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The tools I love are made by awful people

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Re: The tools I love are made by awful people

#91

Post by giomasce »

imgabe wrote: post #64
aptj wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wrong. It's not about morality (or "main character"), it's about caring for your own and your beloved ones current and future. Ignorance, apathy and indifference keep the buyers/consumers/followers encouraging the unhealthy yet very "focused and efficient" morons (big and small) to ruin the world for everyone while they accumulate enormous power to further abuse the rest. __If you buy gold from someone who poisons a…

We have a government to enforce laws to protect the commons. If someone is poisoning the river, the government should fine them and shut them down. They should be inspecting gold producers to make sure they are complying with regulations so that all gold is produced in a sustainable way that doesn't destroy the environment. If that's not happening, then we need to fix the government so it does happen. Expecting each…

Yeah, that's the theory, and by any mean we definitely need to pursue that as well. I wish we had the luxury of making it work on its own. But since we do not, we need to pull all the levers we have, not just one.

> Expecting each individual person to be their own EPA and research how every single item they consume is produced idiotic and doomed to failure.

That's a false dichotomy. There are many middle grounds between researching every single item you buy and dropping the problem as a whole. You can focus on items which are most likely to bring negative impact, you can draw information from journalistic reports and material produced from dedicated associations. There are many ways to be sensitive to economic externalities of the things you buy without getting insane and without considering the whole problem moot on general phylosophycal principles.

Re: The tools I love are made by awful people

#92

Post by aptj »

fargle wrote: post #71
aptj wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wrong. It's not about morality (or "main character"), it's about caring for your own and your beloved ones current and future. Ignorance, apathy and indifference keep the buyers/consumers/followers encouraging the unhealthy yet very "focused and efficient" morons (big and small) to ruin the world for everyone while they accumulate enormous power to further abuse the rest. __If you buy gold from someone who poisons a…

wrong about wrong. if you go down that path, you are powerless. we live in a society that is imperfect. but you cannot live on a pedestal alone and be perfect either. you should shop at "walmart" or where-ever your dollar is the most effective. and that gives you the most stability and and position to challenge whether the current Walton regime's love of China is a good thing or not. but cutting your nose off to spit…

Right, and you posted this reply because you do care that others in the forest know that you deem something "wrong" (actions or ideas) and maybe there's a healthier way to pursue (while reminding to have realistic expectations). The river starts with many single drops gravitating to go somewhere )

Re: The tools I love are made by awful people

#93

Post by cvz »

imgabe wrote: post #4

There’s this modern affliction where people believe they are morally responsible for the actions of every person they buy anything from. For your own sanity, please let this go. You are responsible for your own actions. If you buy a pen from a psychopath and he uses the money to buy a bullet and shoot someone, that’s not your fault. He’s responsible for his actions. It’s like everyone somehow forgot that other humans…

Yes, you are morally responsible for your own actions. But those actions don't happen in a vacuum. They happen in a world that you are able to observe and make predictions about, however imperfect those predictions are. If you don't know that you're enabling the shooter, sure. But if you do know and do it anyway, you are responsible for knowingly enabling the shooter.

This doesn't mean that the shooter doesn't have his own agency and his own responsibility for his actions. It just means that his responsibility for his actions doesn't diminish your responsibility for yours, even if your actions involve him.

It seems to be a common idea that we can just overlook the abuses committed by the other people we deal with, as things "I'm not responsible for", regardless of our actual ability to do something about them. I have no special insight, but I think it's a common idea because it lets us feel better about ourselves while we do nothing. But "feeling good about oneself" isn't a solid way to build or evaluate a moral framework.

Re: The tools I love are made by awful people

#94

Post by imgabe »

merouan wrote: post #79
imgabe wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, you'll notice that we didn't get seat belts in cars by boycotting car companies until they promised to add them.

Your point being? There are multiple levers we can pull, sometimes this one, sometimes that one. That is no surprise.

