> People who can't wake up without an alarm, should be late for things.
> People who are busy, clearly need to be punished!
> Punishment is the best way to change behavior, it's why I always hit my dog!
> Humans are better at remembering and scheduling things than computers are, obviously we should require humans do these types of things even when it would be trivial to do so programmatically.
> I can punish someone, so I should be allowed to!
Or... you could not be a dick, and go, huh, that would be a very nice thing to do to help out your fellow human! I'm glad someone else is willing to help someone else out just because it's the nice thing to do!
> Giving people a free pass for not paying attention to their own finances is exactly how you end up with people that are even worse at managing their finances than before.
[citation needed]... because I'm pretty sure you just made that up, and it's not true at all.
What in the world are you going on about? Continuing to pay for something that you agreed to pay for and didn't cancel is not a "punishment". If it is, that is the silliest definition of punishment I've ever heard. It is certainly not anywhere close to "hitting my dog". So I fixed it for you:
> People who don't cancel subscriptions will continue to pay for them.
> People who can't wake up without an alarm will be late for things.
Neither of those things is an injustice.
Paying for things you agreed to pay for is not a punishment. Punishment is fining companies that do not proactively cancel subscriptions on your behalf. You can set a reminder to cancel something (on a computer). Any argument you can make for a computer being used can apply just as well to the consumer as to the business.
It is very well known in basically every sphere of human endeavor that the less you do something, the less competent you will be at that thing. This doesn't need a citation – this is how humans work.
> > Giving people a free pass for not paying attention to their own finances is exactly how you end up with people that are even worse at managing their finances than before.
[citation needed]... because I'm pretty sure you just made that up, and it's not true at all.
I am not sure what to think about this topic in a whole, but that argument isn’t much different than why we teach responsibility for kids. There might be some truth in it.
> I am not sure what to think about this topic in a whole, but that argument isn’t much different than why we teach responsibility for kids. There might be some truth in it.
Teaching as a whole actions (or inaction) has consequences, is different from trying to interact fairly with the world. In the above case, the punishment is so far divorced from the mistake (forgetting to cancel a subscription), that cost has nearly no chance to actually correct the behavior.
But, even if you think that anxiety and paranoia is a healthy way to go about things... This *still* wouldn't teach the correct behavior. Punishing people for mistakes does not teach them how to manage finances correctly, it teaches them fear about recurring subscriptions.
> But, even if you think that anxiety and paranoia is a healthy way to go about things... This still wouldn't teach the correct behavior. Punishing people for mistakes does not teach them how to manage finances correctly, it teaches them fear about recurring subscriptions.
Unfortunately, consequences often are the only guiding factor. I am assuming that we are talking about normal system here where the user has full control to cancel the financial occurrence. We are not talking about some abusive system that is pretending or denying the cancellation. In that case, it is not different that paying your rent.
If people feel anxiety and paranoia for that, that is not normal and they should do something about it. Like having a confidence that they are in control of their own life. It is a basic life skill.
About the power of consequences - that dictates the world. Almost always it is impossible to provide better carrot than the ill actions are producing.
Look no further than the U.S. politics. If there are no consequences for ill actions, those actions will continue as long as it is possible.
Russia will annex new land until it faces the hard stop.
Companies will push boundaries of the law and ethics until there is a financial consequence.
People will trash the park until the fine is large enough and someone is patrolling in the park.
People will drive beyond speed-limit until the fine is correlating their income level. Otherwise only rich people can break the speed-limit.
> Russia will do [bad thing], unless they're stopped
> Companies will do [bad thing], unless they're stopped
> People at the park will do [bad thing], unless they're stopped
> People in cars will do [bad thing], unless they're stopped
I don't disagree with any of these. We as a society, should punish bad behavior! (Note that the as a society is a critical component of my agreement here)
Is forgetting to cancel a recurring subscription a bad thing, that should be punished? Does it hurt society, or exclusively that individual?
The problem is that there are still huge amounts of services with awful dark patterns out there. There’s an instagram gym clothing brand called Fabletics which is £55/month for their vip tier. They auto subscribe you with a purchase (and when I say buried in the fine print, I really do mean _buried_ in the fine print). To cancel, you have to do it between the 1st and the 4th of the month, and it’s a multi page form where every page is a confirmation that is designed to look like you have unsubscribed . When services are still doing this there needs to be some rules.
Interesting take. I kinda take this a bit personal because I forgot multiple times about some subscriptions I had and I think I have my finances well under order.
I think there is a major difference between spending more then you have for example or getting into the subscription trap of: paid annually but advertised with monthly rates, paid monthly but is part of a separate subscription: Amazon channels, Apple TV channels etc.
I subscribed to a TV service for the Eurocup which was something like 5€ per month. I only realized this after half a year because they send me an email suddenly with the newest shows I can watch. All the time this payment flew under the radar.
If your understanding of managing finances is monthly book keeping down to the penny then yes I might have issues with my finances.
People can leave their computers behind for vacations and try to not use their devices during said vacations or small sabbaticals, you know.
Also, not all people use Kagi for their "search engine" per se. It also has other AI related services, so they might not need a GPU powered parrot every day, sometimes for longer periods.
The status quo is equal footing. Profits and companies are not being put over people when you require people to cancel a subscription that they created. To claim that is to assign almost zero agency to "people".
Forcing companies to do this would absolutely be putting people over profits and companies, however.
Depends. When you remove the "1-click cancel" mandate, it's profits over people, for example.
We had this. You had to fax the company a petition for cancellation before 7 to 2 days to renewal, and call them too to set this in motion. If you fail, you can try next year. Now, they have to integrate with e-gov, and I can cancel my membership from e-gov with one click.
If the integration fails, it's their head under the guillotine, not mine.
I don't think "people over profits" a bad approach. We don't live to feed corporations to feed us junk in return. Corporations shall be there for us improve our lives, if we let them. We are not their slaves.
Yes, I am saying all this in full agreement that there should be requirements for cancellations to be as easy as subscribing, which we have. That said...
Companies are a collection of people. They are not your slaves either.
Saying "I want there to be a mandate that companies auto-cancel my subs if I don't use them" can be re-phrased as "I want a developer somewhere (or a team of them) to be forced (under threat of punishment) to write a bunch of code so that I don't need to do something which is very arguably my responsibility".
