CSotD: He’s joking, right? Right?
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Sometimes it's hard for cartoonists to keep up with reality and impossible to be sillier. Ted Rall serves up this commentary on the latest bizarre vision from Amazon.
This whole concept is mind-boggling, but, of course, not because they don't have the capability to tell what you like. We already know that, if you happen to become curious about what something costs and Google up a few examples, you'll be chased around for a month with ads trying to sell you whatever it was.
It's not always a completely bad idea. I've been trying to decide if I should get a Windows 7 computer while they're still available, or hope my current mid-range laptop holds out until Windows 8 has the bugs worked out. Given that I'm still on the fence, having NewEgg pester me with reminders of what I could pick up on the cheap is smart marketing.
But (A) it's creepy. And it's annoying when I really was just curious and didn't plan to buy airline tickets to Jamaica or a new Prius.
And (B) there's a big difference between pestering someone to make a purchase and sending them an unsolicited item in the mail.
Back when charities in particular would send out tschochkes and hope you paid for them, we were told to rely on the legal theory that anything you are sent that you didn't ask for is a gift and you have no legal obligation to pay for it or to send it back.
If NewEgg would like to test that theory, something with a terabyte of memory and 6 gigs of RAM and Win7 — which I am absolutely NOT soliciting or even suggesting that I would ever actually buy — does kind of spark my curiosity.
However, actual contract law on this varies, depending on where you live.
It's interesting to me that, in some states, unsolicited goods may be treated as a gift, while, in others, if someone sends you something and specifies that they expect to be paid, using the item shows your acceptance of the contract.
What's interesting about it is that Amazon has already had its tail kicked in court over the issue of sales taxes and where their transactions take place — in several states, if they have a "presence" there, transactions are considered to happen there. "Presence" is not just a warehouse, but, in some states, includes an Amazon Associate like me linking to their site.
So my guess is that their sending of unordered merchandise would fall under a similar patchwork of varying laws and it is a can of worms Jeff Bezos will want to really think hard about opening.
If he does open it, he'll be requesting confirmation of delivery on those packages, because, otherwise, he'll fall into the same pit that some lenders discovered back when I was a lad: Proving it went to the right person.
I mentioned last week that, in the late 60s, credit card companies would get lists of college seniors and send them unsolicited credit cards, which — given the lack of consent involved — gave the recipients three options:
1. Use the card, thus establishing an account in your name for which you would be responsible.
2. Swap the card with someone else and use the one he was sent, thus establishing an account in his name for which he would not be responsible while he used the one that would establish an account in your name for which you would not be responsible, or …
3. Take the card into town and sell it on the street and who cares what happens next?
Apparently, the credit card companies had never heard Woody Hayes' famous dictum on what happens when you pass the ball, or, at least, they had never contemplated how it related to sending unsolicited credit cards to college students, but they smartened up soon enough.
Meanwhile, the pizza and beer were on them, and it is my considered opinion that all sorts of good things will be on Jeff Bezos if he actually puts his cunning plan into action.
But, wait!
Perhaps it really is a cunning plan! The other day, I featured Non Sequitur's take on the idiotic "Amazon drone" concept that everyone (else) has been taking way, way too seriously.
Little did I know that Wiley was simply starting a cunning story arc of his own that has been putting the entire thing into perspective. Start here and follow along.
Wiley, of course, had no way of knowing that, between creation and publication, Bezos would cooperate by adding credence to what had been an absurd, insane theory.
Speaking of both football and cunning pipedreams
As part of the annual process in the build-up to the Super Bowl of interviewing anyone who has ever seen a football, the NFL Network interviewed NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell on a variety of topics, one of which was the potential for eliminating the extra point, upon which Steve Kelley riffs today.
But — stick with me here, non-sports-fans — there is something larger to be taken from this.
First of all, Goodell was only speculating, but even his speculation didn't make any sense.
He didn't, for instance, suggest moving the spot for the kick back to the 20 yard line. Instead, he wound out a ridiculous scenario in which you get some points but you can trade one of them in … well, if you care, click on that link, but prepare for something that will make you think they should lay off the players and start drug-testing the Rules Committee.
And here's the universal application: Committees speculate all the time. If they only proposed things that made sense, they wouldn't be able to justify the amount of time they spend in meetings.
What makes this different from passing the football is that, if word of what they are discussing gets out, only two things can happen and they are both bad.
1. They may, out of a sense of pride, feel compelled to act upon the concept, even though it clearly makes no sense.
2. If an idea leaks out that is so absurd that nobody in the meeting took it seriously, the conspiracy buffs will. This is particulary troublesome in government circles, where you have committees tasked with "contingency plans" that involve some pretty paranoid what-if scenarios to begin with.
And #2 is particularly toxic when combined — as it was in the Nixon White House — with #1.
By the time the truth about Watergate and the Ellsburg break-ins and COINTELPRO came to the surface, we were already so paranoid from conspiracy theories about canceling elections and building concentration camps for dissenters that the response to those actual, true revelations was "Wait, they really did that one?"
Then there's this: I saw Goodell's entire interview, and it was only the point-after segment that made me scratch my head, which I guess is why it's the part everyone has jumped on.
Meanwhile, President Obama sat down with David Rimnick for a New Yorker interview that went on for more than 16,000 words, 524 words of which were devoted to the subject of legalizing marijuana.
Which makes me wonder if perhaps Jeff Bezos says a lot of things that do make sense, and so don't make news.
Though there is this factor to be considered …
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