6 ms·

>On the other hand, we should be open and accepting when large companies make policy shifts. Man, if I had a dollar for every time I heard something along thes

by naremu 3y ago

>On the other hand, we should be open and accepting when large companies make policy shifts. Man, if I had a dollar for every time I heard something along these lines of "well we should still encourage X, even if it's a clear political play" I suppose there's just something about being vaguely eager to tacitly accept overt attempts at changing the general discourse Simply because they begrudgingly acknowledge economically progressive agendas in a very limited context, not even truly supporting it; simply pretending to have been on our "side" the whole time "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me eight or more times..."

thereddaikon 3y ago
Its not tacit acceptance. Corps are amoral and always looking out for their bottom line. If that just so happens to mean they align with what the people want then good. And if it doesn't then its on the people to pressure politicians to change the laws and regulations to incentive they do and punish they don't. Cynicism over corps lacking no morals will get you nowhere. They don't and wont. So instead of complaining the world isn't perfect its better to try to make it better. I'd rather live in a world where bad people do the right thing for the wrong reasons than one where bad people just do the wrong thing because they are bad.
- smoldesu 3y ago
  > So instead of complaining the world isn't perfect its better to try to make it better. Well, that's part of the problem. Right-to-repair bills that don't address serialized components or hardware DRM won't make it better. Apple is backing this bill because it aligns with their definition of "repair" and further reinforces the idea that the first party is the only one allowed to authorize maintenance. This is less about letting perfect be the enemy of good, and more about struggling to identify the core problem in the first place. If Apple is a required party for me to replace my screen or reinstall a USB connector, then you aren't advocating for a "right" to repair at all. In fact, you're actually coming back around to the 'Repairs-as-a-Service' model that third-parties protested against in the first place.
  - derefr 3y ago
    Serialized components / hardware DRM exist to disincentivize the pickpocket-to-grey-market-refurbished pipeline. They’re the reason that Android devices get stolen in great numbers but iOS devices don’t — iOS devices in “lost mode” have no resale value, including scrap resale value. That’s the entire point of lost mode — and that disincentivization only works as long as the components from that lost-mode phone are considered “tainted” for use in repairing other phones. Which requires “serialized components and hardware DRM.” If you can come up with a version of Right to Repair that eliminates this practice but which doesn’t give gangs of thieves a 10000% higher interest in stealing my phone at a concert to send it to Shenzhen, I’d be all for it. But I suspect you cannot.
    - smoldesu 3y ago
      > If you can come up with a version of Right to Repair that eliminates this practice but which doesn’t give gangs of thieves a 10000% higher interest in stealing my phone at a concert to send it to Shenzhen, I’d be all for it. Uh... you could just let the user authorize repairs. If your iPhone's root-of-trust is registered with your iCloud account, then users could authorize themselves to make repairs by just putting in the password. Entirely offline, retains Apple's DRM scheme, and even thwarts the Chinese boogeymen that you're so scared of. It just removes the part where Apple has absolute control over the feature instead of the hardware owner.
      - derefr 3y ago
        Huh? What user? I think you misunderstand the pipeline. When they steal my phone, they’re not refurbishing my phone to resell it. They’re scrapping my phone — taking all the expensive components out of my phone: the screen, the touch sensor, etc — and selling them to repair shops to be used as parts to repair other people’s phones. People who, obviously, authorize those repairs. But I don’t! (If you know what an illegal car “chop shop” is, they operate under the same business model: stolen preowned product as an input, replacement parts sold to repair shops — or used in their own “repair shop” — as an output.) The exact point of “hardware DRM” is that it allows me to retroactively revoke my consent for the parts of my phone to ever be used again inside some other person’s phone, through the cloud, at the moment I realize my phone has already been stolen. (Also, FYI, there’s nothing specifically Chinese about this pipeline. It’s not like this is a scam being run by the Triads or anything. Rather, it’s just unchecked capitalism. The gangs that go around stealing phones are small-time local groups of thieves, who have realized they can make a buck by selling and delivering wholesale lots of these phones to amoral “phone chop-shops” who happen to reside in Shenzhen. Those “phone chop-shops” are only in Shenzhen because that’s where all the demand is for the huge number of parts generated by scrapping a phone, and because they can’t sell these parts on without cash-only handshake deals.) To be clear, the “phone chop-shop” never ask any gangs to steal phones for them, either. They just say they’ll “buy phones in any condition.” (Which is why I say they’re amoral, not immoral.) Everything that happens from then on is the natural consequence of a market optimizing for profitability. On a related topic, the true point of Apple’s “authorized repair” program, was to penalize any repair shop who knowingly purchased parts from a “phone chop-shop” by disallowing them from ever again purchasing genuine parts; thus creating a disincentive from ever buying these grey-market parts.
- costanostra989 3y ago
  If I, as a human, only make decisions that are in my best interest regardless of their harm on others, you would not call me amoral. You’d call me immoral. Why does this standard not apply to cooperations?
  - tyg13 3y ago
    Because corporations are not people.
    - costanostra989 3y ago
      Cooperations are made up of people, and the equivalence has been a useful and ubiquitous construct. Abandoning that in the context of morality is, to me, just an attempt to hand-wave the immoral decisions and actions made by the real people within these cooperations.
      - JohnFen 3y ago
        Corporations use people as their machinery, but they are not people and don't operate with the same motivations or intent as people. If we're going to draw an equivalency between the two, then we should also take care to recognize that corporations are sociopaths.
  - nxobject 3y ago
    Another way of viewing "corporations are not people" is the principle, in the American context, that the primary purpose of an organization is maximizing shareholder returns, and more broadly in the interest of shareholders first and foremost (the second of which I think is established legal doctrine in quite a few American states.) You can argue it's questionable from many perspectives – I can be a lot more unfiltered about this – but it tells you how specific of a context large American publicly traded companies work in. If that makes the idea of the large American publicly traded company problematic, that's a reasonable conclusion.
  - jabradoodle 3y ago
    You are not a distributed system.

