Comment by _8j50 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by _8j50 | Hacker News Reader

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Your money, wipe your butt with it if you wish (although treasury dept wouldn't like that).

I only worry about getting privacy invading gadgets like home assistants and things that measure biological activity amd phone home.

I saw other posts after commenting and everyone is worried about waste. This idea of making consumers accountable is ridiculous. You are not responsible for ewaste as much as you are not responsible for global warming. It is the responsibility of manufacturers to maintain a sustainable carbon foot print and properly plan for disposal of ewaste, it is the responsibility of government to regulate all of this as well and impose taxes and cost as needed. The price of what you buy should reflect all of this. If everyone can buy 100 iphones that means the cost of managing ewaste and producing it responsibly was priced in. If it was not them the corner-cutters are responsible not the consumer.

There is absolutley no way you can get enough people to care about ewaste or carbon footprint to make an iota of a difference anytime this century.

Fatalism is a nice omnidirectional exoneration, but I don't think complicity is that simple ("it is their fault and I am blameless even as I reward what they do, it is government's fault and I am blameless even if they're representing me poorly").

In this case it is, producers are responsible and are best situated to deal with the problem. You can hold them accountable but you can't reasonably hold consumers accountable. Guilt-tripping is not accountability.

I agree with what you said about responsibility, except that, in a democracy, you _are_ responsible for your government. I'd argue that even in an authocracy you're responsible for surrendering your power to the authority.

personal_responsibility = 1/total_population - corruption_quotient

How responsible and how powerful you are are two different things. Your equation is a mix of both. Also, your equation does not account for the disparity in motivation. For every truly motivated individual, there's hordes of people who would not show initiative themselves, but are willing to follow. So, if you're a motivated individual, your power is not 1/total_population, but 1/motivated_population.

You are right about motivation, but responsibility makes sense only in relation to your own power, you can not be responsible for something you are powerless about (but you can of course be held responsible).

My opinion on this is somewhat controversial, or at least non-mainstream, I think. I'd say that responsibility and power are perpendicular. One way to put it is that you can respond to anything: responsibility in my mind is nothing more than acknowledging that something is part of your world. Another way I approach it is that I can't honestly differentiate between "I can't" and "I won't": this mindset can get pretty esoteric, but think of it this way: most "I can'ts", when you dig down, are actually "I won'ts". When you ask yourself why you can't do something, usually the answer will be that it's because you can't do something that depends on, and something that depends on, and so on, but eventually you get down to a root "I won't" or "I'm unwilling". Then suddenly the feeling of powerlessness stops, and you realise that you're just avoiding something.

that would just make the concept of personal responsibility and power meaningless ... it's also kind of a cope

That part I agree with you, you are reaponsible for the government you tolerate.

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