[beaconstudios]

The problem is that me switching away from Google products isn't going to change their behaviour at all, and I'm disincentivised from doing so because on an individual level, the benefits to using Google products outweighs the cost I bear from their actions. And even if I decide to bear thr cost of switching away as a largely symbolic act of protest, it doesn't change Google's behaviour at all. Problems at a societal or institutional level require solutions at the same level. There are things you can do individually (contrary to the parent's claim) to achieve systemic change but they're things like helping Google employees to strike or unionise, or building a movement around advocating for the breakup of Google. These are individual actions with the intent of building collective action.

[hellojesus]

I would contest your position. While your individual action may be of no consequence to Google, it still has a marginal impact.

I did basically the same thing as the user you responded to did, but only about 6-8 months ago. And I plan to migrate off of Google services as soon as Graphene is ported to the Pixel 6.

If the utility that the convenience that Google offers you outweighs the inconvenience of not doing business with a company you disagree with, no problem. Your utility curve doesn't weigh in the actions of the company as heavily as mine.

Google won't need to change their behavior until enough people leave, and even then they may choose to go out of business as opposed to changing. But you would have played your part and spoken with your wallet which is how free markets are designed.

Note: My utility curve doesn't place any emphasis on me individually acting as a figure in Google politics: unions, regulation, etc. We all have preferences.

[beaconstudios]

> While your individual action may be of no consequence to Google, it still has a marginal impact.

If we round off and assume Google has 2 billion customers, then your marginal impact is 0.00000005%. That doesn't do anything at all.

> Google won't need to change their behavior until enough people leave

This is based on the assumption that the only action one can and should take against Google is an individual disconnection from their services. This is pointless compared to meaningful changes through systemic means. I know HN has a lot of libertarian/rationalist economist types, but that ideological approach has been shown time and again to accomplish nothing, to the point where brands actively encourage "vote with your wallet" boycotts from conservatives because they are actually extemely profitable (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06yy88tLWlg).

I'd also point out the libertarianism/rationalism is rooted in neoliberalism and the whole point of neoliberalism is to remove challenges to corporate power, so of course they would encourage actions that do nothing to really harm corporate power while feeling like you're doing something. It's the consumer activism equivalent of donating £5/month to charity to assuage your first-world guilt.

[hellojesus]

0.00000005% is not 0%. There is marginal impact.

You are correct that I am both a libertarian and economist type, and that is born out of my love for rationality.

To do what you propose, you need to implement regulation. It is unclear to me how changing worker bargaining would impact the practices of Google towards consumers.

To implement regulation, you'll need to define some harm that is being incurred by a third party that is not voluntarily participating in a private transaction. What is the basis for the proposed regulation?

I don't think libertarianism exists to remove challenges to corporate power. Rather, it seems to me that it is rooted in, "live and let live." Unless there is a negative externality that is incurred by an unwilling participant, there should be no regulation. Morality is not the job of the state.

[beaconstudios]

> There is marginal impact.

Yes, but meaningless. If you want something to change, you typically don't settle for changing it by one in two billion.

> You are correct that I am both a libertarian and economist type, and that is born out of my love for rationality.

I used to take this stance until I learned about systems theory (and later critical theory, which is just systems theory applied to sociology*). Now I realise that libertarianism is only rational if socioeconomic individualism (ie, no collective action, no changing of institutions) is an axiom that you accept on faith.

*kind of, it's more complicated than that.

Oh, and systems theory is the flipside of cybernetics, which is one of the main rational bases of both automation and computing. It is itself a rational field.

> To do what you propose, you need to implement regulation. It is unclear to me how changing worker bargaining would impact the practices of Google towards consumers.

In theory, sure, maybe Google workers don't have to care about this stuff. But they do, and there's been lots of internal activism within Google about reducing the company's negative externalities.

> To implement regulation, you'll need to define some harm that is being incurred by a third party that is not voluntarily participating in a private transaction. What is the basis for the proposed regulation?

