Category Archives: markets

Too Bad

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The FCC is working up a rule that would allow phone companies to automatically block robocalls.

Businesses demur.

The proposal is part of an effort to cut down on unwanted and illegal robocalls, but some businesses fear it could result in carriers also blocking automated calls from legitimate firms. Banks, collection agencies, and merchants say automated calls are crucial, even though some consumers find them annoying.

And

It’s important that the commission take a hard look at some of the proposals to make sure that they are appropriately targeted to address the problem, illegal automated calls[.]

Sorry, guys.  It’s not only illegal automated calls the want blocking.  So do annoying calls—and it’s the customer, the recipient, who makes that determination, not the business caller.  Businesses don’t get to barge into someone’s home without permission—which is what an unwanted, annoying call is, just as much as physically coming through the door.

Then there’s this gem:

The current call-blocking proposal could mean financial-services companies such as mortgage or educational lenders are unable to reach customers for informational purposes, which could keep them from complying with separate consumer-protection rules requiring such companies to contact customers under certain circumstances[.]

This adds cynical disingenuosity to the companies’ arrogance.  Blocking robocalls doesn’t even begin to render businesses unable to reach customers for informational purposes.  Business employees are fully capable of making telephone calls themselves, rather than relying on their bots—but that would require the business to have an actual human on one end of the call actually having to interact, live, with the customer.  This might be inconvenient to the business employee, but that’s singularly unimportant.  Even the cost increment from using a live person on a real phone call is the customer’s call to make, not the employee’s.

Business employees are fully capable of sending emails—even though customers are fully capable of recognizing spam and having those automatically filtered.  If an employee doesn’t want his email filtered, he’ll make it look like serious business correspondence rather than gussying it up with advertising and other froo-froo.  Software makes mass emails—even serious business emails—fast and simple and leaves the process cheap.

Business employees are fully capable of writing letters—they have their customers’ snail mail addresses on file as a matter of course.  If an employee doesn’t want his letter to go straight into the trash or recycling unopened, he’ll make his letter look like a serious business letter: he’ll have his name and return address (both, mind you) in the upper left corner of the envelope, and he won’t gussy up that envelope with advertising or other froo-froo.

Blowing Up Settlements

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The one being sabotaged here is between Facebook and the FTC over the FTC’s proposed settlement of Facebook’s “mishandling” of consumer privacy data, including surrendering millions of consumers’ personal information to Cambridge Analytica.

FTC Chairman Joseph Simons has the (Republican) votes he need to impose the settlement, from the FTC’s perspective, on a 3-2 partisan vote.  He’s quite rightly trying to get at least one of the Progressive-Democrats on the board to vote with him, but they’re bleating that a $5 billion fine and other controls don’t go far enough.

This is naked obstruction, though, based on a cynically manufactured beef.

Another impediment to the settlement is a textbook example of why Federal agencies ought not be spring-loaded to settle cases with miscreants.  “Settlements,” should be vanishingly rare, and they should occur only after the teeth from a history of court cases have been manifested.  This time, the block is whether

to name Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg as a respondent in the complaint that would be filed by the agency as part of the settlement. Naming Mr Zuckerberg as a respondent could make him liable for future privacy missteps—and give the FTC leverage if it should seek to remove Mr Zuckerberg from the company’s management in the future.

Whichever party wants this included, it’s an entirely legitimate inclusion.

“Facebook representatives,” though, object, and they say Facebook will not accept a settlement that includes this.

There’s nothing here for Facebook to accept or reject, though. Facebook screwed up with consumers’ private, personal information, and the screwups identified in this putative settlement are just the latest in a long string of such…errors.  That those prior misbehaviors are not part of this case does matter in determining the price to be paid in this instance, but they should inform the FTC’s willingness to go to court rather than itself settle for a settlement.

There should be no settlement on the table or on offer in any guise.  The case should be in the courts, moving apace—the FTC should not allow Facebook’s lawyers to drag things out, and neither should the courts—with a court judgment sought. That judgment should include, at minimum, a company fine of $5 billion or more, Zuckerberg named as correspondent, and Zuckerberg personally fined for his role as the MFWIC condoning, if not actively authorizing, such privacy invasions and sales.

Charging Assange

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Julian Assange, of Manning and Wikileaks infamy, has been indicted on violations of the Espionage Act in addition to the existing charges pending against him.

Naturally, the NLMSM is in an uproar over this putative attack on a free press.

…reignited debate over whether pursuing Mr. Assange for publishing classified information could lead to other cases against journalists who receive government secrets.

