Victimizing the Poor and Vulnerable Has Become the American Way.

Ever wondered about injured individuals who receive large payouts after suing the corporation that harmed them? Turns out there is a very busy area of lawyering devoted to scamming the injured of their compensation. The more vulnerable the person the easier the taking.

In Today's Washington Post, this article about the area of lawyering devoted to scamming people horribly injured of the payouts made by the corporations who harmed them.

Why does this go on? Because there will always be people who see vulnerability as opportunity. Other people’s vulnerability/their opportunity. Our society allows predatory business to succeed. The successful are admired and emulated. The vulnerable are ripe for sport and amusement.

Simple trusting people can be manipulated for profit. Sometimes for entertainment. TV is full of this.

Here’s a neat example of how to torture poor children for entertainment.

We guilt the poor. We teach the poor they deserve their poverty. We teach them that an austere life is a just life, the system that aids the efficient funneling of money to people with money is right and proper.

The system by which this is done is elaborate and carefully constructed. Economic trickery has become part of government policy, not because the public wanted it but because the public was persuaded to accept it. By the same kinds of legal minds who earn their living by scamming the vulnerable. Austerity policies justify the permanent poverty and vulnerability of a large segment of the public.

How do people rationalize this behavior? It’s easy: whatever pays you money must be right. Whatever pays you the most money must be the rightest thing you can do. This is taught in our media and in our business schools, where the ethics classes are poorly attended. Victimizing the vulnerable is one of the easiest ways of making a comfortable living.

To justify your having the money and the poor not having it it helps to believe that they deserve comfort, security and happiness less than you do. That they actually deserve to be ripped off. That they are beyond undeserving of a good life, that they deserve a life of punishment.

The ultimate form of this rationalization is the criminalization of the poor. The Washington Post recently published this column about the criminalization of the poor.

To profit from this criminalization is the ultimate good. Thus preying on the poor becomes a killer business model. For-profit prisons are a fast growing business category.

The Fine Print We Just Signed Has Nullified Our Legal Rights

A very disturbing article in the New York Times explains how corporations have nullified our legal rights. It's all there in the fine print at the bottom of the agreement we just signed.

I can’t decide if this is Orwellian or Kafkaesque. Maybe it’s both.

Why don’t corporations write contractual language saying we agree to allow them to commit crimes against us? If it’s written into a contract’s fine print which we must sign to complete a purchase of something we need, I guess the corporation whose product we need owns us body and soul. They can do with us as they wish.

If something is in a contract we sign is it automatically legal? Can a lawyer legalize murder in a properly written contract? Can a contract absolve a company of all responsibility for its deeds or its products? Apparently. There are arbitrators, but arbitrators need the corporations’ business. They are bound to them as firmly as we are, and will do as the corporations wish.

Our grandparents used to say “they have you over a barrel.” You’re helpless to resist. You can’t say No. You can’t fight it. Surrender. Give up. Give in. The contractual language of everyday life has put us over a barrel.

Somewhere in the fine print our corporate masters have nullified our legal rights. They have deleted their legal responsibilities for anything that might happen, for anything they might do. They have blocked our access to the justice system forever, nullifying one of the three branches of our constitutional government, at least as far as ordinary citizens are concerned.

How can this possibly be legal?

The point is, it’s not for us to say what is legal. We are nobodies. Our legal rights were suspended when we signed the agreement on our last online purchase.

If the document said we were now the legal property of the lawyer who wrote the fine print would we even know?

(One step toward removing arbitration clauses from consumer agreements.)