4 ms·

The thing is it's individuals in aggregate, who empower those corporations. If people stooped buying iphones (just example, not picking on Apple) Apple would

The thing is it's individuals in aggregate, who empower those corporations. If people stooped buying iphones (just example, not picking on Apple) Apple would stop building them. If people would travel less, there would be less planes burning fuel. If people would stop buying cheap plastic crap, there would be less plastic created, less fuel used by ships bringing stuff from china etc. Sure some corporations rely on government or b2b, but a lot are consumer dependent. And yes one single consumer changing his ways doesn't change much. Several millions or more, can start having an effect. Point is you can make all the laws you want, corporations are great at finding workarounds[1]. We have to get people to consume less[2] or in the long run figure how we can make all of this stuff with less environment impact. [1] just look at all the "disruptive" startups, most of them are using workarounds to get ahead (uber, airbnb) [2] Of course if we actually managed to do that, we would pretty much kill of our whole economy, which is build upon the idea of everything always going up (revenue, gdp, stocks, housing, retirement plans, ...), so we are dammed if we do and damned if we don't.

dragonwriter 6y ago
> Sure some corporations rely on government or b2b, Corporations, by definition, rely on government; the corporate form is a government-created privilege that is also government-granted in each specific instance. But, of course, government, and businesses of all kinds, ultimately depend on people. I mean, if people just stopped listening to a government, it would ceases to exist as a government.
- unionpivo 6y ago
  > Corporations, by definition, rely on government; the corporate form is a government-created privilege that is also government-granted in each specific instance. Sure I meant they rely on them for their revenue (the government is their customer, like military contractors) > But, of course, government, and businesses of all kinds, ultimately depend on people. I mean, if people just stopped listening to a government, it would ceases to exist as a government. This is only sort of true in democracies. There are plenty of places where people don't get a choice of listening to government or not.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > This is only sort of true in democracies. There are plenty of places where people don't get a choice of listening to government or not. People nearly always have a choice; there are just often consequences to an individual negative choice that people don't like, which nearly always in love someone else making a positive choice. If people in the aggregate chose “no”, the government would have no power.
esarbe 6y ago
> If people stooped buying iphones (just example, not picking on Apple) Apple would stop building them. I think advertisement is a big problem here. The way that advertisement has been weaponized in the last 100 years is astounding. The means and methods advertisement employs to wake and create desires in people is scary and I don't think many outside the field of advertisement really do understand how targeted the manipulations have become. Yes, people buy IPhones, and Nikes and all that other fancy stuff. But weaponized employment of memes (in Dawkins' sense) is the reason for it. We're trained and educated to be good little consumers, starting from the earliest childhood.

dragonwriter 6y ago

> Sure some corporations rely on government or b2b, Corporations, by definition, rely on government; the corporate form is a government-created privilege that is also government-granted in each specific instance. But, of course, government, and businesses of all kinds, ultimately depend on people. I mean, if people just stopped listening to a government, it would ceases to exist as a government.

unionpivo 6y ago
> Corporations, by definition, rely on government; the corporate form is a government-created privilege that is also government-granted in each specific instance. Sure I meant they rely on them for their revenue (the government is their customer, like military contractors) > But, of course, government, and businesses of all kinds, ultimately depend on people. I mean, if people just stopped listening to a government, it would ceases to exist as a government. This is only sort of true in democracies. There are plenty of places where people don't get a choice of listening to government or not.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > This is only sort of true in democracies. There are plenty of places where people don't get a choice of listening to government or not. People nearly always have a choice; there are just often consequences to an individual negative choice that people don't like, which nearly always in love someone else making a positive choice. If people in the aggregate chose “no”, the government would have no power.

esarbe 6y ago

> If people stooped buying iphones (just example, not picking on Apple) Apple would stop building them. I think advertisement is a big problem here. The way that advertisement has been weaponized in the last 100 years is astounding. The means and methods advertisement employs to wake and create desires in people is scary and I don't think many outside the field of advertisement really do understand how targeted the manipulations have become. Yes, people buy IPhones, and Nikes and all that other fancy stuff. But weaponized employment of memes (in Dawkins' sense) is the reason for it. We're trained and educated to be good little consumers, starting from the earliest childhood.