150 points

Anti-capitalist regulations, I imagine.

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44 points
*

Anti monopoly and regulations against anti competitive practices are cornerstones of capitalism ensuring free and fair competition.
So no, what we need is a return back to when these practices weren’t allowed, away from allowing these things more than ever as we do now.
It’s easy to see Russia has become an oligarchy, why can’t we see it’s happening to us too?
But we can’t dismantle capitalism altogether, without creating an even bigger monopoly problem, the monopoly being corrupt governments like the soviet union and their 5 year plan economy, that very obviously wasn’t a very good concept.

Maybe that’s what you meant, I’d just not call it anti-capitalism, when regulations are for the purpose of making capitalism work better.
So just “regulation” is better.

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23 points

Let me tell you about the Nordic model

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28 points
*

Repubtard: HEY THAT’S SOCIALISM!!!

Except Scandinavians have more freedom, and better free market than USA.

Repubtard: BUT IT’S SOCIALISM!!!

Ehrm, they also have better freedom of speech.

Repubtard: WHAT? ARE YOU A FUCKING COMMIE?

Actually they also rank way higher on democracy.

Repubtard: WHY DO YOU HATE AMERICA?

I don’t, but wouldn’t it be nice if everybody had healthcare, free education and social security so you didn’t have to fear to starve if you got ill and lost yopur job?

Repubtard: HEY THAT’S SOCIALISM!!!

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1 point

Accountability is probably easier in a smaller country.

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9 points
*

Regulations only exist because Capitalism would consume itself without guardrails.

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8 points

I wonder if it’s consuming itself a bit right now.

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6 points

Anti monopoly and regulations against anti competitive practices are cornerstones of capitalism ensuring free and fair competition.

No, that’s the opposite of capitalism.

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1 point
*

No unregulated capitalism is super capitalism.
Regulated capitalism is capitalism we actually try to get to work as intended or “normal” capitalism.
Social democracy is “Caring” capitalism. Where free markets and capitalism still exist, but is regulated to prevent exploitation of ordinary people.

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4 points

That’s why they do regulatory capture to prevent that from happening. It all starts with money being equal to influence. This can temporarily be reset after a big crash of the system but sooner or later they start again.

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97 points

All power to the users. And I do mean ALL. Complete control over cellular modems for one. Control over every little bit of hardware in the consumers hands.

That includes warranty promises, that includes schematics, source code for firmware, everything. For all current, past and future devices.

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48 points

Fuck locked bootloaders.

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9 points

Yes, even if you try to use the controls we have left, you will discover that they always clip out one little obscure but critical detail that means you can’t actually use your device your way.

Example, starting ADB at boot in tcpip 5555 mode when your bootloader is locked

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1 point
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means you can’t actually use your device your way.

Then don’t use the device.

(I myself can wait longer than many of their shareholders.)

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4 points

You know something is wrong when Google is one of the most consumer friendly companies.

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20 points

But that’s terrorism!

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10 points

I am aware of this narrative. I don’t agree.

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3 points

So you’re saying you side with the terrrists!

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5 points

I respect the sentiment, but most users neither know nor care about that. They want to take their new device out of it’s box, power it on, log in to whatever accounts they have, and carry on with their day.

The number of people who actually care about that is very small.

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2 points

It doesn’t matter if they care about this. They are too dumb to do anything about it anyway. They still can get to take advantage of this. Most notable would be that stuff like “bank apps only through play/apple store” would be much harder to pull of.

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4 points

You’re not wrong, but users should then be held accountable if they fuck up their device. For example, if you decide to force companies to allow unlocking of bootloaders, and the user decides to flash something that they shouldn’t, and the device bricks, whose fault is it?

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5 points

Then they can just get it repaired, at a shop that has the flasher to re-flash the device. Cuz it’s open source

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2 points
*

And pay a shop to do it? Do you realistically think the average person is gonna be willing to do that? I think it’s more likely they’ll complain to the phone company about their bricked phone.

I also don’t know enough, but is a bricked phone “fixable”? If it is, the person could do it themselves. But that’s just one example. Other examples include installing unsafe OSes because social media said so. I don’t think the average person is tech savvy enough to give them this kind of freedom.

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3 points

This very much depends. Are there technical ways to restore this? Something like a jumper to make the flash storage writable. This would be possible with access to the firmware source code. So yeah, they can fix it themselves. Who is responsible? If the device is bricked after this: the company.

Build locked up products? Die.
Build in fuses? Better make those chips accessible by providing the plans to build them, otherwise refund your customers and die. Now everyone can build them, this won’t be a monopoly and everyone wins.

