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October 22, 2014
About the comments at the dailykos,
upon posting my anti-amazon.com THE_PAX_VOBISCUM_BITE
piece...
Quite a few people don't seem to
get the very notion of "boycotts", When you tell them Amazon is
where an ethical concern is evil, they respond "cheap!
supposed to trump (or at least, convenient!". Uh... so?
mitigate) immediate practical
concerns.
And quite a few people don't seem
to get that there are risks with Do I really need to explain
centralization of power, and this? I need to explain the
putting a single company in virtues of decentralization
charge of a major piece of and the balance of power?
information infrastructure is not
really a good thing... We may live to Americans are
curse amazon, supposed to
facebook, google... understand
(if we don't checks and
already). balances.
Many of them, I think, are stuck
on "the new thing" story:
We are members of the proud new generation
that embraced the new newness of the new
thing, and all you grumpy curmudgeons who
are trying to tell us that the bright
shiney newness is hiding some very big
downsides, you're obviously just luddites
who are resistant to change, how can you In other words, there's this
not appreciate life in the bold new world tribal dispute where many
of the newest newness of all? people self-identify as young.
Barnes and Nobles has an "old
established" vibe about it, and
Amazon is the challenger, the
representative of a new era.
Indeed, many people praise
Amazon as a platform for
independent ebook publishing.
This is not a world I'm
familiar with, so I don't
know what to say to them,
except "there's gotta be
a better way".
And remarkably enough, there (After hearing the story "my
are still self-described neighbor's daughter is doing
"libertarians" around great selling on Amazon!"
willing to argue that several times, I've decided
anti-trust law is evil. these are shills.)
Maybe there's a goth
revival coming up, too.
I think "Rich in PA" is a
hilarious handle...
I lived in Palo Alto for many
years, but it was never something
to brag about.
(We called it
Looking around the web at some other "Shallow Alto".)
comments, I see that Mark Andreessen
supports my call for a boycott.
Sort of.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/marc-andreessen-slams-paul-krugmans-002248727.html
"Krugman: ... in case you’re wondering,
yes, I have Amazon Prime and use it a Actually, Andreesen
lot. But again, so what?" doesn't really think
we should do a boycott,
"Andreessen: Amazon is hurting America, this is just a
but not enough for Paul Krugman to take convienient attempt
on a little inconvenience by using at a "gotcha" attack.
other ecommerce sites. Principles!"
Like most such things it
doesn't really hold-up.
Because hypothetically we
might run a succesful
boycott against Amazon,
does that necessarily
preclude an anti-trust
action? Do boycotts
obviate the need for
anti-trust law?
There's nothing
logically inconsistent
with a belief in both
institutions.
I suspect Andreesen
and co of arguing
disingenuously: they don't
really believe that
boycotts are effective,
that's why they're arguing
in favor of them. They
don't want anything to be
effective: hail to thee
free market.
Bigger is better or it
wouldn't be bigger.
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