'A blog in support of stupid people's rights (probably the most important...)' blog

bexster1975

As has been demonstrated several times recently in the media, it is not a case of stupidity that people end up on expensive energy tariffs. It is disgusting that the big 6 ensure it is impossible to make direct comparisons. I really hope some of the people who consider those who get stung to be stupid manage to get stung too. It is hard to imagine these "superior intellectual beings" haven't been caught out at least once before - maybe they were too stupid to notice!;)

bexster

2sides2everystory

callum9999 wrote: »

It's not selfishness. It's not as if I've found a secret loophole that let me get a pre-paid mastercard ...

I wonder if you have discovered and obtained a new Ryanair Cashpassport card yet?

I get those cheap deals through research. Those getting "drawn in" and paying extra have only themselves to blame. I am not benefiting from the stupidity of others, I am benefiting from the laziness of others. HUGE difference, and they have only themselves to blame. (On the whole - of course some people are too stupid to book a flight but they are an extreme minority).

You have twice called the victims of sharp practice "lazy" callum.

As you have kindly laid out elements of your thinking online, I have used them to form the opinion that actually you are no less lazy than the next person. Am I wrong, or have you perhaps just been there a number of times, done it and got the t-shirt whereas many customers are not so fluent as you with Ryanair transactions?

Tojo_Ralph

...
I wonder if Martins sympathy and championing of stupid peoples actions extends beyond the subject matter from which he earns a living?

If so I am sure there are plenty of stupid people out there with short attention spans or who are distracted perhaps due to stress, sleep deprivation from a new baby or maybe in a rush to get home or see a relative on their last legs who would like Martin to make a fist of trying to present such a defence in court against a speeding ticket.

mostlycheerful

My first thought is that we're all stupid from time to time, even the cleverest of us. I've made lots of mistakes over the years, I think all of us do. It's normal.

So I'm very grateful whenever someone else can spot my mistake and save me from wasting my money or losing something or missing out or doing myself some damage etc.

I think we all owe it to each other to try to help.

However, as I mention on another thread just ten minutes ago, sometimes people ask for help but then react against you. So what do you do with them? Do you intervene because you know better and, if you have, because you've got the patience of a saint? Or do you give up and leave them to their fate and doom.

Some people are too selfish or self interested to help. And there are even some malevolent people who take pleasure in inflicting pain on people, kicking people when they're down, exploiting people's weaknesses etc. Laughing and sneering at people's loss and failure and suffering.

Supposedly in the civilised modern world we have laws to counteract this but as there is little or no law enforcement or rule of law in UK many people, if not all of us, are vulnerable to attack.

Which, of course, most cruel people and crims are aware of.

I've dealt with this issue comprehensively on your blog fraud police not bothering thread a few weeks ago and in a number of other threads so I won't go further into that and the crime problem again here now.

I had a long winded debate on the Property board a while ago when several people said that the victims of property frauds, such as people who get sucked in at hard sell seminars for buying property on no money down mortgages and also the time share scam companies, have only themselves to blame.

The point I made is that no they're not to blame, they've mostly been hoodwinked and conned by clever con artists.

Due to the amount of aggressive and rude opposition I got I had to make the point forcefully.

No, victims of fraud, and especially when hypnotised and bamboozled by clever subliminal sales techniques, are not "greedy" and are not at fault.

On the contrary, a lot of people get ripped off, mostly grossly unfairly, by the clever mental sales techniques coupled with the lying and the outright criminal fraud.

I happen to know a lot about business and to have a healthy skepticism. I'm also a confident robust personality and I happen to mostly be good at facts and figures and with a wide frame of reference. So I don't get taken in. But many people do, powerful sales techniques overwhelm a lot of people and their reason goes out the window.

When I encounter heavy sales people I tend to interview them and I point out the faults in their business model. I'm impervious to their hard sell and to their psychological techniques.

I'm also fairly well off so I'm not desperately looking for a solution to poverty, as are a lot of the victims.

So I'm lucky, I'm immune. But many people aren't and I have great sympathy for them.

