Maybe I'm naive but I think there used to be at least a modicum of self-restraint on this kind of thing. Sure, people always tried to make as much money as possible, but there used to be some limit somewhere - not because you'll get caught but because c'mon, we just don't do that! That seems to have now been totally lost.
Edit:
Also, in the West society in general is one of abundance with people housed, clothed and educated in school from birth, which IMHO removes a lot of incentives for scams and fraud.
But it used to be (and still is in some countries) that most people were born with nothing in a very tough environment and had to fight just to eat every day. The world of Charles Dickens was real.
"For my friends everything, for my enemies the law".
Citation? Best I could find is that Louisiana regulates floristry but doesn't mandate education (you need to take an exam). As for taking more hours of training than police I think you are conflating that fact in your head with this: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/cosmetologists-police-trai...
Besides, I'm not sure how you got here in a thread about how Fedex, a "big compan[y] [which] can get away with whatever" getting caught scamming people.
https://www.on.jobbank.gc.ca/marketreport/requirements/24582...
Florist, regulated in QC, training is ~1K hours.
https://www.quebec.ca/en/government/quebec-at-a-glance/first...
training is also ~1K hours.
> Besides, I'm not sure how you got here in a thread about how Fedex, a "big compan[y] [which] can get away with whatever" getting caught scamming people.
Car sales (any many other things) are heavily regulated where I live. Also it seems regulations are not enforced if one is 'too big to fall'.
Can you provide better citation, or point explicitly to the licensing requirements?
[1] https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=license+f...
Although a university degree "may be required by some employers ", I find this a bit much, however.
> Florist, regulated in QC, training is ~1K hours.
Is it? That page is extremely vague and doesn't seem to be specific to study hours or even education requirements.
Floristry doesn't seem to be on the list of regulated professions in Quebec: https://www.quebec.ca/emploi3/metiers-professions/metiers-re..., but I may have missed it.
Link in french shows 1K hours https://ecole-metiers-horticulture.cssdm.gouv.qc.ca/programm... to obtain one.
There are only a few jobs which have mandatory qualifications (left column in the link below) and a larger number of jobs which have voluntary qualification courses. There may be secondary requirements (e.g., to work as a butcher and get insurance, your employees must have the voluntary qualification certificate), but these are not regulated professions the way you have been incorrectly claiming on this thread.
https://www.emploiquebec.gouv.qc.ca/citoyens/developper-et-f...
One can dream, the rich at the top write all the rules. It’s not like Joe Average is the one taking golf trips with Supreme Court justices and buying lobbyists to do their dirty work.
I think maybe, in the immediate past in the West it was better.
We still lived and worked more locally, standing with neighbours mattered; corporations had less power than governments; governments were less able to manipulate their citizens, perhaps.
Politicians seem to have learnt to give just enough to quell the riots and pervert the system for maximum financial gain for those who control them; spreading losses across all those being exploited. The UK's conservative government stole something like £30B using preferential contracts in just two areas (IT, PPE supply) during the pandemic.
In the recent past it seems highly unlikely that someone sacked twice for lying, Alexander Boris de Pfeffle Johnson, would get a job as an MP, nevermind becoming PM. In the past it would be inconscionable, now the party seems to shrug and say 'he brings in a lot of a Russian campaign money, lets make him PM'.
In the UK there has been a systematic removal of scrutiny and oversight: choosing BBC management, choosing the civil service boss (it was previously always under open competition), changing the nature of parliamentary oversight, and of course Brexit helps considerably to this end.
I've no doubt it was worse in the middle ages, but considerable doubt it was worse throughout the 20th Century.
Before many things were kept secret or could at least be kept out of the press. Now everything is photographed and filmed, and politicians have the bad habit of using messaging apps instead of making quiet phone calls or simply of having a private chat and so they leave plenty of incriminating evidence in writing.
It certainly could be that despite the appearances being better in say, 1950-2000, that actual corruption was equal or worse, and most of it went undetected and unpunished!
But my take is that it wasn't as bad, because shame used to exist. A politician would "resign in disgrace" when caught in a medium-to-large scandal (even one that seemed technically irrelevant to their responsibilities, like 'sex scandals'). And he would stay out of public life thereafter, out of shame, knowing he couldn't run for office again and win because of their shameful past. Compare Richard Nixon vs. Bill Clinton.
That's what changed. Now it doesn't matter how shameful and corrupt your conduct was, you just either deny or answer with whataboutism towards the other party's worst sins, and carry on, and for some reason voters are consistently fine with this!
https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/537889-ol...
In the late 1980s, Koch Industries stole millions of crude oil each year by instructing their employees to always measure in a way that benefited Koch Industries [1].
[1]: https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/07/22/kochland-...
If you judge society by the worst headlines and stories from social media then it’s going to seem very bad
You have to consider that news and social media only talk about the extreme stories. It’s not representative of normal
Personally, I would like that to be countered much more like how they do things in China. Making an example of some bad apples can be very persuasive.
These headlines are showing that the class of "weakest members" has grown to include most of the population.
A representative of "normal" criminals demonatrates they are free to operate with healthy profit margins.
If anything, suspect on a national / global scale there's far more capacity for society to hold people and organizations accountable than any time in history.
"Accept certain inalienable truths: Prices will rise. Politicians will philander. You, too, will get old. And when you do, you'll fantasize that when you were young, prices were reasonable, politicians were noble and children respected their elders." - Wear Sunscreen
If you don't learn history, and then lso not pay attention to what's happening around you, of course you will pine for the good old days when it was easier to control the narrative.
People got addicted to ever more shocking news, I guess 9/11 in the west helped with that. Once you burn your receptors and they go back to flatline, the next kick needs to be a bit stronger to keep people engaged, and next one even more so. So just consuming news is a never ending progression of bad, amoral and over time progressively worse stuff.
When were we not there?
This seems to be the pervasive trend
Society hasn’t so much as changed as we’ve become more aware of all of the issues. And to top it all off, a lot of people want to go back to that again. Because ignorance is bliss.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_capitalism
Not that I agree with welfare capitalism, I think it’s an unstable position and greed would always kill it. But let’s not forget that for some people, the past was definitely better than the present when it came to some economic matters. Note: I’m not excusing or wanting the bigotry of the past.
"When did we move to a "do whatever you think you can get away with" model of society?
That's what I was talking about, and it's much broader than what's covered by welfare capitalism.
> But let’s not forget that for some people, the past was definitely better than the present
We are talking about society as a whole. And "do whatever you think you can get away with" implies that it will be better for some people. Just because life it great doesn't mean people aren't doing whatever they think they can get away with. Just because the past was better doesn't change my assertion.
Yes! Everyone was a millionaire, law was perfect, no intuitions were abusing their powers, no government agencies ran experiments on unsuspecting citizens, everyone was friendly, no one stole anything, no corporation ever lied to the public about dangers of their products, no one was killed, etc! Good old days!
Sarcasm aside, there were things that were better, but also huge amount of things was way worse.
Elon brought this to tech in an extreme way.
This problem won’t be solved until CEOs and execs are able to take over behind limited liability.
Women and minorities get targeted by this sort of stuff all the time.