For-profit prisons and hospitals.
Not only they are bad ideas, but the incentives are horrible.
I could see the point of prisons if there was “warranty”. If a person guess back to jail, the first sentence was useless and the prison should be financially punished. You’ll see then how quickly therapy and quality job trainings are implemented.
Nah, they’d just have hitmen ready to kill anyone who leaves the prison.
The exit leads to an airlock, except the open button turns on the incinerator.
Also education
Man, just reading this plain sentence. It’s so glaring as to why this should be illegal.
Infinite return customers = infinite profit!
Advertisements for prescription medication
Well that highly depends on location. I think that’s illegal in most of Europe
Most places other than the US. I know it’s illegal here in Canada.
We get medication ads here in Canada, they’re just very restricted in what they can actually say, but Sportsnet runs a rybelsus ad every hockey game
That’s only legal in like two countries.
I’m in one of them. I wish it wasn’t.
Advertisements in general. Imagine world without ads and sponsored content.
I don’t think that’s realistic. Even the guy at the local market shouting “get your potatoes here” is technically advertisement.
What could work instead is to make both the company that advertises and the one that displays the ad liable for the ad itself. If it’s inappropriate, contains malware or is in any way malicious, the company displaying it should also be liable for endangering the customers. Also outlaw tracking for advertisement purposes altogether
This one is pretty location specific but I agree that US law doesn’t make any sense. Like, physician and pharmacist spend 10 years at university to learn all the details about prescription medication and then have to get yearly retraining, so how do you even do ad’s for that
Two ways: first, you go to doctors offices and hospitals and give gifts to the person responsible for picking which version of this medicine to buy/prescribe.
Second, convince patients to ask for your version when they see their doctor by telling them on tv that it will make their life better or whatever
I left the US to work overseas and when I came back the law changed and everyone was hooked on viagra, the “little purple pill” and everything else…it was VERY obvious what happened…after we sttled down we went to establish care woth a GP & I walked out of my initial appointment with 6 prescriptions.
ridiculous…
Using “tipping” as an excuse not to pay workers living wage.
Displaying prices without tax.
P.S. This is illegal where I live, but some places would be better off if it were illegal there also.
Displaying the price you will pay at the counter is my personal benchmark for civilized society. No price tags? You’re a medieval backwater. Wrong price tags? Go see a shrink, USA. Correct price tags is the way to go.
It’s weird here too because states set sales taxes. I live in Oregon, and we don’t have a standard sales tax here. That means what you see is what you pay at the register for most things, and it’s so freaking nice.
About the only thing I regularly see is the bottle tax (0.10/can added at the register). That’s refundable too, at least theoretically, so it’s not that bad.
Would it change your assessment if they have dynamic price tags that you can only see with the aid of some network-connected augmented reality solution or an online catalog (that you access with a QR code you scan, geotagged software, or something along those lines)?
digital serfdom
Lobbying and lobbyist groups.
Lobbying in and of itself isn’t bad, it makes our politicians aware of issues and alternatives.
Unrestricted lobbying is the problem, I recently read that lobbyists from Amazon would no longer have access cards to the European parliament so they no longer could come and go as they liked.
I just wonder why lobbyists ever got that access in the first place…
Owning shares when you are an elected official with jurisdiction over the industry you own shares in.
Also, any political figure owning shares in a media organisation, regardless of whether it is traditional media or “new media”.
God the nerds in here are annoying.
“Ackchually banning lobbying would mean nobody could talk to politicians anymore blah blah…”
Everyone knows what you mean when you say that lobbying should be illegal.
Everyone knows what you mean when you say that lobbying should be illegal.
Could you explain?
Lobbying as in “bribery with extra steps” where companies give money to politicians, ask them to do something, then say it’s ok because it’s “lobbying” and therefore not bribery, but people are coming in and pointing out how lobbying technically just means talking to politicians, but that’s not what RotatingParts meant.
