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It is freeloading on any general improvements in wealth that society gains due to anything the almost ubiquitous usage of cell phones makes more efficient. Let

It is freeloading on any general improvements in wealth that society gains due to anything the almost ubiquitous usage of cell phones makes more efficient. Lets make a specific example: lets say in 2028, 98% of pizzas are ordered via clicking on a phone app. Over at the pizza place, nobody is on the phone full time, just to punch phone orders into the computer system. As a result, pizza places run with 1 less full time person every shift. Pizzas are cheaper to make, competition leads to pizzas being slightly cheaper than they otherwise would have been. Even though you still phone in to the pizza place to make your order, you get the lower price. This is freeloading, since you didn't participate in any of activities that led to the lower price. (yes I realize you could have used a computer but this is just meant to show an example of how widespread phone use can lead to benefits for everyone, even non phone users) Lets say that everyone is .1% more efficient at picking up their kids from places kids need to be picked up at because they can just navigate to their GPS coordinates every time. Less idling and less driving around looking for them means less energy consumption, and less wear and tear on vehicles. This reduces demand for energy in several ways, which means lower energy costs for you, even though you continue to drive around parking lots trying to figure out where your kids are and why they aren't where you agreed ahead of time, or idling for AC and waiting for them to walk to where you agreed from the far side of the mall. There are a lot of ways that having a communication/data link to the world allows for new more efficient ways of doing things, and probably these will continue to compound, and taking the benefits (various efficiency improvements) without the costs (suffering downsides of having a smartphone) is the definition of freeloading.

em-bee 5y ago
thank you, those examples are very helpful to show what you mean. now my argument is that i don't see this as a bad thing. yes, maybe some people get an advantage here without contributing themselves, but the alternative is that we stop improving our lives for fear that someone might get a better life without contributing themselves. that kind of thinking seems to be very common in the US and it prevents a lot of potentially good development. some people would prefer to suffer rather than allowing others to get an advantage. we really need to get away from that. as long as we ourselves get an advantage from some development we need to stop worrying if others get an advantage without contributing. the reality is that my life can't get better if i don't work to make life better for everyone around me, regardless if they like it or not. but there is another issue that i have with complaints about freeloaders. we don't know if they are freeloaders. we don't know if that person that refuses to buy a smartphone isn't putting that money towards some other good cause. we don't know if that person avoids that pizza app because they happen to know that it contains spyware. or if that parent searching their kids went to the extra effort of getting a very energy efficient car, and the solar panels on their roof that frequently send electricity into the grid and that make up for the wasted energy of searching their kids once in a while many times over. we don't know if someone is really a freeloader or a contributor. and it's impossible to come up with an equation that could tell us.
- em-bee 5y ago
  to spin the argument further. what exactly would we gain if the amish started using cellphones? i don't think it would matter at all. on the contrary, they now serve as an example that life without cellphones is still possible. but the same argument that works for cellphones also works for other things. life would be so much easier if everyone would use the same tools. but that ends up arguing against diversity. what we are missing is that the cellphone refusers are developing or keeping alive alternative ways to communicate, and who knows when we'll need those. we don't actually want 100% adoption of every technology. we need that diversity and room for new technologies to replace old ones. the amish may refuse cellphones, but maybe their refusal opens the door for new communication tools that are in line with amish ideals that end up improving the life of anyone else who adopts those new tools. and those people who still use phone calls to order pizza, well, they happen to make sure that phone ordering keeps working with the real beneficiary being that blind or handicapped person that has trouble navigating the pizza app.
  - ltbarcly3 5y ago
    I think you are right, society as a whole will basically have no effect from smartphone Luddites, my main point was that it is just yet another arbitrary rejection of technology, and that the majority of society will adapt to it. The Amish decided that technology developed after 1600 or so was dangerous for humanity and needed to be carefully avoided. None of us agree with that. 200,000 years ago some of our ancestors' relatives were probably terrified of fire. In 400 years the idea that it is somehow dangerous to use whatever they have on whatever their equivalent to our smartphones and tiktok is will seem rediculous to them, just like you disagree with the Amish that it is important to avoid buttons on clothes lest you become a slave to vanity.
    - em-bee 5y ago
      well the danger of depending on technology is that we get stuck when it stops working. i just had this experience today. thanks to covid here it is frequently necessary to have a smartphone with a camera to scan a code at a location that updates your health-status. now i understand the point of contact tracing, but without a phone i would have been denied service. in my case the camera stopped working so i could not scan the code. it was fixed with a reboot of the phone, but imagine if it wasn't. i'd have been stuck. i might not even have been able to buy new phone or get it repaired because those places might not let me in either. our dependency on technology is so absolute and deep that any failure can have serious consequences for an individual. we need that minority that refuses or avoids certain technology as a test for our fallback options. i was also told to pay using the phone, which i would not do either. that was more of a communication issue, the person at the counter asked me to hand her my phone so she could initiate the payment, presumably because she felt that it was to complicated to tell me how to do it. when i refused, she sent me to another counter where i could pay in cash, which effectively caused me to verify that a fallback system that didn't rely on a phone was available and working.

