Best Buy paid out the lawsuit with 500 $10,000 bills.

Forget the $2 bill, since when does Best Buy utilize the local police in collecting accounts receivable?

https://downwithtyranny.blogspot.de/2017/01/best-buys-national-repair-techs.html

The repair techs at Best Buy would have made excellent officers for the Stasi...

Awesome comment. I wish I could upvote it twice. I threw up a little in my mouth watching the grandstanding going on here and how apparently most Sifters are eating it up.

Fraud? Cross-selling is perfectly legal and in fact practiced regularly in many industries besides banking (like when Best Buy tries to get you to purchase a protection plan for any electronics you buy at their store). If she has an issue with it, as a legislator she is free to bring a bill to the floor to do something about it. The problem is, she didn't give a shit about cross-selling until she realized she was going to have an opportunity to stump for future votes in these hearings and she apparently doesn't give a shit about it now because despite those strong-worded pleas for action she's done nothing personally to make anything she said happen.

Stumpf should give up his money? He isn't the one who opened fake Wells Fargo accounts nor is there any evidence he directed his employees to do so. And as he tried to explain before she cut him off to grandstand some more, those fake accounts only represent 1% of the total cross-selling that happened, which means the stock price was not unduly inflated--people were in fact opening of their own volition more accounts with Wells Fargo than any other bank and Wall Street loved them for it.

The real issue here is that there were not adequate controls in place to prevent the fake accounts from being created in the first place (or detected quickly after being created). And for that Stumpf probably does have some small amount of responsibility, although it sounds to me more like whoever was in charge of compliance is the person who likely should be the one left holding the bag.

But let's not let reality get in the way of a politician's dreams of future offices.

I'm a laptop serial killer...

*gazes over stacks of dead laptops and random computer parts*

Sometimes I masturbate all over these carcasses. I mean, no. I don't. Ever.

Do that...

If only I had been born with the simple desire to learn electronics...

-- Instead, I was born a luddite into an era of technocracy that my feeble, easily offended, confused and aggressive mind cannot comprehend.

Now I am destined to commit predatory electronic abuse on a daily abuse.

*punches monitor, tears it from the computer, screams into the night and throws it crushed and dying into the heap*

ELECTRONICS!!! AGHHHHH..! The pure and total ANGUISH!!!!!!!!!!!!!

*runs screaming out of the house, operates overheating vehicle 100,000 miles over the recommended oil change sticker reminder to the nearest best buy; purchases something using money like its arcade credits; drives home and plugs the heathen VGI cable into its oozing port*

Please... kill me.

Good points, Redsky.

However, there hasn't been nearly enough research on the effects of rehabilitation to claim that it consistently reduces recidivism. You mention Scandinavian countries in particular. How many of those rehabilitated prisoners were guilty of violent crimes? If you want to reduce recidivism, the death penalty will offer guaranteed results.

As for the U.S.'s murder rates, they aren't the highest among first-world countries. Higher than European countries, sure, but Europe is tiny. Russia is more comparable to the size of the U.S. and it has almost double the murder rate. China claims to have a 1.0 but I'd question the reliability of any data provided by that government.

I'm also pretty sure that most criminals recognize the severity of their crimes. If they aren't insane, they'll know that jaywalking will result in a far lesser penalty than murder. What it comes down to is risk versus reward. If breaking the law is the most convenient way of getting what they want and the likelihood of them getting caught is low, they'll break the law. That's rational behavior. It's the reason why people people slow down when they see a cop on the freeway instead of speeding like they would normally do. It's the reason why people won't hesitate to download a pirated movie but would think twice before trying to steal a movie from Best Buy. If someone wants to rob a liquor store and they see a cop inside, they will most likely not rob that particular liquor store. Not all criminals are psychotic murderers. On the contrary, most criminals are perfectly sane and break the law on a regular basis. They just make sure that the risks are low enough so they don't get caught.

Severe penalties mean nothing if they aren't enforced and increasing surveillance increases the likelihood of enforcement. Increasing surveillance wouldn't be cheap but then, rehabilitating criminals isn't cheap either. Getting rid of the prison system entirely and replacing it with efficient executions (nothing overly elaborate like lethal injections) would cut costs dramatically and allow for greatly expanded surveillance and enforcement, in addition to dramatically increasing the risk for any given crime. If the penalty for speeding was death and there were more cops patrolling the roads and freeways, I guarantee 99.9% of drivers would stop speeding. There's no hard data for this, of course, but that's because no country has ever attempted it.

