This is me ranting and venting after watching too much Louis Rossmann on Youtube, but I think there is some merit in the points I made in the post, hopefully it'll resonate with some of you. I expect this post to be aggravating to some, just because it heavily criticizes liberal democracies with unreasonably week market regulations.
In the US we have always at least acted like we try to buy American made. It feels weird that the rest of the world is only now considering where their stuff is coming from.
I love visiting Brazil, but it’s not like paying 3x the price for an iPhone means you’re less likely to get it stolen in Foz vs CDE (where presumably they bought the phone)
If the writer of the article is here I’m interested in why there’s far more consumer protection southern red states like Santa Catarina vs northern blue states. How come things just don’t get stolen as often there in the Bolsonaro areas?
If your answer is poverty i refer you to CDE vs Foz.
The most fascinating thing in this self-aware rant is that Reason is still around. I haven’t heard of their DAW in what must be 20 years.
n.b. They were shamelessly anticonsumer all along even in the early days. That’s why we just moved on from them and, to me anyway, they fell into obscurity.
Does this mean not buying from American companies, or things that were made in America? E.g. would this person consider buying a MacBook from Apple that's entirely manufactured in China to be "buying American"?
No shade to the poster but we don't really make much, so not buying American is very easy. Besides tomatoes and apples most people in the US probably don't even own anything made here.
The USA isn't a traditional oligarchy. It does have different levels and kinds of power. Most of them are corporate, but some are purely political or ideological (like Trump's regime). Our oligarchy is more like a collection of oligopolies that all share an interest in the political state and economy. After Trump goes away, they will work towards preventing a single leader from working against their interests again. It's all about soft power.
So... they wrote American but they are confusing anti-consumer tactics with an entire country, even though they were not going for that.
Just want to point out:
* Samsung has been accused of releasing software updates that degrade performance, forcing you to buy newer devices - Samsung is not American
* Brother - Japanese printer maker, I LOVE their printers mind you, but they've released firmware upgrades that prevent or degrade compatibility with third party ink cartridges
* Epson - Also Japanese, also have owned some of their printers, same thing with third party ink cartridges.
I'm sure there's many more companies, not from the US who do equally if not worse evils with software / hardware.
What the author is after isn't American products, just anti-consumerism, which can be impossible to predict mind you. Anyone of any country can do it.
No, it's not about the companies, it's about the government that allows those companies to behave the way they do. Which is why the article is about the US and not about Walmart or Dow Chemical.
Companies will almost always look for ways to extract maximum profit even if it comes at the expense of others' wellbeing. So it is up to government to protect its citizens by regulations that prevent, for example, polluting water supplies, the air we breathe, etc., or from taking advantage of consumers, defrauding them, etc.
If government decides to roll back many of those regulations (like gutting the CFPB), then companies are free to engage in those destructive practices.
You can blame the companies, sure -- but mostly I blame the government (and those who voted for that government) because it's their job to keep companies in check, and instead of doing that, they're in bed with the companies, and even directly profiting from them (also known as corruption, which oligarchies do very well).
I won't lie that I had HN partially in mind when I wrote the post. It honestly started as a way for me to vent, but I thought what the hell, lemme post there, it prolly won't even survive the New page without getting flagged. Didn't really think it would hit front page (but I really was expecting it to get flagged which it eventually did).
Hold here. They aren't. Immediately letting 'the people' off the hook for blame is a somewhat modern fallacy. These people democratically choose the leader. You can't just 'not blame' them, as a group, for an eventual failure if they consistently choose poorly.
I came to the same conclusion years ago. The best appliances and kitchenware I've ever bought were designed (not necessarily made) in countries which have strongly defended return policies. Thinking La Creuset, Breville, Bosch, etc.
In general you get quality from the EU and the UK/Aus/Can/NZ countries where there's "you may return the product at any time for a full refund if it has a fault" type of laws and a consumer agency to help police enforcement (the law is worthless if the consumer has to take a store to court themselves). I'll also give a viewpoint that Japan and SK, like the USA, have fallen pretty far and i don't include them in the above group. If you look it up it appears stores can easily refuse refunds which is a recipe for crap products which explains the absolutely shit Sony and Samsung have been putting out the past decade.
That's disastrous and not the point of the post. I don't want to see the American economy gone, I want to see it serve the very people that makes it the behemoth it is.
This is why I hate tariffs and extreme regulations so much. My Xiaomi vacuum cleaner is the best I've ever owned, but I can't purchase their electric car, and even if I could - it'd cost an extra 40% or so just on the tariffs.
We need a free market with open competition. The best guarantor of rights is having the option to walk away and choose a different provider - in employment, and in services / retail purchases, etc.
This seems like an empty threat. Okay, so what non-American products do they plan to buy instead? What qualifies something as an American product? Is Apple American because their HQ is there? Are Samsung phones American because they use American Corning Gorilla Glass? Not to mention plenty of other countries have companies that engage in similar practices. As they say, there is no ethical consumption under capitalism.
You know about America, you can see our big court cases live.[1] You have no idea what happens in Brazilian courts, your own country. (If your courts were open, there'd be a RECAP equivalent.) Same for European countries.
A law says "all evil is unlawful" and the naive think it's a utopia. A ignorância é uma bênção.
To the OP: this is extremely well written. It explains something crucially important in a very measured style. I saw your update .. please do not be disheartened about people picking nits. If you read comments to other popular posts, you'll observe that we sometimes ignore the main theme go to great lengths picking some nits to infinitesimal bits.
