Diplo said:
There seems to be a very serious lack of mutual understanding.
Of course there are degrees.
As consumers, our ability to influence the industry in the direction we desire lies mainly in our purchasing decisions, and in our ability to influence the purchasing decisions of others.
As consumers, it is therefore important that we actually use this. If I feel that nVidias policies are just too much, I don't buy their products. If I feel that animals should have reasonable living conditions before slaughter, I preferentially buy meat produced like that. Et cetera. If we don't use this tool of ours, we essentially just bend over and ask to be screwed again, when we could actually have affected our situation and to some degree, the society we live in.
Look, an online shop that bait-and-switches, overcharges for shipping and handling, ships similar but cheaper stuff assuming that the customer either won't notice or will accept their fate rather than go through additional hassle - do they deserve your money, or do you take your business elsewhere? If you believe in the capitalistic system, you believe in weeding out those businesses that do not serve your intererest as a consumer, in favour of those who do.
[rant]Yes, I probably sound condescending. There are attitudes I don't much respect. If they are plastered onto the world, and therefore me and people I know, I might eventually object. I'm a computational chemist, but I could still make some very saleable substances and peddle them. I don't though. I could make efforts to avoid paying taxes. I don't. I could pirate all my software. I don't. I could steal pretty substantial amounts from a non-profit organization where I'm trusted without ever getting caught. I don't. I could have bedded a number of women without my wife probably finding out. I didn't. And so on. That doesn't mean that I tilt at every windmill I see, or that I haven't done my share of ugliness. But still - I try to stand for what I think is right.
More fool me? Limiting my options? Perhaps. But those are decisions I make, that define who I am, and what I stand for during my time in the world. It's a good idea to think about that a little, if you want to be able to look yourself in the mirror and feel good about who you see there when you get old.
Of course, I could have chosen otherwise, and then when I look in the mirror say -"everyone else probably does just like me". But it would be a lie, a pathetic attempt to save some self-respect by trying to paint everyone else with the same brush I had used to paint myself.
And since I feel this way, and happen to know some people in some very high places, government and corporations, who really do work hard trying to generally do as best they can, I get pretty irritated with this "everyone's a cheater anyway" attitude that gets thrown around as if it was true, and as if this ridiculously simplistic worldview somehow indicated sophistication and maturity.[/rant]