Venezuela currently has over ten times the murder rate of the U.S. It was the first country in the world to abolish the death penalty. Now, the country is riddled with corruption. Laws have no meaning because they are not enforced so criminals do whatever they want without fear of reprisal.

This is probably the only time I'll ever agree with Mike Hucabee.

Gay people should not be turned away from like a best buy, applebees, whatever. But people who take photos, make videos, design clothes, they should be allowed to say I can't do this for you because my heart would not be in it.

*promote Meshuggah 25th Anniversary TOUR!!



Meshuggah announce 25th anniversary tour around Bonnaroo, asking fans to vote on their setlists (dates)
by Doug Moore
Meshuggah at the Roseland Ballroom, 2013 (more by Fred Pessaro)
Meshuggah
Few metal bands survive for 25 consecutive years, and even fewer retain a reputation for consistency over such a long period the way Meshuggah have. We already knew that the Swedish djent progenitors were slotted to play this year's edition of Bonnaroo in June, filling the bad-trip-inducement slot that Swans occupied last year. Unsurprisingly, they've also announced a short North American tour built around that date and their ensuing appearance at Quebec's Amnesia Rock Fest. The tour is being billed as a 25th-anniversary celebration for the band, and it also includes Between the Buried & Me on its non-festival dates. Meshuggah are also holding a poll in which fans can help the band decide what their set list will include by voting for one song from each album in their catalog.
The tour will hit NYC on 6/21 at Best Buy Theater. Tickets for that show haven't gone on sale yet, but keep an eye out. In the meantime, enjoy a live video (of mosh action, natch) from Meshuggah's last NYC appearance and check out the full set of dates below...
---

Meshuggah -- 2014 Tour Dates
06/06/14 The Wiltern - Los Angeles, CA
06/07/14 The Regency Ballroom - San Francisco, CA
06/09/14 Ogden Theater - Denver, CO
06/11/14 House of Blues - Dallas, TX
06/13/14 Bonnaroo Music Festival - Manchester, TN
06/14/14 Pop's - Sauget, IL
06/15/14 Vic Theatre - Chicago, IL
06/17/14 The Fillmore - Silver Spring, MD
06/18/18 House of Blues - Boston, MA
06/19/14 Sound Academy - Toronto, ON - CANADA
06/20/14 Amnesia Rock Fest - Montebello, QC - CANADA
06/21/14 Best Buy Theater - New York, NY

Retailer strong-arming: So what? Movie studios do this to theaters all the time. So what if Best Buy only sells Apple -- in essence becomes an Apple store -- like all the other exclusive Apple stores? There will still be many willing and able competitors who will employ their entrepreneurial savvy by seeing the market need in selling non-apple tablets and make good money fulfilling that need that Best Buy may have (stupidly) stopped serving.

I repeat: Natural monopolies don't exist. And if they come about, they end up very short-lived because the world is full of competitors and competitor-wannabe's who will rush to fill any perceived market needs.

Misinformation: You find your trusted sources. The government is not one of them, I assure you. I, for example, trust way more the "Non-GMO Project" or the "Berkeley Ecology Center" far more than I would trust any (former-lobbyist/government kleptocrat) FDA-crony. Both of these (and many other) non-governmental organizations would still exist without government and in fact would be able to do more without government limiting what they can study or not about the products they inspect.

Patents: No, nothing good will ever come out of patents. If you want I will point you to countless articles I've read which show this to be the case.

New Technology: You're discounting reverse engineering? Why? If what you claim was so, then innovators would not even bother to patent, because then they could keep the technology "secret" forever. Clearly this isn't so. But, they get patents because they know of reverse engineering and other ways that the technology would be copied if they don't get a patent. In fact, right now, they can keep it "secret" by not getting patent. For example, Coca Cola does not have a patent on its secret formula for that very reason. Look it up.

