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Comment by frumper | Hacker News Reader

I feel like you misread his explanation of why it's not fraud as an endorsement for how things work. He doesn't seem to imply support anywhere in his statement.

Aside from that, this law would not eliminate the need to do math. The sales tax would still be added. Despite "the price you see is the price you pay" slogan, it excludes certain government taxes and shipping fees. That exclusion includes sales tax.

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You're right, I did conflate endorsement with if this actually is fraud, my bad.

Probably the core of the disagreement here is different definitions of "fraud". For me personally, information that is misrepresented and hides behind the mask of an unreasonable amount of work to be correctly understood is a form of fraud, and I know others don't share that definition.

Our reliance on "the letter of the law" rather than the spirit of it, giving rise to all these little loopholes in everything, are just another thing that makes living the USA so frustrating. "See, it's not fraud! It's just evil, and we're allowed to do evil if we disclose it in 4 point text!"

I'm sure the next decade will be full of litigation to decide what counts as a "restaurant" and what counts as an "add-on fee" and every business owner is just going to try to skate on by with the status quo using technicalities and acksuallys.

If you think the above poster's statement doesn't adequately justify that it isn't fraud, then you should respond to him. My statement simply stated that he didn't express support one way or the other for fees, and that even if the law is passed it wouldn't do what the parent wanted.

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