Which I witnessed, there’s this relative of mine who, for lack of a better word, is a Thief.
To be fair to MasterCharge and whatever Visa’s old name was (I’ll look it up) they DID reject half the applications. He put in 25. He only stayed at our house for a week and a half and with that one scam got about $25,000 which he promptly took to Las Vegas. Gambling is a more expensive vice than any dope.
But when I go to a local supermarket there’s a big push on for people to sign up for a 1-2-3 Rewards MasterCard. My usual joke for the past 6 damn years was that even MasterCard wouldn’t be dumb enough to give me a card. All the people there have heard me reject the offer of this credit card. Yet I’m still asked. I know the people, they’re not dumb in any way, Mass Senility seems to be out of the question. So why the Ask?
They have an internet-based customer opinion poll and one of the questions (just not on every single instance of the poll) is “Did the clerk offer you the 1-2-3 Rewards Master Card promotion?” It turns out, they’re required to offer it.
My little heh-heh-heh joke about MasterCard not being stupid enough to issue me “credit” was just that, a joke because I’m not rude enough to get in my friends’ faces and tell them in a big nasty public scene that the whole notion of the credit cards is a scam, strongly related to the ongoing bank scam involving real estate, mortgages and Toxic Debt. I go to a grocery store to buy groceries, not to buy Debt. And as the incident with which I started the narrative shows, yes, they WOULD be stupid enough. Or greedy enough. For every Cousin-doing-life-on-the-installment-plan there’s enough honest citizens, also known as “marks”, who will buy into the Credit Card scam, that the small-time thieves are written off as a business expense. And the loss taken off their income taxes, which has been loopholed to the point that a Corporate Entity can pay less in taxes than their workers do. Yet another scam written by the same Corporate Lawyers who can charge you compound interest on a Credit Card Debt, something which would otherwise be known as “Loan Sharking” and “usury” and would be illegal.
So I don’t jump into it. There’s a report circulating that Krogers stores are requiring their clerks to offer the Scam Card. Required as in “punished if they don’t”
If YOU or I were to offer local stores the option of selling my products at a price I demand and with the clause “or else” it would be called Racketeering. Something which the Anti-Union type of Thieves, including the board of directors of Kroger, accuse the UNIONS of doing.
For a legal and Religious point of view, many Christian sects prevalent in the area, like Mennonites, other Anabaptist sects, refuse to buy into credit cards. It’s a first amendment issue.
Like the Society of Friends (Quakers) don’t buy guns. Baptists and Pentecostals don’t buy liquor or Cigarettes and some of the Pentecostal churches refuse to buy medicines like Aspirin and cough syrup even.
And cite scripture for each such decision. The one about Credit Cards, without delving into the Mark of the Beast controversies, actually comes directly from Jesus saying not to lend out money at interest. I point that out mostly because there’s a large population of Mennonites in Colorado Springs.
Would it be constitutional, or forsaking that even ETHICAL to offer, constantly, to sell bacon to Jews, beef to Hindus, wine to Baptists, coffee to Mormons, prescription drugs to Assembly of God church members?
Would it be legal to force your employees to do so? Then there’s the larger issue of people who tee-total (refuse alcohol, tobacco and other drugs) out of respect for their bodies without resorting to a Religious backing for their own ethics. People who refuse to eat meat simply because they feel it’s wrong, or destructive to their bodies, destructive to the ecology, destructive to the economy, supports slave corporations like McDonalds etc.
Would it be ethical to force your employees to constantly push those products on people who Don’t Want Them?
Because they, the card companies, are every bit as much thieves as the guy who snarfs out 25 grand of their stolen money and goes to Vegas with the proceeds. To give employees the option of selling this line of thievery or leave the company is supposed to be “Right To Work” how, exactly?
