You have consumer activist brain. Next you're going to suggest that we complain to the manager or start our own government and compete in the marketplace.
> The only thing that talks is money
No, the only thing that is talking is money. Money wants this. You're busy pretending like you're going to do a boycott; they're going to boycott you.
Complain about the internet? They'll just blacklist you from it. Complain about the phone? Well now you can't use one; try smoke signals. Complain about the landlord? They'll settle the case, kick you out on the street, and blacklist you among all private equity landlords and the management companies that service small landlords. You'll just go to a small landlord that doesn't use one of the management companies? Well they won't have access to a bunch of vendors that have exclusive contracts with and share ownership with the management companies; now they can't make any money and have to sell to private equity.
You've been fooled into thinking that being victimized is a moral failure of the victim. The perpetrators taught you that. They taught you that the only appropriate action is to beg and threaten to leave, and they shut down customer service and monopolized the market. But, again, the worst thing they trained you to do is to blame the victim.
Just because you're a pessimist doesn't mean you have to be coy. :)
At the end of the day, this stuff is headed by humans. Humans are fragile, weak even. They like silly things like food and safety.
Look, I'm not saying we need to be killing people. However, I AM saying that just about every single significant rights progression in human history was achieved that way. So, draw whatever conclusions you want.
Ideally, we are above that. Christ, it's not the 20th century anymore. So hold up a sign or something.
Protesting, voting, and civil disobedience are all great, I agree.
Guy with the root of "pessimism" in his moniker: start writing about that in your posts!
What do you mean? They still need people purchasing software and hardware.
You can argue effectiveness, but if enough people say no, then a boycott is extremely effective. The issue is always on awareness and making people take hard actions.
They don’t need you to purchase hardware or software any more. We’re moving to centralized economic planning, where resources for datacenter buildouts are reserved for people with sufficient political loyalty (and come from tax dollars), and the only products are surveillance and collective punishment.
If you don’t want that to happen, then you’ll need to help build an alternative.
Yes, I agree.
>They don’t need you to purchase hardware or software any more.
Need? No. But they still want as much money as possible. That's why a boycott/strike will still be effective. They don't need money anymore but will still bend over backwards for it.
>If you don’t want that to happen, then you’ll need to help build an alternative.
I want to help. Not sure what I can do to help, though. Seems like simply calling my reps is talking to the wind.
And you seem to have been fooled into thinking all victims are powerless.
No, the way to stop it is to talk to your representatives.
You have the power. You just have to pick up a phone, and ask your friends, relatives, neighbors, to do the same. (They will, because it affects all of them.) Tell your reps to remove the legislation or you're voting them out. They don't want to lose their jobs. They will change if you tell them to. But only if you tell them. That is your power. Use it or lose it.
I keep seeing this advice, yet whenever it actually matters, it doesn't really work
No amount of talking to representatives stopped the genocide in Gaza, no amount of talking to representatives is stopping what the US is doing now in Iran
Majority of Congress voted to continue war in Iran, despite an overwhelming majority of Americans being opposed to it
Then they just continue with that was already happening.
Turns out they were right
Or, refuse to participate or use any tech that implements OS age verification (start with communication app Discord).
The reason nothing happened was because Snowden is still a State Dept or CIA asset. He's an actor and/or a limited hangout of some kind to show the US government and claim to be doing absolutely insane bullshit and nobody cares. New Zealand retroactively changed their laws (clearing John Key of any wrong doing for illegally spying on Kim Dotcom), allowing the GCHQ to legally spy on all their citizens.
As far as refusing to work for these companies, I was on Linux at work for over a decade. But after my last job I was forced to take a .NET role and with a $30k/yr paycut. It'd like to get back into a good role again where I can use Linux, but I'm not sure if I'd be willing to stand my ground on this issue, because I also don't want to lose my house and software jobs are incredibly scares right now. Unlike Snowden, I don't have a government paycheck coming in to continue spreading lies.
I think the earth is round. I'm a "globe-head," but I have MAD respect for people who hold such a controversial viewpoint. I think they're wrong, but I've read a lot of their stuff and don't think they're stupid.
I'm 50/50 on the moon landing. You would probably be too if you actually looked into it.
The scientifically learned use to thing leaches and bloodletting was innovative. Many of the things we think of as being scientifically enlightened today will be looked upon with horror 200 years from now.
Flat Earth only has a handful of anecdotal short-range observations of some flat areas of Earth taken from a perspective near ground level. Relative to the size of the Earth, those short-distance observations are dominated by the margins of error in the observation. All of those sight lines are accounted for in LIDAR scans of the Earth as well as the WGS84 model.
For less than $1,000 you can send a high-altitude balloon up to see the slight curvature of the Earth. For a few thousand dollars, you can circumnavigate the Earth in an airplane along a common latitude. For tens of thousands of dollars you can go to Antarctica and see the 24-hour Sun from November to January. Or you could just have all your friends from around the globe point to the Sun and measure that angle. With basic trigonometry, you can see the Sun is about 92 million miles away.
[1] Hsu & Horányi (2012), University of Colorado Boulder - "Ballistic motion of dust particles in the Lunar Roving Vehicle dust trails," American Journal of Physics: https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2012AmJPh..80..452H/abstra...