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-6 points

The users already have a lot of control; many just don’t use it.

Can any of you live without Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube for one calendar month? 25 years ago, millions of Americans did, and their lives were hardly the poorer for it. 25 years before that it was over 150 million Americans, including the 12 who walked the Moon.

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7 points

The kind of control we are talking about are different. You look at the law, in which I have only little trust, while I look at the ability to manipulate the hardware.

So no, they do not have control over the hardware, they just don’t care that much. They do care if they are inconvenienced in any way, say by a service that disallows some parts that were previously offered. They don’t understand and don’t care, but they do win from some more control over their stuff.

I already live without any of the services you mentioned, I suspect most of Lemmy do. Well, not without YouTube (for me), I guess, but that gets more and more replaced by stuff like peertube.

Millions of Americans would still only occasionally visit those things if they had more options to plan their recreational time. Those options are mostly limited by less free time available while also having less money available. In that regard, and mostly limited to that regard, was then better than now.

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2 points

If we are going to wait for the right legislation, then we are probably going to wait a very long time.

You’re not on Facebook and Twitter? Good. It’s entry-level stance, but nonetheless a good one, particularly if you are under 40 years of age.

YouTube is more difficult as it is, for me at least, mostly a replacement for television, videotape, and DVDs. My search for alternatives haven’t been too fruitful, but I often go to Vimeo, Archives, niconoco (they’re back in service starting early August), occasionally RuTube and vk (I support Ukraine in the war, but I’m not going to hate Russia), for a while the Chinese sites (though there seems to be less selection these days, too many ads, and some of it is YouTube embeds), Jamendo, and WikiCommons, and yes PeerTube (I suppose searching in time will get easier). (I’m also thinking of going back to P2P a bit.)

FWIW, I have this https://lemmy.world/c/musicnoytnosnofbnoff on Lemmy, and so far I might be the only contributor. The one I have on reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/musicNoYTNoSNoFBNoFF/ I can no longer access as the account I used to create it has been suspended (and yes, suspended for no good reason). I could be the sole contributor for the next few years and I won’t give up.

Yes, many Americans, many people, are stuck in shitty jobs that take too much of their time, and a lot of it is nonessential. However, over a trillion hours (e.g. say over 250 million people x over 4000 hours in less than 10 years) have been spent on FB, Twitter, and YouTube. If 1% of that time was spent on alternatives, choices could improve dramatically. But they might not, it might be that they probably won’t, at least not for most of the Fox and CNN viewership. No matter: the search for alternatives continue and if people like us remain a small minority for years, maybe decades, to come, then we will nonetheless continue. We will be our own 1%ers.

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6 points

I’ve been living without the first two for years now. I could live without youtube if I really needed to, though I do watch a lot of stuff about farming that is really helpful. Most of my youtube watching is educational with a slight smattering of games and entertainment and a tiny bit of news.

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3 points
71 points

Once capitalism is dead.

Technology is great, it’s just naturally being used to exploit.

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8 points

That’s for too long a wait—if such ever happens.

DIY. Be your own boss. Not all economic relationships in this world are capitalist.

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6 points

If we work together and do our part, we can shorten the wait by more than you might think

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4 points

Starting out with small groups shouldn’t be too difficult.

wp:Affinity group

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1 point

Yeah but what if I don’t want to starve :-( ?

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1 point

Why would you starve?

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64 points
*

Taking patent, trademark, and copyright laws to what they were in, say, 1790, might be a good start.

Regard today’s billionaires with the same contempt that one does of criminals.

Wait at least 5 years before buying a new computer.

Don’t pay by credit card.

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28 points

Don’t pay by credit card.

This is bad advice for anyone with good credit and spending habits. A credit card with rewards is just free money if you’re responsible with it. I haven’t paid interest in over a decade and have made thousands from rewards.

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19 points

Yep, the rich are rich because they borrow other peoples money. 0% free interest lines are about the best discount you can get on anything. I get to make the interest while you hold the loan? Sign me up! Siri, remind me in 11 months to pay off the X loan.

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5 points

Surely you know that’s too good to be true. The card issuer charges fees to the merchant and then throws a portion of the money you just gave them back to you. But the prices of products are being driven up and the merchants aren’t eating them.

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8 points

You pay with your data lol

The reason why corpos been able to price gouge the peasants is particulaly to tp them having access to data this granular. Same reason why they want dynamic pricing schemes.

