632
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 04 Jan 2024
632 points (96.9% liked)
No Stupid Questions
34888 readers
1522 users here now
No such thing. Ask away!
!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rules (interactive)
Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.
All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.
Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.
If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.
Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.
If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.
Credits
Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!
The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
You need to be the example you want to see in this world. Buy ZERO Corporate.
That’s it.
Delete subscriptions. Replace your music collection with pirated MP3s. Same with movies.
Learn to cook.
Obviously you’ll have to buy gas. Nothing is perfect.
Make a start.
Voting with your wallet is literally plutocracy -- those with more dollars get more votes.
Not only is our theoretically bad, but it's practically bad: the impact of a boycott is negligible, but the impact on the people doing the boycott is huge: not having access to the conveniences everyone else has puts us at a significant disadvantage compared to our peers.
And finally, it's not just practically bad, it's actually contraindicated. The executives of a corporation are legally required to maximize immediate returns to their investors. It's literally illegal for a CEO to move a company in the direction of civic responsibility over profit. And it's not just "profit" -- it has to be increasing profit. Line has to go up; they can't just keep it flat, even if "flat" is hugely profitable. To withdraw our financial support will just cause them to squeeze harder on everyone else.
(There's an argument that there might be more profit in social responsibility, but unless you have numbers to back that up, and it demonstrates immediate returns in addition to long term benefits, then it's just a guess, and a guess is never going to be more convincing to shareholders than facts.)
The only way to change this is with regulation, and a cultural shift away from "line goes up" mentality. And you can't effect political change when you're spend 3x as long making dinner because you're boycotting processed food.
Suggesting that we just give up all the conveniences that our labor, our creativity, and our cultural contributions have enabled, for the sake of convincing a CEO to be nicer is just ineffectual.
This moves me.
Thank you.
I’m so distanced from all regulatory processes that they seem literally as impossible as your vision of boycotts. And yet, I now see how pressuring regulatory bodies for the change we want is a very effective tactic.
But it look how long legalized marijuana has taken — that process started in the 70s.
Look how fast Musk was able to turn Twitter into the mouthpiece of fascism. Weeks.
This is what we are dealing with.
I want to push back on your sense of “convenience.”
I am not covetous of streaming. I have abandoned it.
I’m in charge of my media libraries.
What I’m saying is that we can do both: apply pressure on regulatory bodies WHILE abandoning crushing predatory capitalism.
I eat healthily. It does not hurt ME that I refuse to eat corporate bile.
I choose my media. It does not hurt ME that I never see ads.
Anyway — hoping that you can appreciate you have made me value the regulatory pressure argument while I still believe we are powerful.
Oh I pirate the shit out of everything -- and partly it's a boycott, but I think mostly it's the convenience. "Owning" things and enjoying them on my terms (no Internet? No problem) is just better than subscriptions.
And I block ads, 100% for sure. I would literally give up most of the Internet rather than subject myself to ads -- I'm "on the spectrum" and I have a very hard time with overstimulation and distraction, so ads substantially interrupt my ability to read (which I already have trouble with).
Like -- I love lemmy and everything, but I'm here because Reddit disabled the ad-free app I used to use. I was a daily reddit user for like 13 years. if I could still use Relay, my ethical resolve against their anti-user practices, and my personal commitment to foss, probably wouldn't have held up.
My feeling is, if I behave in a way that's conducive with good mental health and life satisfaction, and what I do is also a political statement, then the universe is in harmony.
It's really just the "voting with your wallet' perspective I mean to illuminate and undercut -- it's a very tempting idea, but I would rather we (as a resistance movement) remain sane and comfortable than ascetic and underengaged.
Pretty sure this is a myth. https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/8146/are-u-s-companies-legally-obligated-to-maximize-profits-for-shareholders
Tbh, in the digital world Lemmy is actually a nice step imo. But more steps can always be taken (as long they're reasonable). Whether its physical or digital.
Moving everything to Fediverse is a great next step.