• Tar_Alcaran@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      7 months ago

      We are not discussing happy people fucking up due to some innate character flaw. We are talking about people

      No, we are not talking about people at all. We are talking about companies. Again, if we were talking about people, I would agree with you 100%, but we’re not. This is one company making a contract with a different company. Companies are legally distinct from people for very good reasons, and this is one of them.

      Of course, there are reallife human behind those companies. And if those people had made these choices as individual people, they would in fact be protected under the law. But they chose NOT to be protected under those laws so they could operate as a company with the ups and down that entails. They voluntarily took this risk to get the benefits of running a company, and now they are crying that they didn’t know any better. It doesn’t work like that, if you don’t want to be treated as a company, don’t be one. You don’t get to have all the advantages on one hand, and none of the disadvantages on the other.

      I want to re-emphasize this: You can absolutely do this work as a private individual. Mia Li, the window-frame importor from the article could have done all her business as a private individual, but she obviously didn’t, probably because that comes with some big downsides in taxes. She voluntarily started a company, chosing the waive the very protections she had as a private person, in order to get benefits in the form of tax advantages and other things. And now that she suffers the downsides from her own choises (that choice of starting a business, that she made well before covid), she’s upset that she’s not shielded from the consequences of her actions like a regular consumer would be.

      I don’t feel sorry for people when they their voluntary, intentionally risky, actions have consequences. When you chose to forego risk-mitigation in order to recieve financial benefits, you’re making a choice. If that goes wrong, you literally only have yourself to blame.

        • BearOfaTime@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          7 months ago

          Good luck preventing all scummy practices.

          Not that we shouldn’t try, but to expect them to not exist is naive.

        • Tar_Alcaran@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          7 months ago

          If you assume incompetence as the default, as with most consumer protection, then it becomes basically impossible to deal business to business. Can a company lie to a consumer, and then claim they simply don’t know or didn’t understand? If your industry has a higher profit margin than mine, can I sue you for being scummy?

          The basis of consumer protection is that consumer can’t be expected to be experts in everything. The basis of business law is that businesses know what they’re doing in their field. If you don’t, you’re doing it wrong.

        • Tar_Alcaran@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          7 months ago

          Would you prefer to argue the semantics, or the actual point?

          Someone intentionally, knowingly, drops their legal projections to increase their personal benefit. They stop acting as an individual legally, and start acting as a company. And then the consequences of that action happen.