em-bee 5y ago

thank you, those examples are very helpful to show what you mean. now my argument is that i don't see this as a bad thing. yes, maybe some people get an advantage here without contributing themselves, but the alternative is that we stop improving our lives for fear that someone might get a better life without contributing themselves. that kind of thinking seems to be very common in the US and it prevents a lot of potentially good development. some people would prefer to suffer rather than allowing others to get an advantage. we really need to get away from that. as long as we ourselves get an advantage from some development we need to stop worrying if others get an advantage without contributing. the reality is that my life can't get better if i don't work to make life better for everyone around me, regardless if they like it or not. but there is another issue that i have with complaints about freeloaders. we don't know if they are freeloaders. we don't know if that person that refuses to buy a smartphone isn't putting that money towards some other good cause. we don't know if that person avoids that pizza app because they happen to know that it contains spyware. or if that parent searching their kids went to the extra effort of getting a very energy efficient car, and the solar panels on their roof that frequently send electricity into the grid and that make up for the wasted energy of searching their kids once in a while many times over. we don't know if someone is really a freeloader or a contributor. and it's impossible to come up with an equation that could tell us.

em-bee 5y ago
to spin the argument further. what exactly would we gain if the amish started using cellphones? i don't think it would matter at all. on the contrary, they now serve as an example that life without cellphones is still possible. but the same argument that works for cellphones also works for other things. life would be so much easier if everyone would use the same tools. but that ends up arguing against diversity. what we are missing is that the cellphone refusers are developing or keeping alive alternative ways to communicate, and who knows when we'll need those. we don't actually want 100% adoption of every technology. we need that diversity and room for new technologies to replace old ones. the amish may refuse cellphones, but maybe their refusal opens the door for new communication tools that are in line with amish ideals that end up improving the life of anyone else who adopts those new tools. and those people who still use phone calls to order pizza, well, they happen to make sure that phone ordering keeps working with the real beneficiary being that blind or handicapped person that has trouble navigating the pizza app.
- ltbarcly3 5y ago
  I think you are right, society as a whole will basically have no effect from smartphone Luddites, my main point was that it is just yet another arbitrary rejection of technology, and that the majority of society will adapt to it. The Amish decided that technology developed after 1600 or so was dangerous for humanity and needed to be carefully avoided. None of us agree with that. 200,000 years ago some of our ancestors' relatives were probably terrified of fire. In 400 years the idea that it is somehow dangerous to use whatever they have on whatever their equivalent to our smartphones and tiktok is will seem rediculous to them, just like you disagree with the Amish that it is important to avoid buttons on clothes lest you become a slave to vanity.
  - em-bee 5y ago
    well the danger of depending on technology is that we get stuck when it stops working. i just had this experience today. thanks to covid here it is frequently necessary to have a smartphone with a camera to scan a code at a location that updates your health-status. now i understand the point of contact tracing, but without a phone i would have been denied service. in my case the camera stopped working so i could not scan the code. it was fixed with a reboot of the phone, but imagine if it wasn't. i'd have been stuck. i might not even have been able to buy new phone or get it repaired because those places might not let me in either. our dependency on technology is so absolute and deep that any failure can have serious consequences for an individual. we need that minority that refuses or avoids certain technology as a test for our fallback options. i was also told to pay using the phone, which i would not do either. that was more of a communication issue, the person at the counter asked me to hand her my phone so she could initiate the payment, presumably because she felt that it was to complicated to tell me how to do it. when i refused, she sent me to another counter where i could pay in cash, which effectively caused me to verify that a fallback system that didn't rely on a phone was available and working.