I reject your dilemma because if taken as-is, there would also be no argument against monopolies or monopsonies as they are caused by free individuals participating voluntarily in private transactions.

> I don't think libertarianism exists to remove challenges to corporate power. Rather, it seems to me that it is rooted in, "live and let live." Unless there is a negative externality that is incurred by an unwilling participant, there should be no regulation. Morality is not the job of the state.

Libertarianism is rooted in deregulation of private industry, which objectively increases corporate power by removing constraints on their actions. I understand the belief behind it being "live and let live" because if you formulate a free market system from the position of an individual voluntary transaction, and don't look at the higher-order effects that can come from that, then it seems like a good ideology. I believed this myself, maybe 10 years ago.

> Morality is not the job of the state.

Regulation is, though. Plus, laws are how we enforce the Overton window of our collectively agreed-upon moral beliefs - theft is the illegalisation of stealing, after all, and murder is illegal too; I would assume you're OK with these laws.

[hellojesus]

> Yes, but meaningless. If you want something to change, you typically don't settle for changing it by one in two billion.

With this I agree, and I mentioned in my original response at the end that my utility curve didn't include going beyond changing my consumption habits. But I did want to make it clear that there was an impact (and there are a growing number of people that are taking the same action so the aggregate marginal impact is certainly increasing).

> I used to take this stance until I learned about systems theory

I will look into this further. From the limited searching I've now done, it seems potentially similar to coalitional game theory wherein the result from cooperative behavior leads to better outcomes from all participants than if they were to individually compete against one-another. Perhaps the major difference is the level of abstraction which may say that a system is made out of many coalitional games to create an even greater outcome without the individual coalitions knowing, but I could be wrong there. If that were the case, it isn't apparent to me why an individual or coalition would participate. Searching source: https://www.onlinemswprograms.com/social-work/theories/syste...

> In theory, sure, maybe Google workers don't have to care about this stuff. But they do, and there's been lots of internal activism within Google about reducing the company's negative externalities.

This is good news. My original supposition was that we were discussing the consumer perspective (having no insider sway), but I would agree that a far better effect would be gained from internally infiltrating/joining the organization and then pushing directly for the changes one wants to see.

> I reject your dilemma because if taken as-is, there would also be no argument against monopolies or monopsonies as they are caused by free individuals participating voluntarily in private transactions.

Generally, yes - and I generally am against break-up of monopolies unless such an organization is able to physically prevent competition via barriers to entry (typically a consequence of government) or physical exclusivity. Examples are things like transmission over radio frequencies, satellite orbits, electricity companies. These things specifically benefit from regulation because, without it, there is no market solution that can provide the same service.

> Regulation is, though. Plus, laws are how we enforce the Overton window of our collectively agreed-upon moral beliefs - theft is the illegalisation of stealing, after all, and murder is illegal too; I would assume you're OK with these laws.

I am okay with laws against theft and murder specifically because there is harm against a third party whom is not a volunteer in the transaction. I think a more appropriate comparison would be things like gifting (and the resulting gift tax) and duels.

Gifting: It's private property so you should be able to do with it (withholding negative externalities) or give it to whomever you want. The gift tax, as I see it, is a direct tax and unconstitutional, but this is specific to the U.S.

Duels: The outcome of a duel is equivalent to murder, someone dies. The difference is that two (or more) parties voluntarily enter this transaction knowing the potential consequences, and no third party harm exists. I am fully for duels and believe that their existence actually more appropriately shifts the Overton window than regulation, which will always be solved on too general a level. Specific actors are much better able to generate specific solutions for their specific needs.

All this said, I will take the time to look more into systems theory as it does sound like I'm 10 years behind you in the progressivity of my belief system.

[beaconstudios]

> With this I agree, and I mentioned in my original response at the end that my utility curve didn't include going beyond changing my consumption habits.