by naremu 3y ago

thereddaikon 3y ago

Its not tacit acceptance. Corps are amoral and always looking out for their bottom line. If that just so happens to mean they align with what the people want then good. And if it doesn't then its on the people to pressure politicians to change the laws and regulations to incentive they do and punish they don't. Cynicism over corps lacking no morals will get you nowhere. They don't and wont. So instead of complaining the world isn't perfect its better to try to make it better. I'd rather live in a world where bad people do the right thing for the wrong reasons than one where bad people just do the wrong thing because they are bad.

smoldesu 3y ago
> So instead of complaining the world isn't perfect its better to try to make it better. Well, that's part of the problem. Right-to-repair bills that don't address serialized components or hardware DRM won't make it better. Apple is backing this bill because it aligns with their definition of "repair" and further reinforces the idea that the first party is the only one allowed to authorize maintenance. This is less about letting perfect be the enemy of good, and more about struggling to identify the core problem in the first place. If Apple is a required party for me to replace my screen or reinstall a USB connector, then you aren't advocating for a "right" to repair at all. In fact, you're actually coming back around to the 'Repairs-as-a-Service' model that third-parties protested against in the first place.
- derefr 3y ago
  Serialized components / hardware DRM exist to disincentivize the pickpocket-to-grey-market-refurbished pipeline. They’re the reason that Android devices get stolen in great numbers but iOS devices don’t — iOS devices in “lost mode” have no resale value, including scrap resale value. That’s the entire point of lost mode — and that disincentivization only works as long as the components from that lost-mode phone are considered “tainted” for use in repairing other phones. Which requires “serialized components and hardware DRM.” If you can come up with a version of Right to Repair that eliminates this practice but which doesn’t give gangs of thieves a 10000% higher interest in stealing my phone at a concert to send it to Shenzhen, I’d be all for it. But I suspect you cannot.
  - smoldesu 3y ago
    > If you can come up with a version of Right to Repair that eliminates this practice but which doesn’t give gangs of thieves a 10000% higher interest in stealing my phone at a concert to send it to Shenzhen, I’d be all for it. Uh... you could just let the user authorize repairs. If your iPhone's root-of-trust is registered with your iCloud account, then users could authorize themselves to make repairs by just putting in the password. Entirely offline, retains Apple's DRM scheme, and even thwarts the Chinese boogeymen that you're so scared of. It just removes the part where Apple has absolute control over the feature instead of the hardware owner.
    - derefr 3y ago
      Huh? What user? I think you misunderstand the pipeline. When they steal my phone, they’re not refurbishing my phone to resell it. They’re scrapping my phone — taking all the expensive components out of my phone: the screen, the touch sensor, etc — and selling them to repair shops to be used as parts to repair other people’s phones. People who, obviously, authorize those repairs. But I don’t! (If you know what an illegal car “chop shop” is, they operate under the same business model: stolen preowned product as an input, replacement parts sold to repair shops — or used in their own “repair shop” — as an output.) The exact point of “hardware DRM” is that it allows me to retroactively revoke my consent for the parts of my phone to ever be used again inside some other person’s phone, through the cloud, at the moment I realize my phone has already been stolen. (Also, FYI, there’s nothing specifically Chinese about this pipeline. It’s not like this is a scam being run by the Triads or anything. Rather, it’s just unchecked capitalism. The gangs that go around stealing phones are small-time local groups of thieves, who have realized they can make a buck by selling and delivering wholesale lots of these phones to amoral “phone chop-shops” who happen to reside in Shenzhen. Those “phone chop-shops” are only in Shenzhen because that’s where all the demand is for the huge number of parts generated by scrapping a phone, and because they can’t sell these parts on without cash-only handshake deals.) To be clear, the “phone chop-shop” never ask any gangs to steal phones for them, either. They just say they’ll “buy phones in any condition.” (Which is why I say they’re amoral, not immoral.) Everything that happens from then on is the natural consequence of a market optimizing for profitability. On a related topic, the true point of Apple’s “authorized repair” program, was to penalize any repair shop who knowingly purchased parts from a “phone chop-shop” by disallowing them from ever again purchasing genuine parts; thus creating a disincentive from ever buying these grey-market parts.
costanostra989 3y ago
If I, as a human, only make decisions that are in my best interest regardless of their harm on others, you would not call me amoral. You’d call me immoral. Why does this standard not apply to cooperations?
- tyg13 3y ago
  Because corporations are not people.
  - costanostra989 3y ago
    Cooperations are made up of people, and the equivalence has been a useful and ubiquitous construct. Abandoning that in the context of morality is, to me, just an attempt to hand-wave the immoral decisions and actions made by the real people within these cooperations.
    - JohnFen 3y ago
      Corporations use people as their machinery, but they are not people and don't operate with the same motivations or intent as people. If we're going to draw an equivalency between the two, then we should also take care to recognize that corporations are sociopaths.
- nxobject 3y ago
  Another way of viewing "corporations are not people" is the principle, in the American context, that the primary purpose of an organization is maximizing shareholder returns, and more broadly in the interest of shareholders first and foremost (the second of which I think is established legal doctrine in quite a few American states.) You can argue it's questionable from many perspectives – I can be a lot more unfiltered about this – but it tells you how specific of a context large American publicly traded companies work in. If that makes the idea of the large American publicly traded company problematic, that's a reasonable conclusion.
- jabradoodle 3y ago
  You are not a distributed system.