[BirAdam]

All of the oldest folks I knew were wrong about many things, but they were right to say that morality must be at the center of all public discourse. Pensions were part of the contract of employment for many old companies. As those companies became more interested in ever higher rates of return without offering higher value to customers, the companies became fragile. Becoming fragile, they were eventually broken. Then the pensions are unfunded by no fault of the employees.

A company doesn’t have to make billions per quarter to be solvent, it only needs to beat inflation. Beyond that, the people running the company should have some basic human decency. If they don’t, we as consumers, employees, founders, whatever can and should cease doing business with them.

[kokanee]

We need to figure out how to effectively organize boycotts, and find a way to actually incentivize participation.

I'm spitballing here, but what if we created a browser extension that gives users the option to block various monopolistic/oligarchic tech platforms. If the browser navigates to a blocked platform, we show a "consider these alternatives" page instead. Competitors to the monopolies could offer incentives (raffles, discounts, etc) in exchange for promotion on the recommended alternatives list, creating an incentive to participate in a boycott.

Example: a user opts into an Amazon boycott, but later clicks an affiliate link that leads them to a book listing on amazon.com. The browser extension intercepts this and displays a list of other places to shop for that book. Barnes and Noble offers a 10% discount for people who boycott Amazon, so they're the top recommended alternative, and the user gets the book for a discount.

[ChaseMeAway]

I was working on something adjacent to this for a little while.

It was a Chrome extension which allowed a user to upload a list (pluggable community-maintained lists, akin to ublock). It would light up when a user was on a site in the list with details about the site, the ownership/board, recent news, etc.

It also had a space for recommended alternatives. I built it because I was tired of giving money to companies who used the profits to make society worse.

I’d be down to pick up work on it again and get development going in the open or shift to work on the more commercial oriented design you describe. Lmk a good way to reach you if you’re open to it.

If you’d rather I can set up an email for this alias I just don’t have one handy to post publicly at the time of writing.

[BirAdam]

That’d be cool. I am not good at negotiating, sales, or anything g of that sort so I’d be the wrong person to help get companies on-board. I’d love to see something like this tho. I’d certainly use it.

[cogman10]

While I'm ok with the notion of boycotts, they aren't effective in a world dominated by monopolies.

It's basically impossible to boycott amazon completely because of AWS which powers everything.

The hard thing needed is better politicians. And to get better politicians we need a better and more politically literate voting public. To get that, we need better journalism.

It's a real hard battle to win especially since a huge portion of the electorate will vote for the incumbent and the incumbents will deploy every dirty trick in the book to stay in power. Including getting people to run to split tickets.

But that's ultimately what must happen. The thing Amazon or Walmart actually fear is a government willing to regulate them or their employees unionizing. And the only way to get regulations is voting for politicians that do that and voting out politicians unwilling to do that. For unions, you have to convince people that even though it may cost them their jobs, it's worth it to drive the likes of Walmart out of town to support more local businesses. It helps to get union friendly politicians into office.

(Un)fortunately, there's a pretty big generational divide. As boomers expire, I have hope that Gen X and Millennials will make things better. The question is how bad things will get before that happens.

[amazingman]

>All of the oldest folks I knew were wrong about many things, but they were right to say that morality must be at the center of all public discourse

Most of the Trump supporters most everyone here knows are also the oldest folks they know. Funny that.

[BirAdam]

I wrote: “oldest folks I knew” and I was referencing those who are no longer with us, and who were members of generations before boomers…

[doctorpangloss]

Yeah, buddy, lemme tell you, every old person you ever knew, if they had the good luck to have bought a house in California in the 80s or older for kopecks, that they pay basically no taxes on, and then will go onto leave in a completely dilapidated state to sell for $1.5m... suddenly they're not talking about the morality of their windfall, right? How do you not see that?

[BirAdam]

First, I’m not talking about boomers. Second, if I were, those same people paid taxes on that house for decades. Is it not okay for that rate to fall in their latter years? If they sell, they then pay taxes on that sale amount.

Intergenerational war is stupid. Why be angry because someone lived in a time they gave them a benefit? In the case of the boomers, they were also the generation beaten by cops, water cannoned, and shot for being antiwar and pro civil rights. While many boomers are crappy, they’re are also every bit as diverse as any other group.

Finally, the old folks I was thinking of were born in the 20s and 30s, not the 50s.

[doctorpangloss]

all i'm saying is that the complete thought they have in their mind is, "the way i got mine is the most moral"