mrttao
Well-known member
Oh yea.
I love boycotts. (I am being serious here).
Whenever possible, vote with your money for the more ethical corporation.
Of course you need to actually have the info in the first place.
Five minutes of hate news
- Thread starter PsihoKekec
- Start date
I love boycotts. (I am being serious here).
Whenever possible, vote with your money for the more ethical corporation.
Of course you need to actually have the info in the first place.
Morphic Tide
Well-known member
But from well under ground in what is overwhelmingly very solid stone, where water leeching through is utterly negligible. As opposed to "this three-mile stretch of ground will not grow plants for centuries" like the runoff of the mines these metals come from, which is a pretty clear giveaway of the horrors that throwing it on top where rain can wash it directly into drinking water entails. In the case of lithium, it's frequently found in deposits that extraction from results in concentrated acids.
It is very much a problem downstream from mindless consumerism because the sheer volume of wasted material is directly responsible for that smuggling being a viable business decision. You'd have a point if the devices were highly modular and repairable with compatibility breaks only with drastic improvements and thus the smuggling is just scraping the bottom of the barrel, but they're very much the opposite on all three of those points so they waste very difficult to recover material with extreme environmental damage to extract then ship the problems it causes off to somewhere nobody with jurisdiction over them cares about.
A lot of normies aren't stupid though, they're just really easy to persuade. It's understandable when you realize they've been getting drilled since birth for this consumption.
People think that 'buying more stuff' makes them a better person, humility is lost on them.
I honestly find it pretty sad. X_X
Orrrrrrrrrr it gets scrapped for the gold in it's circuits, and the rest shipped off to become E-waste where it poisons black children.
From America? Generally unlikely.
From China, definitely.
Also, E-waste is the least of worries for africa
;P You have to be exceptionally naïve to believe that the vast majority of everything no-longer-used isn't just tossed in a crate and sent overseas~
The whole 'reuse, reduce, recycle' leftist mantra? It never existed. ANYWHERE.
I mean, vast majority of places in the US resell it because that is money.
Of every phone resold, a shitload are tossed away. And how long do those resold phones even last for, before they too are tossed?
Mate the people who own the green-initiative companies/policies are the same people who moves industry offshore to places without environmental regulation.
Ever heard of saying one thing, and doing another?
Okay sure, some stuff is recycled. But who cares when 99.9% of crap THEY irresponsibly create, gets tossed in a hole somewhere or usually into the ocean.
LordsFire
Internet Wizard
We seem to have some people who have trouble parsing between 'This is a person's own choice to make' and 'you can still criticize a choice as unwise.'
If a person wants to, they can make a hobby out of building a luxury log cabin over the course of a few years, then immediately burning it down as soon as it's done, then starting over again.
It is their right to do that, presuming reasonable fire safety in the demolition, and so long as it's all with their property, their labor, etc, the government and other people have no business forcing them to stop.
It's still a damnfool thing to do, and it's perfectly fine to tell them that.
'You're allowed to do this' and 'This is a wise decision' are not the same thing.
So it is with consumerism. If someone wants, they can blow every bit of spare spending cash they can squeeze out of their budget on Star Wars merchandise, or trying to get every single game in the Steam Store, or having their kindergartener's finger-paintings framed in bullet-proof gold-plated frames.
Just because they can, and it would be morally wrong to force them to stop, does not mean it is not foolishly wasteful of them to do so, or make it immoral to tell them such.
Spending money on the lottery is a waste. Any state instituting such a thing is doing something evil. Yes, people have the freedom to waste their money in such a way, but it is extremely foolish and wasteful, and feeds into a destructive system.
So it is with women who just need to be up on the latest fashion trend, men who just have to have the latest tech-gadget, etc, etc.
To some small degree this is relative to wealth. If you're a Billionaire, buying one of the newest tech gadget each time it comes out isn't meaningfully wasteful to your budget, nor is it driving consumer production scale to stupid levels, because billionaires are bloody rare. Even then though, you can do this in foolish ways, or wise ways. The wise man will know that wealthy first-adopters are what drive investment to make a product cheaper and available to more people, so they'll buy, use, and give feedback on products that they think are good to see proliferated through society, rather than just mindlessly go 'it's a new tech-widget,' must have.
To try to sum up the issue another way:
If I were a rich man, I might buy a pizza for dinner every night. I love it that much, and I'd just change which brand I got to keep it from getting old.
However, I would still eat the leftovers for breakfast the next morning, not throw them out and order a new pizza each time.
This basic principle can apply to almost anything.
If a person wants to, they can make a hobby out of building a luxury log cabin over the course of a few years, then immediately burning it down as soon as it's done, then starting over again.
It is their right to do that, presuming reasonable fire safety in the demolition, and so long as it's all with their property, their labor, etc, the government and other people have no business forcing them to stop.
It's still a damnfool thing to do, and it's perfectly fine to tell them that.
