I just signed up as a claimant in (yet another) class action lawsuit. This one is against Visa and MasterCard.
“The deadline for the Visa/Mastercard $5.54 billion settlement claim is approaching quickly…This settlement provides all eligible businesses the opportunity to reclaim a portion of the interchange fees paid between 2004 and 2019.”
Class action lawsuits, like many other boondoggles, are good-intentioned at their core.
The primary purpose of a class action lawsuit is to allow a group of individuals to band together and sue collectively against larger entities. If Big Evil Company has misrepresented, mischarged, or otherwise duped us little people out of what we deserve, then we can get together and stick it to the man.
Power to the people, and whatnot.
Y’all know how it works in practice. The law firm gets a pile, and we, the claimants, get a tiny drop.
“Hey! That’s not fair!”
Sure it is. It’s actually the very definition of fair.
I don’t fault the law firm, nor am I bothered by the distribution. If I was duped out of $3.64, then I should be repaid $3.64. The law firm does the work on behalf of all of us. They should get paid.
The problem is the incentive.
It’s the Cobra Effect, the social media algorithms, and KPIs.
We usually get what the system incentivizes.