And I denounce people who wrongly say that people, for instance, who have worked hard all their lives then want to invest in a property somewhere are "greedy" for falling for a con.

There are also some greedy people around, sure, but the point is that a lot of victims of fraud, in fact most victims of fraud, are not greedy, not at all, and do not deserve to get ripped off. It's not their fault that some monstrous criminal has taken advantage of them, not at all.

There's a lot more to be said about this subject so I might come back again as possibly I'll think of some more to say about this.

In summary, I have sympathy for anyone and everyone making mistakes, we all do it sometimes.

And also for anyone not knowing about stuff, being unable to read or understand stuff etc, which, again, many if not all of us are subject to at one time or another.

It's not just people with recognised conditions or disabilities or old people etc who are vulnerable, as I say at the start of this piece and just now, we all make mistakes or misread or misunderstand stuff or have our attention distracted at an important moment occasionally.

So the decent civilised thing to do is to help people out.

Those who sneer at victims and people who lose out are nasty twisted antisocial wrong'uns, lacking in normal human kindness. Lacking in decency and empathy. Shame on them. Bad people.

JimmyTheWig

dtsazza wrote: »

Do people generally think that Carol Vorderman goes on an advert to express her own unbiased preference in something?

I think it is more subtle than that, but yes I think basically that is how it works.

I would like to think of myself as a pretty clued up consumer when it comes to bank products. But I know that I chose Abbey National for three different things in the short time that Alan Davies (who plays genius Jonathon Creek) was doing their adverts.
I believe that I got good deals in each case, but I do still sometimes wonder to what extent I was subconciously swayed.

dtsazza

tagq2 wrote: »

A bank manager, on the other hand, is usually more advanced than a mushroom. He has a social standing in a social species, so the tribe grants him rights, burdens him with responsibilities, and takes account of his emotion. If he harms the tribe for personal gain, the tribe will castigate him.

...

It's simply up to the tribe to decide which sort of behaviours the tribe will protect and which it will prohibit. And if the behaviour harms the tribe but its prohibition does not cause suffering then the tribe would be degenerate not to prohibit it. The best way to proceed is with a scientific understanding of the abilities and limits of man rather than an ideal of man as either a hero or a helpless pawn.

That's an illuminating way to look at it, and what it really comes down to - thanks for a thoughtful post.

At root it really is a choice of what behaviours are allowed, and are determined to be beneficial to the "tribe". Specifically, in which situations we allow an entity with some sort of advantage to gain a more favourable position over an entity without that advantage.

It's almost universally accepted that someone with more physical power is not allowed to use that advantage to subjugate others into slavery or similar. At the other end of the scale, it's almost universally accepted that someone with very good empathy/memory/negotiation skills is allowed to be a better Customer Relations Executive (to give an arbitrary example).

One could argue that the former is exploitation while the latter isn't; but in the latter case, a mediocre candidate will still not get accepted for the job, or will be paid a lower salary, thus putting them in a worse position than the skilled application, as a direct result of that applicant's involvement.


I hope that it's clear to everyone that we do need to allow abilities to mean success to some extent. (The alternative would by definition mean everyone living to the lowest common denominator, with everyone having exactly the same, and no rewards for any sort of effort making incentives non-existant. As well as being drab, it would be very inefficient.)

The question then, is where the line is drawn. As a society, do we feel that those with above average financial aptitude should be able to profit from that aptitude, or should the masses be protected so that there's a middle-of-the-road solution available to everybody?

My opinion is that it's greatly inferior to apply restrictions in this situation. By default, enjoying the successes of knowledge and ability should be allowed, and only prevented when they impinge on the freedoms of others and/or the stability of the society.

That said, I suspect that how someone feels about this is strongly correlated with whether they consider themselves a socialist or a libertarian, with socialists more inclined to find a common denominator approach and libertarians supporting individual ability.

Dave_C wrote: »

I read with interest the self-righteous comments along the lines of "I'm clever and I benefit from people less clever than me, it doesn't matter about everyone else".

Isn't this going against the whole idea of a civilised society. The comments should be "I'm clever and I will help people less clever than me and the whole of society will benefit"

It depends on how you imagine a civilised society is best run. As above there's a whole spectrum of "where you draw the line".

