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How will this work practically? Let's say we want to try this just for a month. Make a list of such companies and try not to spend our money with them. First of
by vijayr 11y ago
How will this work practically? Let's say we want to try this just for a month. Make a list of such companies and try not to spend our money with them. First of all, making this list itself isn't that simple, because of confusing and ever changing murky corporate structures (apps like buycott [1] can help here). In many industries, a handful of players control the entire market - just 3 or 4 companies control meat supply in the US, Monsanto controls a huge portion of seeds and so on. In the end we'll probably end up with a list of couple of dozen companies in our "bad list" and our options to shop (even the basic necessities) will be severely limited. Not saying it can't be done, it is just difficult to do it without some serious collective effort. It is definitely a good exercise to brainstorm ideas though, we gotta start somewhere.
http://buycott.com/ http://buycott.com/
- noja 11y agoYou buy from the least bad one. Then the others become less bad, and you switch to them. And so on.
- anonbanker 11y agoisn't that what we already do? I mean, I switched from Godaddy to Namecheap, Dropbox to Spideroak, etc. How is this not how things are done today?
- Veratyr 11y agoSpiderOak isn't "better" than DropBox. It supports privacy but the service and support is utterly appalling. I was getting upload speeds on the order of kilobytes per second on a gigabit fiber connection while my CPU was idling. Filed a support request and they bumbled around a bit and then ceased responding to me entirely until I opened another ticket and demanded a refund. It took 5 __months__ to get to this point, with them not responding for weeks at a time. I'd recommend something like https://www.syncany.org/ https://www.syncany.org/ over SpiderOak any day.
- lfam 11y agoDepending on your needs, you could try Syncthing [1]. IMO the major functional differences between it and Dropbox are: * You have to provide the servers that Dropbox provides. I.E. you have to provide the level of availability that you want. [2] * FOSS licensed. * Because your data is only ever stored on your machines, you are only limited by your own storage and bandwidth. [1] https://syncthing.net/ https://syncthing.net/ [2] This requirement has actually loosened to some degree because the latest version of Syncthing introduced relay servers. So you still need to provide available storage servers, but you can use relays to overcome partitions in your network.
- Veratyr 11y agoThe first requirement is the one that kills SyncThing for me and why Syncany is more appealing. To sum up my reasons very quickly: - I want to store my data offsite, where it isn't vulnerable to breakins, fire, water damage etc. - I have no offsite storage I can trust completely. - Syncthing only supports storing plaintext on disk. Therefore I can't use syncthing to securely and remotely store data. This is where Syncany wins. You don't have to trust the storage endpoint. Also, Syncthing requires having a CPU attached to your remote storage, meaning your remote options are limited to a VPS or dedicated server. This is significantly more expensive than buying block storage from Google or Amazon. If Syncthing ever resolves https://github.com/syncthing/syncthing/issues/109 https://github.com/syncthing/syncthing/issues/109 I'll be open to using it, until then it's out.
- clusterfoo 11y agoI don't think that's feasible either on a large scale. How about this strategy: 1. Pick the top three offenders (not in the same industry). 2. For each offender, find their cash cow, or top 3 most profitable products. 3. Make a concerted effort to boycott those products, and those products alone, indefinitely. Make some real damage. The purpose here is to make an example out of someone. Build morale among protesters that if well organized, they can be effective. First scenario: One million US/Canadian citizens sporadically decide to buy from company Y instead of company X... nobody notices. Second scenario: Company Z suddenly loses 100,000 customers for their core product... I'll bet you someone notices.
- walterbell 11y agoYes, see the history of fossil fuel divestment and boycotts, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil_fuel_divestment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil_fuel_divestment
- fweespeech 11y agoWe could simply boycott all movie theaters and Disney as both are a large part of the push for the IP copyright rules as a demonstration of will. I suspect if that had a noticeable impact the other related companies would fall in line to avoid being targeted for a boycott.
- junto 11y agoBoycotting Star Wars would send a very large message.
- kuschku 11y agoSome German Cinemas have refused to show any Disney movies for months, and are still discussing if they’ll show Star Wars at all. Disney wants far more of the profit the cinemas make, which is already next to nothing, and for some cinemas would lead to them paying Disney more than they have in income. So cinemas have been boycotting Disney. http://www.spiegel.de/kultur/kino/star-wars-boykott-deutscher-kinos-die-macht-erwacht-nicht-ueberall-a-1059965.html http://www.spiegel.de/kultur/kino/star-wars-boykott-deutsche...
- kordless 11y agoCompeting with them with a decentralized corporation is the only option here. They will manage to work around any boycotts by rebranding products through alternate channels. Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.