Isn’t the problem that the “extra steps” are loopholes?
And legal loopholes are like a hydra. Close one and the lawyers will open up two more.
I imagine the line is hard to draw. But of course, the ones doing the drawing of that line are also on the receiving end of the good stuff, so there’s incentives to not close those loopholes…
Probably the part where they’re straight-up bribing politicians to rubber stamp the garbage that ALEC writes.
Everyone knows what you mean when you say that lobbying should be illegal.
People who don’t know anything about lobbying know what you mean when you say lobbying should be illegal.
Banning lobbying would mean no one would be able to talk to a politician/official about an issue. Not even writing your local officials, proposing a local ordinance to making bike lanes or spending money to fix-up/improve a local park. Because that’s lobbying. You’re asking a government to wield their official power and/or spend public money, for your (and potentially others’) benefit.
Even lobbying groups aren’t necessarily bad. The Sierra Club, EFF, ACLU. These are American, but I’m sure there are equivalents of these in other countries.
So banning lobbying doesn’t really work. Now if you’re talking financial contributions and gifts and nice dinners from those who lobby, yeah that probably needs to be more highly regulated or stopped altogether. Generally speaking, any kind of quid pro quo.
But just talking to a politician should not be made illegal. In democracies, talking to people, talking to politicians, and trying to convince them to align with your view is the name of the game.
Gonna overturn the 1st Amendment?
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
I’m sure there are ways to dial in the abuse, but what legislator is gonna vote for that?
Does that include unions?
Gerrymandering.
One side changes on EULAs.
Hardware that requires a proprietary service to work.
Looking at you, nvidia.
Insider trading by Congress
Cheaters
Edit:
“they are cheating!”
Got elected to be congressman
“LET’S DO THIIISS”
Trading at all by Congress. They should be required to lock their money in a blind trust with heavy oversight. If a CEO has to publish their stock sales months in advance, congresspeople should too.
Landlords. Housing as a commodity in general.
Just curious what your preferred solution would be?
Everyone gets one house. No hoarding.
Which house?
I imagine one that is convenient for their needs. Work, school, whatever. Is there a deeper meaning to that question?
I don’t think owning your home is realistic in all scenarios. For example, let’s say because you needed to leave your abusive partner, so you don’t have the luxury of going through the whole process of saving money, then researching, and eventually purchasing a home. You need to get out, maybe live somewhere for a year or two to get your feet under you and save some money so you can purchase a home. If you couldn’t rent a home, how could you possibly get out of this situation if you had no money on hand?
If you move to a new city that you’ve never visited before, sometimes you want to rent in a few areas to find the areas you like before commit long term to a place.
I really don’t think buying a home should be your only option for living in a home. It’s just not what’s best for some people in some scenarios.
Government owned housing used to be a common thing in the UK and it’s how housing works in Singapore today, just because private landlords don’t exist doesn’t mean people can’t rent houses from the government
Could you elaborate on Singapore? I have a friend who lives there and her rent is obscene…
Forced arbitration
Churches backing and funding politicians.
It is illegal to a degree, it violates rules and regulations with the IRS. When they back a politician, they are supposed to lose their church non-profit status. But that doesn’t happen because any move to it would cause a huge “the government is attacking out religious freedoms/churchs”.
In fact it’s now a religious event every year called “Pulpit Freedom Sunday” to purposefully break these laws.
That’s true for the US but not everywhere else
Something (almost) no one has mentioned: factory farming of livestock. I’m not gonna say a person who engages in subsistence farming shouldn’t be able to keep a coop of chickens for eggs (as long as their chickens are well cared for), but large scale animal husbandry and livestock is devastating to the environment and genuinely cruel.
Kill it yourself and eat it? Fine by me. Circle of life, yadda yadda.
Send hundreds into an abattoir to be machine killed by robots or strangers and eat it? No. Own up to the process, or don’t partake.