Some levers are effective and some are meaningless posturing.

Re: The tools I love are made by awful people

#95

Post by casey2 »

Articles like these always lack perspective despite desperately trying to seem woke. These "awful people" are the people that stepped up in the system and were forced to make the hard decisions. You can either be the guy paying strike breakers to kill your striking workers or the guy whose business failed. Do you really think you are any less awful for deciding to minimize your participation?

Who am I kidding, progressive economic theory hasn't progressed passed "lets kill everyone who is better off than me"

Re: The tools I love are made by awful people

#96

Post by [deleted] »

cweagans wrote: post #19
mastazi wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you can be pragmatic and choose not to buy from certain companies whose behaviour you consider egregious, while at the same time not having to worry about each single expense you make. Deciding what bank you will get your home loan from -> not something you do every day, it's ok to do some research Deciding what cafe you will get your next lungo from -> not worth your time

Isn’t that the same as “just avoid things you’re morally opposed to as time and energy allows”? Why even bother with taking a moral stand if you only do it when it’s convenient?

[deleted]

Re: The tools I love are made by awful people

#97

Post by brunkerhart »

Have the author did the reality check exercise? What might seem as awful conditions by some westerner, might be great given other options. Once I read a post about working at Foxconn - assembly line for majority of hardware manufacturers. You might remember people were dropping off the roof because of hard working conditions. Yet they have a line of candidates. Because the other option is working at the same intensity but at no conditioned and barely ventilated clothing shop.

Re: The tools I love are made by awful people

#98

Post by jsiepkes »

imgabe wrote: post #50
jsiepkes wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you buy a pen from a psychopath and he uses the money to buy a bullet and shoot someone, that’s not your fault. He’s responsible for his actions. If you know upfront that's what's going to happen, why wouldn't you have a degree of responsibility?

You don't know up front what's going to happen. Seeing the future is not an ability humans have. Unless the pen is being sold as part of some murder fundraiser and you're going out of your way to specifically buy it there than from any better options the person doing the murder is the one responsible for the murdering.

If that's the rebuke then the whole comparison is silly. Since if you buy clothes at some chain like Zara you know before hand what the conditions are which they impose on their workers. You don't need "future sight" for that.

Re: The tools I love are made by awful people

#99

Post by sshine »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #57
lenkite wrote: post #12

I would love it if I could use Linux on the Desktop. Windows 11 feels a practical joke played on humanity by Nadella. The new Macbooks have amazing hardware, but the software quality has deteriorated considerably - even spotlight has bugs nowadays. However, I need basic sleep/restore to work on my laptop - and it feels like this is a Mars-mission-effort level problem for Linux to solve. If the Linux Software Foundati…

> However, I need basic sleep/restore to work on my laptop - and it feels like this is a Mars-mission-effort level problem for Linux to solve. Pick any model on this list that has all green boxes. There is no step 2. https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Laptop/Lenovo (Sent from my thinkpad with perfectly working sleep)

Sleep works perfectly on my Lenovos, and it fails miserably on my custom gamer laptop.

Supporting arbitrary hardware is hard for an open-source project.

Sticking to solid brands with well-tested models has other benefits.

Re: The tools I love are made by awful people

#100

Post by fulafel »

lenkite wrote: post #12

I would love it if I could use Linux on the Desktop. Windows 11 feels a practical joke played on humanity by Nadella. The new Macbooks have amazing hardware, but the software quality has deteriorated considerably - even spotlight has bugs nowadays. However, I need basic sleep/restore to work on my laptop - and it feels like this is a Mars-mission-effort level problem for Linux to solve. If the Linux Software Foundati…

> However, I need basic sleep/restore to work on my laptop - and it feels like this is a Mars-mission-effort level problem for Linux to solve.

This has not been true for over 20 years. You just need to buy known good hardware.

(Anyone know when exactly we first got reliable sleep on the early Thinkpads with APM?)

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