The marginal utility of R&D: This is the standard old argument for patents. But you can find creative ways to make the inventions pay off. Did the music industry disappear because of piracy? No, it is making record profits, actually! Some companies would not be as mega wealthy, perhaps. Bill Gates would still be mega rich, but maybe not as rich as he is now. But, here you are complaining about extreme "inequality" while supporting the very structures which generate it.

Ignorance may be bliss -- but thankfully, we don't all have to be as ignorant as the least informed among us.

@Trancecoach: We're not going to agree, and that's fine. This'll be my last reply.

Retailer strong-arming: Imagine Apple makes up 95% of Best Buy's tablet sales. Off-brand-X wants to sell tablets at Best Buy. Apple says: If you sell Off-brand-X tablets, we will not let you sell our tablets. Off-brand-X is likely to only provide a tiny profit to Best Buy, compared to Apple, so they comply. (This actually happened, in a different form, with Intel paying computer manufacturers to not use AMD processors. See here). Also see price-fixing.

Widget-distribution-prevention: This is just an extension of the previous point.

Buying up all of the competitors: Ma Bell. Old AT&T. That should be enough said. But, if that's not enough, now Ma Bell is nearly entirely re-formed. The US was one government approval away from having cell carriers limited to Sprint, Verizon, and AT&T. That's been spoiled, now, but I don't think it's hard to imagine that future continuing on to two carriers colluding and price-fixing (as Verizon and AT&T pretty much have freedom to do anyway). This is another quasi-natural-monopoly situation (or at least a tragedy of the commons situation), in that the radio spectrum is not infinite. To keep the spectrum usable at all, blocks of frequencies are doled out to radio/TV/cellular/military/etc. etc. with stiff penalties for interference.

Patents: Patents present a litany of problems, but the world without them is even worse. You have two things happen, both of which are bad:
1) New technology remains veiled in secrecy indefinitely; no one else can riff on it even after patents would normally have expired
2) My previous point. The marginal utility of R&D decreases drastically based on the likelihood of a competitor being able to get hold of your secrets before you can profit on them sufficiently.
This is exactly why patents were created. It's a temporary monopoly granted by the government in exchange for the promise that the knowledge will be released to the universe after X years.

Predatory pricing: If excessive, it's illegal. That's why it doesn't happen very often. In a country with anti-trust laws, you just want to hurt your competitor, you don't want to drive them out of the market.

Natural monopolies: Since you brought this one up, you can choose your energy service because the government forces the utility to lease its lines and to decouple distribution from production. That is to say, you have a free market in production because the distribution is not free. See here. My state is the same way.

Misinformation: Who vets marketing claims in a free market? My competitor says that their food is organic. Well--hell, so is mine! They're environmentally conscientious? So am I! Their drug cures cancer? Mine cures it even better!

Oh, shit. Someone caught me in a lie! Well, I'll just force the media to ignore it and ramp up my disinformation campaign.

This ends on a positive note so not too dark really. Just a tale of hatred towards consumerism.

Our social contract with government changes in the same way that the Apple Terms of Service changes. No way to back out of it and live a life of remote peace... SPEND.. YOUR. MONEY. Taxes, shmaxes, there's no more better judge of WASTING your goddamn money than your own judgement.

Sir, you are at risk of not spending every last fucking dime at Walmart. Or Target. Or Best Buy. Do you want your economy to be destroyed? Your leaders have already given up on you, so this is your last chance before monetary disciplinary action.

But getting trampled to death in a black friday savings riot does not represent risk because the true risk that matters in this world is the risk of assholes not getting your money.

Because fuck you if you don't want to be part of the dogpile.

I'm still raging about the time this security lady tried to pull me aside at the Best Buy checkout in 2009. Fuck you lady.. I still avoid going to Best Buy because of the sour taste you left in my mouth!

My Best Buy and Magnolia Hi-Fi credit accounts are managed by HSBC

It is incomprehensible that there are no serious repercussions for such atrocity.

Gotta love this, calling people zombies for looking for a good deal at best buy, and then turning around and spamming advertisements at the end of his video in an effort to get the same zombies to go to his sponsors sites and spend money. "hey don't spend money on their shit, spend it on my shit!" Hypocrisy at its best (or would that be worst?).

I see this kid all the time at best buy. He was a very nice guy.