Own up to the process, or don’t partake.
That’s actually why I went vegan: I couldn’t see myself ever killing an animal.
That’s great in theory, but there’s just too many people for that to be anywhere close to realistic. If we had about 20% of our current global population, then I’d agree with you, but even the worst pandemic in modern history couldn’t scratch 1%.
my parents grew up eating meat once a every few months, from animals they raised themselves. No big farm, just a house in a village. Is that not sustainable?
No it isnt because unless you eat/drink enough dairy or take B12 supplements, youre going to have a B12 deficiency if you do that. People forget that meat actually serves a nutritional purpose.
Well shit, B12 supplements are cheap enough. Are there any other reasons it’s a bad idea?
Vegans and vegetarians (once a month meat consumption isnt really an omnivore diet) are more likely to be deficient in Zinc, Iron and are more susceptible to osteoporosis due to poor Calcium uptake. Because animal protein does help the body to absorb minerals like Iron, Zinc and the like (it isnt known for sure why and phytates in certain plant foods also hampers mineral uptake) vegetarians and vegans need to overcompensate for those minerals in their food. On the order of about 50% higher than the RDA for omnivores.
Now I am not saying it cant be healthy, it can and there certainly are problems with how the average westerner eats, but I have no confidence in this being done correctly on a mass scale given the data that has come out. eg. 50% of vegans are deficient in B12 as measured by blood test and thats among a population that is likely much more aware of B12 being problematic since it is only naturally found in significant quantities in animal products and almost every meat and dairy substitute on the market is fortified with B12. And that widespread deficiency STILL happens. Vegetarians are less susceptible to B12 deficiency but still generally rely on the dairy industry to obtain that B12 along with Calcium and Zinc. And because B12 is water soluble not fat soluble, it needs to be obtained daily or in higher doses, semidaily. And the effects of B12 deficiency can be delayed months (pernicious anemia) or years (permanent nerve damage with the anemia hidden by excess folate consumption)
People need education and better meat and dairy substitutes that arent as processed to make this work. Right now, most of them have too much salt and saturated fats to be an improvement.
No such thing as animal protein being different from any other protein.
Thank you for the write up!
Well they did eat lots of cheese and dairy. Is that not okay?
You need cows to produce all of that just like you would meat. The way cow physiology works requires that calves be birthed periodically to maintain milk production at large scale. The dairy industry is to a large extent, a by product of the meat industry. Those new calves have to go somewhere. And you have to keep in mind that 70% of the world’s population is lactose intolerant as adults. They rely on nondairy meat products for the majority of the B12 they get. OR you switch people to vegan substitutes that have B12 added to them. Right now those are niche/luxury products which is problematic for developing nations. Like… imagine going from small scale cattle and poultry farming to relying on B12 bacterial fermenters and soy production at large scale. That might be doable if new processes for using certain strains of B12 producing pseudomonas bacterial cultures can be developed for fermented soy products like tempeh can spread there but again, those arent there yet. More R&D is needed.
Screwing over a large number of people to benefit a small number of people. Religion and corporations immediately come to mind.
That’s very vague and sounds like it would mainly affect minorities in a negative way. Not that I think that’s your intention of course.
Forced arbitration
Definitely in a B2C context. If businesses want to force arbitration between themselves then fine.
Even worse in a Business to Employee context.
Tracking & profiting off it.
Forcing people to be tracked to use a product that they then sell that data should be illegal without your complete, informed consent, and you get to opt out and still use the product.
All tracking should be regulated. You own your personhood 100% and only you can make money off of that.How about we set a no tracking flag in our browsers for example and companies actually respect the choice? One can only dream…
Zero hour contracts in the uk don’t actually have to have an actual contract so if your boss says that something is in your job description you can’t argue otherwise because there was never a contract that said what your job roles were to start with.
How is that even legal somewhere ?
For context this is how the vast majority of jobs work in the US by default.