Taking your view to an extreme, the "best" outcome would be if the government approved every product or service that existed, and there was only one of them, and everyone got the same amount of government rations. This would avoid any questions of relative quality or pricing, and would also ensure that the so-called "stupid" wouldn't be worse off than the savvy.

However, I don't think that on balance that would be a better society. I'd have very little incentive to study, or work hard (or even work at all if I got my rations anyway). I much prefer a society where everyone gets a result that accords with their choices and input, and I believe that on balance that does benefit the entirety of society.

It's easy to point at a single disadvantaged group and show how they would be better off under that change. It's less easy to construe how such a disincentive to enterprise and personal betterment will lower the general standard and amount of useful work done by a small amount across society as a whole, reducing the aggregate standard of living by a much more significant amount. Not to mention the shift away from self-fulfilment, towards an attitude of having rules and safety provided for you by the state (which ironically might make people more prone to picking sub-optimal choices, since they have to exercise their judgement less and generally feel that everything has already been checked for them).

So it's hardly obvious that a reduction in personal responsibility leads to a better society.

MSE_Martin

Errata -- Im quite surprised at your comment.

Of course its deeply offensive to call the people in that blog 'stupid' that's my whole point - that's exactly what the comments I receive are doing without thinking.

And just quickly I've changed the line 'no debts' to 'no debt problems' It wasn't meant to imply Im whiter than white, but that its perfectly possible to care about the issues people get in without having experienced them. Im very surprised some of this debate has been drawn onto what was a very small throwaway line into it. And dont want to dilute the main issue with such debate.

Errata

MSE_Martin wrote: »

Errata -- Im quite surprised at your comment.

Of course its deeply offensive to call the people in that blog 'stupid' that's my whole point - that's exactly what the comments I receive are doing without thinking.

And just quickly I've changed the line 'no debts' to 'no debt problems' It wasn't meant to imply Im whiter than white, but that its perfectly possible to care about the issues people get in without having experienced them. Im very surprised some of this debate has been drawn onto what was a very small throwaway line into it. And dont want to dilute the main issue with such debate.

I think I've explained my stance in #28. You're a journalist and know what a sub-editor would have done to ensure the phrase was encased in quotation marks to clarify it wasn't your phrase.
It's in your power to correct the punctuation in the blog as easily as you've changed the text.
I realise that often blogs are cracked out at a pace and aren't subbed; sometimes that can lead readers to misinterpret and assume. That's where those powerful words 'some' and 'may' punch far above their weight.

"Below is my non-exhausted list of those who struggle with all these various issues ...."

Below is my non-exhausted list of some of those who may struggle with all these various issues

I don't expect you to agree with me, but believe you deserve a full explanation of my thinking.

ps It's exhaustive, isn't it?

MSE_Martin

Errata wrote: »

I think I've explained my stance in #28. You're a journalist and know what a sub-editor would have done to ensure the phrase was encased in quotation marks to clarify it wasn't your phrase.
It's in your power to correct the punctuation in the blog as easily as you've changed the text.
I realise that often blogs are cracked out at a pace and aren't subbed; sometimes that can lead readers to misinterpret and assume. That's where those powerful words 'some' and 'may' punch far above their weight.

"Below is my non-exhausted list of those who struggle with all these various issues ...."

Below is my non-exhausted list of some of those who may struggle with all these various issues

I don't expect you to agree with me, but believe you deserve a full explanation of my thinking.

ps It's exhaustive, isn't it?

I wasn't having a go - I was just saying I was surprised at your comments (as I know you're not a troll therefore you must've meant it). I did tweak the blog slightly on the back of reading them to make it more clear (and exhausted now). Hopefully we're there

equado

It just seems so obvious for companies to leave boxes unticked so that you have to opt in if you want to - but then of course they can just leave boxes blank so that you have to tick in to opt out - it's all just about screwing the customer! I've just been searching for a new car insurance policy (thanks, by the way, Martin - got a nice comp policy at a good price :j) and there's a lot of this opt in/opt out nonsense going on.