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Comment by nightski | Hacker News Reader

It's pretty obvious that if you stop drinking CC, no one else will stop because you did. Meaning the events are conditionally independent. In my opinion, rallying large groups of people is the only way to make a difference. So really day to day choices you make on what to purchase have no effect on the system.

I would argue that the only real way to change is attempting to effect group think. Individual purchase decisions will not do this. Only organized efforts will. Meaning everyone is just as responsible for not doing this, whether they buy the product or not.

Again, if slavery is going on, whether you buy the product involved or not, we are all equally guilty for allowing it to continue. Buying the product is irrelevent.

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Isn't this the exact point of the App posted? To rally people together?

You claim that "rallying large groups of people is the only way to make a difference," but a large group of people is made up of individuals, and those individuals will participate in that group by altering their day to day purchases.

So to say that it is all about groups and not about any individual decision is a bit of a paradox since without any individual decision, there is no group.

I'm just playing devil's advocate here, but my view is that I was not asked to be born under these circumstances (over population, unequality of wealth, unfairness, etc). I never was in charge of dictating the type of world I wanted to live in. Therefore, why do I have the burden to do something about unfairness in this world? It's like saying to a developer "Go fix this bug RIGHT NOW!", and then when he/she asks for commit permissions, you reply back "Sorry, you need to sign this form, and give it to HR, then send an email to the DBAs, and wait a couple of days.. but still FIX IT NOW!"

I never meant to imply that you did have the burden. As engineers its easy to see something broken and think that it is our duty to fix it. But honestly, we can't fix everything (and fixing it doesn't always make it better haha).

The other assumption is that the only way to change this is to stop buying a product. The truth is robots are probably better than slaves. That day is coming hopefully!

This way of thinking doesn't make sense. No one is claiming that you're responsible as in you need to fix this. We're claiming that you're responsible in the sense that you're part of the cause (or, in the language of Nagarjuna the "dominant condition" -http://www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/307/nagarlec.htm) of the exploitation of people in third world countries. There are many other conditions besides you, of course.

The most important goal is to deeply realize your position and relation to other people - how you act after you realize this is up to you/your emotional makeup/your virtues/etc.

My claim is that because of the complicating factors (visibility and ineffectiveness) inherent in this situation you aren't able to fully understand this relationship.

Of course I understnd my position relative to others, I think about it constantly. People naturally are competitors in this world. One person having a mate means one less mate for you, and less evolutionary success.

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