'You're allowed to do this' and 'This is a wise decision' are not the same thing.
So it is with consumerism. If someone wants, they can blow every bit of spare spending cash they can squeeze out of their budget on Star Wars merchandise, or trying to get every single game in the Steam Store, or having their kindergartener's finger-paintings framed in bullet-proof gold-plated frames.
Just because they can, and it would be morally wrong to force them to stop, does not mean it is not foolishly wasteful of them to do so, or make it immoral to tell them such.
Spending money on the lottery is a waste. Any state instituting such a thing is doing something evil. Yes, people have the freedom to waste their money in such a way, but it is extremely foolish and wasteful, and feeds into a destructive system.
So it is with women who just need to be up on the latest fashion trend, men who just have to have the latest tech-gadget, etc, etc.
To some small degree this is relative to wealth. If you're a Billionaire, buying one of the newest tech gadget each time it comes out isn't meaningfully wasteful to your budget, nor is it driving consumer production scale to stupid levels, because billionaires are bloody rare. Even then though, you can do this in foolish ways, or wise ways. The wise man will know that wealthy first-adopters are what drive investment to make a product cheaper and available to more people, so they'll buy, use, and give feedback on products that they think are good to see proliferated through society, rather than just mindlessly go 'it's a new tech-widget,' must have.
To try to sum up the issue another way:
If I were a rich man, I might buy a pizza for dinner every night. I love it that much, and I'd just change which brand I got to keep it from getting old.
However, I would still eat the leftovers for breakfast the next morning, not throw them out and order a new pizza each time.
This basic principle can apply to almost anything.
My issue is where does natural decisions start and artificial decisions start?
If you want to chop your own dick off, hey, it doesn't hurt me one bit, now does it?
But all of a sudden it doesn't sound very fair when someone keeps whispering 'cut your dick off' into their ear until their mind snaps. Now what if this whisperer begins to spread?
LordsFire
Internet Wizard
The terms you're looking for aren't 'natural vs artificial' it's 'independent vs coerced.'
And if someone keeps whispering that in your ear, you tell them to stop it, or you'll have them arrested for harassment. That's how you solve that problem.
To relate it to advertising, I use adblock on browsers, use the mute button on the rare occassion I watch TV, and when I'm listening to the radio I channel surf or turn it off when ads start. It isn't particularly hard to cut most of the advertising out of your life, and if you willingly expose yourself to it continuously, that's your fault.
Advertising is very distinct from propaganda being administered through state-run schools, etc.
mrttao
Well-known member
I agree with your analysis on the wisdom / rights of buying stuff.
But you are actually wrong about the argument raging here.
Literally everyone in the thread agrees it is unwise of them.
The disagreement is on whether or not it is "their right to make this choice" as you say.
Me and Zach argue it is their right to make that choice, because they are hurting noone with it.
Others are arguing that they are destroying the environment and harming other people with their choices.
With one person specifically saying we need to "do something" about this harmful choices to stop them hurting others.
The argument literally started ParadiseLost argued that we need to do something about their unwise choices and I refuted the notion we need to do something about it
ParadiseLost
Well-known member
Literally any sane school of ethics suggests that you should involve yourself in problems in your immediate community, especially if they violate your principles, and if the problems are likely to negatively impact you.
Also my original statement that your quoting was a hypothetical based on what a person who truly believed in environmentalism would do, but applying the context of a post to a particular sentence within that post might be a bit too complex for you.
You did not refute anything.
mrttao
Well-known member
These are not "problems" and they do NOT negatively affect you. Nor do they violate any principals.
People wasting their money on crap is just them being stupid in a harmless manner.
Actual problems would be things like govt and corporate malfeasance. The things you insist on blaming the end buyer of consumer electronics for.
Another problem is enviropsychos who wish to toss away our basic human rights to "save the environment". Because surely if we give daddy govt the right to control what you buy at the shoppe it will make the world a better place.
Why yes, it is daddy govt who decided to improperly dispose of e-trash in the first place. But it is your own damn fault as a filthy peasant for not giving daddy govt the ability to regulate what electronics you are allowed to buy.
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ParadiseLost
Well-known member
You are continuing to ignore context - but yes, society wide mindless consumerism 100% affects me, macroeconomics and demand curves make that fairly obvious and intuitive.
Well, I'm glad they aren't violating any school leadership.
Governments and corporations are just groups of people, and their behavior is merely a manifestation of the underlying ethics of the society in which they exist.
mrttao
Well-known member
Quite the opposite. We have seen time and time again they wildly diverge from the ethics of commoners. While they try to engage in mass social engineering to alter reality to fit their wild imagination.
Furthermore, by imposing authoritarian govt controls over "consumerism" you are not shifting your society towards "smart consumption", you are instead shifting it towards "corrupt authoritarian hellhole"
ParadiseLost
Well-known member
Where in the flying fuck did I ever advocate this?