So I’m a believer in Net Neutrality. I think ISPs should be prevented from slowing down traffic on some sites, or otherwise interfering in the content people view online, except maybe when confirmed criminal activity is involved. One of the ways in which ISPs violate Net Neutrality today is through a technique called zero-rating, essentially waiving charges on certain services (typically related to the ISP in some way) and not on others.
My cell phone plan includes a 2-GB data cap (this is Canada, after all), but the data cap doesn’t apply to a certain set of music streaming apps (Spotify, SoundCloud, etc.). So I can listed to Spotify for a full day and I never pay for it.
Until the CRTC ruled on it a few days ago, I had not put two and two together and recognised this as zero-rating.
Now I’m using my cell phone data plan (which I like) to receive e-mails from OpenMedia telling me that “we” just won a victory by (potentially) eliminating my cell phone data plan. And I’m cognitively dissonating.
What you’re essentially asking is whether people ever find that their beliefs/values/convictions suggest a need to make changes, or to accept changes, that will inconvenience them or cost them money.
Yes, all the time. If you never experience this tension you’re probably some kind of sociopath.
I feel conflicted by the fact that so much of my life is subsidized by the poor, who pay all the fees and penalties that enable me to get more affordable services. My credit card has provided me with a service for decades, not costing me a cent, because they make all their money from penalties and late fees and usurious interest, paid by those who can least afford it.
People who live from payday to payday pay obscene amounts of money for fees that i am not exposed to because I can always keep ahead of any fees and penalties and interest.
Then you can be happy, because you’re mistaken. When you make a purchase with your credit card, part of the purchase price goes to the credit card company as a processing fee. It’s about 2% here in the UK.
Another vote for this being quite mundane and should be very common in everyone’s life.
A related matter regards ethics. If the “easy choice” was the most moral one then everyone would be moral all the time. That doing the right thing quite often means doing something difficult is fundamental.
But that is equalized across the board as a cost of doing business. The sticker price of the product is the same for people who pay with cash or card. So using the card has no effect on my carry-out price. A buyer who has poor credit and cannot get a card also pays that 2%. He has just subsidized me.
But the inherently moral among us do not find it difficult at all to do the right things. If you have to ask yourself what is the right thing, and weigh the “difficulty” of your choice, you are not among those who would “be moral all the time”.
Every form of payment carries a cost to the seller. Processing of checks and cash require additional hours at the retailer and incur processing fees from the bank - all told probably in excess of 2% of sales, but it’s an “invisible” expense. Credit cards eliminate this additional processing for the retailer since everything is done automatically. The CC company charges 2% for the convenience to the retailer. Everyone gets a better deal, but it’s easy to villify because it’s a visible expense.
And, at least in the Netherlands, it’s easy to see: some small mom-and-pop shops work only in cash and do not accept payment via cards. And their prices are not particularly lower than the prices of the supermarkets that DO accept cards (as a matter of fact, sometimes they can be a bit higher).
Why would they do that? Because the owners of the shop do not want to pay the % that the card companies take from the seller. The customer does not pay that % – the shops do. Why would the shops then want to accept cards? Ease of transactions, less cash in the shop itself, more convenient for the customers, potentially more volume of sales.
A couple years ago with the Chik-fil-A dustup I found easy to boycott them because I didn’t like it in the first place. In fact, I’d been self-boycotting for about five years at the time.
OTOH I am trying to be Buddhist but find I enjoy being a carnivore too much. I’m working on it piecemeal (bacon will be the last to go). The dissonance is palpable.
That is a feature, not a bug. Being poor is not a virtue anymore than being overweight or having a filthy house. Fuck them. I have been poor myself a few times but I prefer being rich so I make adjustments to help maintain that. I like the fact that credit card companies throw so many travel perks at me that I almost never have to pay for them myself. If people that are bad with money want to subsidize my vacations, God bless them.
You should update your political views. If your political position is getting in the way of customers getting goods things then that shows you it was wrong to begin with.
To state the obvious: all other things being equal, I’d strongly prefer to pay zero taxes. But I pay them not just because I’m legally required to, but because they’re the dues of a civilized society.
If you are asking if doing what you believe to be the right thing ever has the consequence of inconveniencing you because you may have been some how benefiting in some way from the wrong thing? (did that make sense?)