I bought MS Office Professional some 15 years ago. Having been bit by other vendors, I bought the disks. There is nothing on them that the license is for X years (or maybe there is, .. if so, very well hidden in legalese). Now, the company has been going to great lengths to force me to get a later version and pay them a monthly rent. I do not need it, and already paid for the license for what I use. So I will continue to use Windows 7 or 10 or whatever. I am close to putting together a Linux laptop. I see that Consumer Reports has asked that enshittifier to keep supporting Windows 10. One can only hope. I too, while paying my dues to America, will start to look elsewhere. Thank you.
Thanks for the encouraging words. It really means a lot.
Yeah it feels like people default to assuming we bash on US for sport, that we enjoy it's shortcomings and would also enjoy seeing it burn to the ground. It's not. I wished I didn't have to write these kinds of stuff. I wish I only focused on my area of interest which is philosophy of consciousness. But we have to write these harsh criticism because we want to see things just because we don't wanna see it burn to the ground, but flourish and be ever more inviting for collaboration. It's illogical to think otherwise because it's counterproductive to share knowledge with an actor we'd aim to neutralize.
But when slack can change terms, when Microsoft can push spyware and nobody is accountable for anything, when what's the point of a transaction? These all feels like scams. If I'm going to get scammed I prefer not to buy anything at all.
35 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 64.4 ms ] threadI read it as don't support oligarchies.
If the writer of the article is here I’m interested in why there’s far more consumer protection southern red states like Santa Catarina vs northern blue states. How come things just don’t get stolen as often there in the Bolsonaro areas?
If your answer is poverty i refer you to CDE vs Foz.
n.b. They were shamelessly anticonsumer all along even in the early days. That’s why we just moved on from them and, to me anyway, they fell into obscurity.
It looks like Ralph Nader led one for a while back in the '70s but it's long dead now.
If someone were to revive such a movement or if some politicians were to attach themselves to it then I think it would be hugely popular.
I read it like "let's try to create a more tame Trump", and not like "let's elect leaders that represent the people's interest just as well as ours".
Just want to point out:
* Samsung has been accused of releasing software updates that degrade performance, forcing you to buy newer devices - Samsung is not American
* Brother - Japanese printer maker, I LOVE their printers mind you, but they've released firmware upgrades that prevent or degrade compatibility with third party ink cartridges
* Epson - Also Japanese, also have owned some of their printers, same thing with third party ink cartridges.
I'm sure there's many more companies, not from the US who do equally if not worse evils with software / hardware.
What the author is after isn't American products, just anti-consumerism, which can be impossible to predict mind you. Anyone of any country can do it.
Companies will almost always look for ways to extract maximum profit even if it comes at the expense of others' wellbeing. So it is up to government to protect its citizens by regulations that prevent, for example, polluting water supplies, the air we breathe, etc., or from taking advantage of consumers, defrauding them, etc.
If government decides to roll back many of those regulations (like gutting the CFPB), then companies are free to engage in those destructive practices.
You can blame the companies, sure -- but mostly I blame the government (and those who voted for that government) because it's their job to keep companies in check, and instead of doing that, they're in bed with the companies, and even directly profiting from them (also known as corruption, which oligarchies do very well).
This junk always gets attention because people don't read history therefore they have no basis for comparison.
Hold here. They aren't. Immediately letting 'the people' off the hook for blame is a somewhat modern fallacy. These people democratically choose the leader. You can't just 'not blame' them, as a group, for an eventual failure if they consistently choose poorly.
In general you get quality from the EU and the UK/Aus/Can/NZ countries where there's "you may return the product at any time for a full refund if it has a fault" type of laws and a consumer agency to help police enforcement (the law is worthless if the consumer has to take a store to court themselves). I'll also give a viewpoint that Japan and SK, like the USA, have fallen pretty far and i don't include them in the above group. If you look it up it appears stores can easily refuse refunds which is a recipe for crap products which explains the absolutely shit Sony and Samsung have been putting out the past decade.
https://www.starlinghome.io/ shut down today.
We need a free market with open competition. The best guarantor of rights is having the option to walk away and choose a different provider - in employment, and in services / retail purchases, etc.
https://lemmy.ca/c/boycottus
You know about America, you can see our big court cases live.[1] You have no idea what happens in Brazilian courts, your own country. (If your courts were open, there'd be a RECAP equivalent.) Same for European countries.
A law says "all evil is unlawful" and the naive think it's a utopia. A ignorância é uma bênção.
[1] https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/
If you care to treat the whole post as naive, maybe you should also try to make your point as to why all the other arguments are naive as well?
I bought MS Office Professional some 15 years ago. Having been bit by other vendors, I bought the disks. There is nothing on them that the license is for X years (or maybe there is, .. if so, very well hidden in legalese). Now, the company has been going to great lengths to force me to get a later version and pay them a monthly rent. I do not need it, and already paid for the license for what I use. So I will continue to use Windows 7 or 10 or whatever. I am close to putting together a Linux laptop. I see that Consumer Reports has asked that enshittifier to keep supporting Windows 10. One can only hope. I too, while paying my dues to America, will start to look elsewhere. Thank you.
Yeah it feels like people default to assuming we bash on US for sport, that we enjoy it's shortcomings and would also enjoy seeing it burn to the ground. It's not. I wished I didn't have to write these kinds of stuff. I wish I only focused on my area of interest which is philosophy of consciousness. But we have to write these harsh criticism because we want to see things just because we don't wanna see it burn to the ground, but flourish and be ever more inviting for collaboration. It's illogical to think otherwise because it's counterproductive to share knowledge with an actor we'd aim to neutralize.
But when slack can change terms, when Microsoft can push spyware and nobody is accountable for anything, when what's the point of a transaction? These all feels like scams. If I'm going to get scammed I prefer not to buy anything at all.