Unreasonable people often think that a little authority, such as "I'm the customer!" will make them magically become reasonable without ever going through the effort of evaluating their ideas and rejecting the ones that make no sense

Anyone who has ever been young and worked an entry-level job that involved customer service knows this. I sincerely believe businesses are encouraging stupidity by ever accommodating such people. If no one did so, no business would feel a need to do so in order to remain competitive. One could almost argue it's a form of tragedy of the commons (inasmuch as a given marketplace is "common" to all participants), in that Business A knows it better tolerate such stupidity because the competition would.

Not necessarily. That's more true for users who think the Internet (I assume you mean the Web) is for passive consumption of corporate-owned one-to-many content, like television. Other users appreciate that it's a two-way many-to-many communications medium and take a much more proactive stance on how it should be used. If anything, those users are sharpening their skills and their ability to think and reason. They tend also to realize that their systems retrieve only the information they are configured to retrieve, not someone else's idea of "programming" content, hence the selective downloading based on desirability that ad-blockers help to achieve.

The point of NoScript is not do disable Javascript alltogether. The standard browser settings include a checkbox to disable Javascript entirely for all sites. That isn't what the add-on NoScript is for. NoScript is there to selectively disable the scripts that you decide are unnecessary.

I wish people who actively choose to comment on a thing would take a moment to acquire the most basic familiarity with that thing. It would lead to far fewer redundant posts and far fewer posters who are convinced they've pointed out the "obvious flaw" that no one else was smart enough to ever think of...

By selectively enabling just the scripts that facilitate the content you want to see and keeping all the rest disabled. Which is exactly what NoScript is designed to do.

Did you put even a moment's thought into this prior to posting a comment? It does not appear like you did.

You saw all the trees and asked where the forest is. That happens far too often on this site because too many of you want to find fault with the other guy so you can feel clever.

The (slightly) abstract principle here is that overcoming inertia in order to effect change is often difficult no matter what that change may be or how overdue it is. That's what the otherwise unrelated issues of same-sex couples, legalization of marijuana, and implementing the metric system all have in common. You'd have noticed that if you were looking for it.

Or (unrealted to the Target hacks) of having an unreasonable returns policy that is not consistent with what the sales guy promised. So yes, I suppose that is fraud, though incompetence is a more likely explanation.

No, but it is abundantly possible to say "hey, I am not knowledgable about this subject, so perhaps I should avoid forming any snap judgments until such time as I inform myself (not rely on anyone else to do it for you)". It takes such a slight amount of humility to recognize that your own ignorance is not equivalent to someone else's skill and knowledge, that to do otherwise is simply a severe character flaw.

If it does that anyway, it's because there is a monied interest behind it. All the more reason to mock and ridicule it as it deserves, or else that monied interest won't view that form of stupidity in the desirable terms of "wow, backing this could cost me a lot of profits".

The root of that problem is a particular form of arrogance or ego-centrism. The form is: it is so ridiculous *to me* because I understand what's wrong with it, that no one else will ever be persuaded by it, so there is no reason to expend the minimal effort it would take to nip it in the bud...

The Prohibition of alcohol happened this way. The Al Capones of the world were thankful.

Fucking up easy, simple-to-understand, basic things is a fine American tradition, you insensitive clod!

Really though this one isn't caused by a lack of knowledge. If you were to test that person on it and tell them that they would win $500,000 dollars if they get it right, they will get it right. This problem is caused by a lack of even the slightest discipline. You know, the kind you have even when no one is looking. The real kind.

As someone who has never seen an established business that does not take credit cards of some sort, I have to say: it is far too easy and tempting, for some, to puff up with pride and look down your nose at someone for failing to exercise an option that doesn't really exist. Easier than admitting that maybe he had a point, at any rate.

The number of businesses you can drive up to and shop in that do not accept credit cards of any kind is a rounding error in the face of all the business transactions made. You know this. Can you admit it?

It's simply that voters who receive benefits from one party tend to continue voting for the party that gave the benefits to them. Especially when occasional yet regular promises are made to increase those benefits. Also, the scanario you mentioned there ("vote for me, because the other guy won't give you as much as I do!"). It doesn't help that welfare is designed to be difficult to get off of.

It really doesn't help when there are only two parties with any chance to win, constantly forcing voters into these "lesser of two evils" compromises. For some, the benefits they have come to depend on will be, from their point of view, the lesser of evils. "Good cop, bad cop" is a game the Demicans and Republicrats play because it works. It's like wireless carriers that all overcharge for text messaging instead of competing with each other: they all increase profits that way and it's in the interest of each to not rock the boat. The Democrats and Republicans aren't actually competing for votes. They're segmenting voters.

You wind up with politicians who might not be in power at all except for their ability to addict people to their vote-buying scheme. The only purpose of all the deceit and manipulation is to retain power in a scenario where being honest would mean losing elections. A ruler does this; a civil servant does not. These strategies work because they're subtle. The best way to sort that out is to look at who actually benefits from each decision ("qui bono?").

All the more reason to work with them and inform yourself at the same time.

It sounds as though medicine is like everything else: you have a better experience when you take a little initiative and work _with_ the experts instead of being completely passive, waiting for someone else to do absolutely everything for you.