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4 points
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Not to mention the security that comes from being able to not pay if you get scammed for whatever reason. I paid for a course at a community college with a credit card, but then my schedule changed so I tried to cancel the class before it even started. The college gave me a whole runaround, and whether it was willful or just simple incompetence, I wasn’t able to get a refund. So I called my credit card company and explained the situation to them, and they resolved the whole thing for me. Sometimes even mentioning that you’ll refer such a problem to the fraud department at your credit card company is enough to get someone to back down and give you a refund.

Credit cards have issues, especially if you have problems with using them responsibly, but that’s one particular way in which they can save you a lot of headache.

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3 points

I haven’t paid interest in over a decade and have made thousands from rewards.

I’m not too familiar with credit cards, do you mean this in a literal money sense or something more complex, i.e. the value of rewards & money?

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10 points
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One of the better credit card rewards is a small percentage cash back, so literally free money. Money is fungible though, so any discounts on things you were going to buy anyway are effectively the same thing.

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9 points

We pay for EVERYTHING on our credit card, shared account with my partner. 2% money back. Pay it off in full every month. Zero interest paid, thousands of monies back.

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-3 points

There are no free money. These are loans. And making them attractive with cashbacks and rewards is done to trap unresponsible spenders. 95% of the time you don’t need to borrow money from the bank, unless you are in emergency or you are to invest these to achieve some payback (e.g. a loan to open your business).

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11 points

These are loans. And making them attractive with cashbacks and rewards is done to trap unresponsible spenders

I am aware, which is why I specifically said

This is bad advice for anyone with good credit and spending habits.

For people who aren’t irresponsible spenders, it’s a bad financial decision not to take the short term bank loan. Sure, I don’t need to spend the banks money because I have enough in my checking account to cover it. But by not doing so, I lose money on any transactions that don’t charge me a fee to run my card.

If you’re not responsible enough to use a credit card and not destroy your finances, absolutely do not use them. But for those of us who are, it’s a dumb idea to eschew it just because you have the money on hand. Like I said, I haven’t paid interest in a decade and have made thousands from my normal spending habits.

If I followed your advice, I would be objectively worse off, because I’d be losing money from my rewards for no benefit whatsoever. And I can guarantee I’d be materially worse off, since my credit card is the reason my credit is as good as it is, and that bullshit has a pervasive and perverse effect on your life. It’s not only loans that are impacted, but insurance, housing and employment can be as well. So maybe I should have left good credit off, since responsible spending will build your credit up even if it is bad currently.

TL;DR - responsible credit card use is a good thing, and foregoing it just because you have money on hand is a bad financial decision. Pay that shit off immediately and there’s no material downside and you still get all the benefits.

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-4 points

Fair enough, but they know what you bought.

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5 points

Yes, but you can also do a chargeback if the company you purchased from sold you a lousy product and isn’t being reasonable about returning it. If you had paid with cash, that cash is GONE.

Each method has its pros and cons.

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1 point

And? How has that harmed you overall?

Not saying I like that they track everything but I’ve yet to see it impact me personally.

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6 points

My almost six year old 9900k machine is still playing everything amazingly, with a video card update being my only change. I love it so much.

My iPhone is also six years old and the only reason I’m upgrading this month is to get 120hz, USB-C, and a better low light camera for cat pictures. A terabyte would be nice, too.

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56 points

We stop the acquisitions. We work out ways to foster innovation and protect patents only in the short term.

We need more than a couple phone manufacturers, we need more than a couple of food producers. All of these monolith mega corporations keep smaller upstarts from coming up and competing.

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10 points

And more than a couple operating systems. We get a lot of horrifyingly bad compatibility issues from Apple, and to a lesser degree, Google.

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10 points

Unfortunately some things will IMO always remain a natural monopoly. For example good luck trying to convince developers to write their apps for all those different operating systems.

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8 points

They could still be compatible, though. it’s possible even today, to some degree

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7 points

Doesn’t have to be that way

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2 points

Most of those apps could be replaced by a website that will work anywhere. But a website can’t spy on you as easily… so they push apps instead.

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2 points

And it’s hard for anyone to say no to multi-millions that will change your family’s life by selling when it’s not even 1% of the corporations profit. Can’t blame them for selling out really. I’d do the same thing and so would you.

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10 points

We can at least stop crap like this

https://www.confectioneryproduction.com/news/49392/mars-moves-to-deliver-35-9-billion-kellanova-takeover-including-flagship-pringles-brand/

They actually said in their review of the sale that they’ll be able to do better price fixing even if grocery stores demand price cuts.

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1 point

Don’t buy Pringles.

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