nika on legal everyday violence ness
nika dubrovsky on legal everyday violence ness
via fb share then found tweet [https://x.com/nikadubrovsky/status/2117594020989775937?a=WDQjQce_oyg0fvYRPD4&s=20]:
I call my parents. Dad says: “We have a problem. We took a punch. Mom’s lying down with her blood pressure up.” Just in case someone worried about it, nobody attacked or punched my parents, but it turned out the phone company had sent them an unfair bill. And now they have to immerse themselves in a bureaucratic battle.
utopia of rules backwards et al
Apparently, if one doesn’t respond in time, one’ll never get the money back. Somewhere in the long list of special rules there’s surely a clause saying how long you have to complain about mistakes. I relaxed and told them: just pay it, we’ll sort it out later. And then I thought:
this is how we all live, in a world that’s one big minefield. Relax for a minute, and who knows how it will turn out.
@davidgraeber wrote that one of the main sources of income for American banks is late fees and other “punishments” for disobeying their rules, written in fine print in an endless customer agreement, while the average American pays monstrous interest on credit card debt.
For people for whom an unexpected bill can mean losing their health insurance or getting evicted, it’s not just a “punch.” It’s a regular, brutal flogging.
How amazing that perfectly legal everyday violence has seeped into every nook and cranny of our lives, and hardly anyone is outraged.
structural violence.. david on structural violence.. spiritual violence.. graeber f & b same law.. et al
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