That's fair enough, my point was not that everyone has to be some kind of activist, which is just overly demanding on others' time, but that if one were to take action against Google, consumption habits were probably the least effective action possible - and that their ineffectiveness is why neoliberals advocate for it, and yet always try to undermine collective action.

> From the limited searching I've now done, it seems potentially similar to coalitional game theory wherein the result from cooperative behavior leads to better outcomes from all participants than if they were to individually compete against one-another.

Yeah that's one way of looking at it, at least from a sociological/economic angle; cooperation > competition, in a prisoner-dilemma sense, but capitalism forces everybody to compete against each other. Broadly though, systems theory is about how the sum can be greater than the parts (via complex causality), and applied sociologically it speaks to things like incentive models and how small-scale actions that are perfectly moral can lead to larger-scale effects that are not moral. One example being that from an equal starting point, a pair betting rationally on fair coin flips will eventually end up with one person holding all the money; this has obvious implications for your previous examples of voluntary trade under capitalism (rich-get-richer etc). Systems theory is more of a general holistic lens though, it started out in biology and has applications all over the place. It's not a common topic ideologically speaking (aside from things like systemic racism), the main entrypoint into things like how/why Google does what it does would actually be Marx & Engels' analysis of capitalism.

> This is good news. My original supposition was that we were discussing the consumer perspective (having no insider sway), but I would agree that a far better effect would be gained from internally infiltrating/joining the organization and then pushing directly for the changes one wants to see.

I think the most effective consumer-only approach would be to protest and advocate to the government, but for sure change is best affected from within an organisation.

> Generally, yes - and I generally am against break-up of monopolies unless such an organization is able to physically prevent competition via barriers to entry (typically a consequence of government) or physical exclusivity.

Regulatory capture is pretty terrible, I agree - and that's how government ends up actually strengthening exploitative enterprises. However there are natural monopolies too, like network effects or other accumulative, positive feedback loops. Commodification through perfect competition is largely a myth, all markets trend towards monopoly over a long enough period. Just look at Microsoft's near-total dominance over the desktop OS market, or Google's dominance of search. Competition is the only thing that gives consumers power (under capitalism), so once competition goes away the monopolies can (and basically always do) exploit their consumers while ceasing to innovate in their captured market.

> I am okay with laws against theft and murder specifically because there is harm against a third party whom is not a volunteer in the transaction. I think a more appropriate comparison would be things like gifting (and the resulting gift tax) and duels.

> Duels: The outcome of a duel is equivalent to murder, someone dies

You can extrapolate from your argument about duels, directly to Squid Game. Presumably you think that such a world is not moral? You have to look at the outcome of your principles to decide whether they are moral, not just the theoretical formulation. Free market capitalism's outcome is generally an extreme income divide, and post-globalisation the other outcome is that all the misery and poor working conditions get exported to poor countries. Free market capitalism as formulated in the individual transaction kind-of sounds fair, but played out in reality it's extremely immoral.

[lamontcg]

But you really can switch to firefox and DDG today.

Firefox works perfectly well if you don't get wound up about silly details (mostly silly details that have been amplified by the internet which has told you to care about them, perhaps by Google astroturfing PR?) and you can DDG for 90-95% of your searches and fall back to google when it isn't doing well. Once you get over the initial few weeks of the learning curve there's very little cost to it.

[beaconstudios]

it's a bit more involved than that for me (I use Google search, chrome, gmail, calendar, android + play store, sheets, analytics, etc) but yeah I totally can switch. The problem is that that doesn't accomplish what I want, which is for Google to stop doing evil things.

[Tokelin]

Ironically the whole GDPR mess made it easier for me to use ddg first. I just don't have cookies, so every time I use google I'm greeted with that amazing consent form, so I just stick to ddg unless it's really necessary.

[mickotron]

The ocean is made up of drops of water.

Individual action has lots of impact at scale.

[beaconstudios]

True, but how do you scale it if you only act in a vacuum?