There are a couple of things on the NLMSM’s artificial dudgeon, though.  One is that a free press also has to be a responsible press—which includes respect for the law and acceptance of the consequences where the press engages in civil disobedience.  We’re all big boys and girls, though, the press’ and the Left’s contempt for us notwithstanding.  We’re fully capable of recognizing irresponsibility when we see it and disdaining pseudo-journalism when it’s presented.

The larger thing, though, is the role of law in our nation.  We’re either a nation of laws, or we are not.  We’re all equal under law, or some of us get special treatment—descending us into rule by law instead of rule of law.

The laws regarding receiving stolen goods are quite clear: that’s a crime, and the recipient(s) on conviction go to jail.  Except when it’s a journalist who receives the stolen property.  See, for instance, the news outlet that received and published the stolen Ellsberg papers, along with the hue and cry over holding Julian Assange—who’s not even a journalist, for all that he pretends to be—to the consequences from his having received the documents Manning had stolen and sent to him.

A free press requires journalists be allowed to break the same laws the rest of us must obey?  What’s the value of a press that cannot be trusted, that demonstrates its lawlessness by freely receiving stolen goods and profiting from the receipt by publishing the stolen material?

Here’s an alternative—a bare minimum of movement of the NLMSM back within the reach of the same laws the rest of us must obey.

Upon receipt of the stolen material, the news outlet and the receiving journalist must immediately return the originals of the material to the robbed entity and identify to law enforcement the person(s) and/or entity from which the material was received.  Upon return, the news outlet would be free to publish based on its copies of the stolen material.

Should the journalist or news outlet refuse, the journalist (or the news outlet’s chief editor, if the receiving journalist cannot be clearly identified) should be jailed until the originals are returned and the delivering person/entity identified.

Of course, overriding the above is whether the stolen material is classified (the Manning theft, for instance).  In this instance, the material and the receiving news outlet and its personnel would be subject to laws pertaining to (mis)handling classified material.

Trade Deals

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The Progressive-Democratic Party has once again shown us its meld.

“It used to be Congress versus the administration; now it feels like the administration is at least coming around to the Republican point of view” on trade, a Democratic congressional aide said, adding that “it’s going to be hard for them to work with Democrats in a productive way.”

Never mind the Progressive-Democrats’ refusal to work with the White House or Republicans in a productive way.  “A productive way” means, as it always has, doing it the Progressive-Democrats’ way.

Take the present case.  The US, Mexico, and Canada have agreed to lift the metals and other tariffs the three had imposed on each other—per Progressive-Democrat demands.

It’s not enough.  Progressive-Democrats want to renegotiate the deal altogether because the labor parts of the agreement don’t suit them.  Never mind, here, that the agreement effectively mandates significant pay raises for Mexican workers.  Never mind, either, that the rules are supported by American unions.  House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) and her cronies want to scuttle the Trumpian deal altogether.

It’ll never be enough.  It’s not just hard, it’s nearly impossible, to work with Progressive-Democrats in any productive way.

Medicare for All

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Senator and Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders (I [sic], VT) has the canonical version of Medicare for All; the other Progressive-Democrat candidates have only slightly varied versions of it.  Here’s Sanders on his Next Big Idea for health care provision and health care coverage:

You will have a card which has Medicare on it, you’ll go to any doctor that you want, you’ll go to any hospital that you want.

Right.  Been there, done that.  Both claims were straight up lies then, too.  There is a major difference, though, between Sanders’ two lies and ex-President Barack Obama’s (D) two lies: Sanders would make private insurance illegal—both the selling and the possessing.  That, though, only potentiates the power of Sanders’ lies.

As The Wall Street Journal mentioned on the other side of the link,

The point of Medicare for All is to cut reimbursement rates to Medicare levels, which government can now set so low only because private commercial reimbursement rates are so much higher. Cutting reimbursement rates would “probably reduce the amount of care supplied and could also reduce the quality of care,” CBO says.

Not could—would.  Reducing availability cannot help but reduce quality, if only from denying it altogether to many who need it or would merely benefit from it.  But that’s not the only pathway: that reduction in availability will flow, at least in large part, from that reduction in reimbursement rates.  As a result of that, those doctors and hospitals whose talents and skills warrant higher pay will limit their practices to the bare minimum.

That’s not out of personal greed, either: costs of care delivery go up markedly as the number of patients go up.  Absent meeting costs with fees charged, these providers would have no choice but to limit their costs by limiting their services and the numbers of potential patients served.

There’s another cost path, too: the more complex or difficult, or even merely rare, a medical problem, the more expensive it is to provide services for dealing with it.  Capped reimbursements will limit the availability of that care. And—lower reimbursement rates again—lower the quality of those providers willing to provide the care.