José Latour

In late 2002 or early 2003, resid­ing in Spain, I read a lauda­tory arti­cle on cap­i­tal­ism in a pres­ti­gious, pro-market, right-of-centre British mag­a­zine that included this asser­tion: “Some cap­i­tal­ists are the worst ene­mies of capitalism.”

Twenty or more years ear­lier I had con­cluded that a num­ber of politi­cians and reli­gious lead­ers are the worst ene­mies of pol­i­tics and reli­gion. But I had con­sid­ered Marx­ists, Marxist-Leninists and oth­ers of their ilk the worst ene­mies of capitalism.

“Why would busi­ness­peo­ple in free mar­ket economies oper­ate against their liveli­hood?” I asked myself. “How do they do it?”      To see whether the magazine’s remark­able asser­tion con­formed to fact, I have since read thou­sands of wires and arti­cles about eco­nomic and finan­cial malfea­sance in cap­i­tal­ist economies, all the while observ­ing and eval­u­at­ing my imme­di­ate surrounds.

And I find it indis­putable that cer­tain schemes con­ceived by some cap­i­tal­ists are detri­men­tal to cap­i­tal­ism, the imper­fect and fre­quently dis­ap­point­ing, yet best eco­nomic sys­tem humankind has ever come up with.

I am not refer­ring to crim­i­nals like Bernie Mad­off or to the financiers that devised credit default swaps, but to law-abiding and decent busi­nessper­sons who go to any lengths cut­ting cor­ners, search­ing for loop­holes and walk­ing very thin lines to max­i­mize their com­pa­nies’ rev­enue and profits.

Allow me to illus­trate with a Cana­dian exam­ple that might be hap­pen­ing elsewhere.

One day your cell phone gets a text mes­sage with a ques­tion. For instance: “What Amer­i­can Idol judge recently left the show?” Finding it mean­ing­less, you don’t respond. Two or three days later you get another silly ques­tion. Text mes­sages of this order keep com­ing. You think they are spam.

Your next bill includes a $20 charge with this descrip­tion: Type of Usage: Event. Usage Descrip­tion: 84040 Pre­mium Text Trivia – For info call 1–866-257‑4586. You used: 10 Messages.

Total cost: $20

You frown and think: “Some­body made a mistake.”

You call your ser­vice provider’s Cus­tomer Ser­vice. Three weeks or so ear­lier, you explain, some­one started send­ing text mes­sages to your cell phone. Nobody asked you if you wanted to receive them, you never asked to get them, and never responded. You have no idea how the mes­sen­ger learned your num­ber. Since they are the col­lect­ing agent for Text Trivia, you want him/her to tell you what is going on.

The Cus­tomer Rep­re­sen­ta­tive tells you he/she can’t can­cel the charge or order an inves­ti­ga­tion. You must call the phone num­ber on your bill and type STOP.

Fum­ing, you call the num­ber and get recorded instruc­tions. Press­ing keys you even­tu­ally reach a place where you type STOP.

But you can’t let it go, so two days later you call your ser­vice provider, com­plain in a more demand­ing tone and a dif­fer­ent Cus­tomer Rep­re­sen­ta­tive agrees to deduct $10.00 from the $20.00 charge ($11.30 once the tax is also subtracted).

Now curi­ous, you research this scam on the Inter­net and find a num­ber of inter­est­ing things. At the top of the list: Tex­ting com­pa­nies are not ille­gal; they are reg­u­lated by the Cana­dian Radio-television and Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Com­mis­sion (CRTC).

Accord­ing to press arti­cles, many peo­ple have felt vic­tim­ized by tex­ting com­pa­nies just because they took an IQ test on Face­book or played a quiz.

A CBC news piece dated Octo­ber 30, 2009 says that a spokesman for the Com­mis­sion stated that cus­tomers can­not be “duped” into receiv­ing text mes­sages merely by enter­ing online con­tests or play­ing quizzes.

The spokesman also said that pre­mium sub­scrip­tion ser­vices require cus­tomers to con­firm their sub­scrip­tion twice to insure that they are aware of the cost per mes­sage, the fre­quency of mes­sages as well as the opt-out information.

You never enter online con­tests or play quizzes, never asked for or con­firmed a sub­scrip­tion, and by no means were warned about cost per mes­sage, their fre­quency or the opt-out infor­ma­tion. So how did Text Trivia come across your cell number?

Mother of all mysteries.

You also learn in the CRTC web­site that you can file a complaint.

I know that cer­tain Cana­dian ser­vice providers are staffed and man­aged by an over­whelm­ing major­ity of good peo­ple. Why are they serv­ing as col­lec­tion agents for unscrupu­lous scam­mers? For a per­cent­age? Can’t they see that their rep­u­ta­tion is at least as impor­tant as their bot­tom lines?

Okay, get­ting a lit­tle testy here, but I’m not mak­ing this up.

A week ago I emailed an exec­u­tive of my ser­vice provider and said that I would write this. It would be unfair, I added, not to give them the oppor­tu­nity of express­ing their views. I added that I looked for­ward to hear­ing from them. Seven days later I have not received a response.

There­fore, I won­der: Are Text Trivia and cer­tain ser­vice providers at risk of join­ing the list of worst ene­mies of capitalism?

Copy­right @ 2010 by José Latour. This arti­cle is pro­tected under the Cana­dian Copy­right Act and other intel­lec­tual prop­erty laws through­out the world. Users are per­mit­ted to view it or down­load it for per­sonal use only. Such per­mis­sion does not con­sti­tute any autho­riza­tion to fur­ther repro­duce, dis­trib­ute, pub­licly dis­play or oth­er­wise trans­mit it, in whole or in part, by any elec­tronic or mechan­i­cal means. Requests for per­mis­sion to repro­duce, dis­trib­ute, pub­licly dis­play or trans­mit the arti­cle or part of it are to be made to the author, by email to jose@joselatourauthor.com.

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