Hacker News Reader

Comment by nonrandomstring | Hacker News Reader

Goodonya. Here's what I did. It's not for everyone. It was painful, awkward and led to a lot of bother... but ultimately I feel proud of myself and how the other responded.

I rejected a gift that came in an Amazon box.

Very politely, and apologetically., I said, "I'm really sorry, but I can't accept this." And why, (working conditions, monopoly etc).

It had an effect not only on myself - to make an ideological whimsy into a real and binding action - putting my skin in the game - but also on the other person who was initially embarrassed, then emboldened. It led to a memorable and positive conversation.

View on HN

> It led to a memorable and positive conversation.

Was the conversation really positive? My first instinct was to think that this is incredibly awkward and harsh for the person that made the effort to buy you a gift; or to speak for myself: I would be pretty pissed if a good friend has a birthday, and I buy them an iPhone from AT&T and they refuse my gift because... <working conditions, monopoly>.

Yeah. I also make it a personal rule to never buy things on Amazon, but I can't imagine turning down a gift like this from someone.

No social movement in history has ever been powered by people being considerate about their consumption patterns. I'm not saying it's a waste of effort, but I am saying this is unlikely to be sufficient to any cause. In fact, I'd posit that it has a far greater (and largely negative) impact on your life than it has a positive one on other peoples' lives.

As a counterpoint, here's a brief history of social movements that were powered (in part) by considerate consumption patterns:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boycott

They were organized of course, which starts by communicating your cause and action to other individuals.

Boycotts are precisely the type of ineffective political action to which I'm referring, so I'm not sure i understand your point.

To pick an extreme example, should you steal something that's lying out in the open in a dodgy area because someone else will if you don't? Some things you do for yourself, and an action isn't required to have an effect for it to be moral.

A far greater (and less needlessly entrapping) commitment to that would be to drop all traffic from AWS. Watch the Internet break, and never contribute to Amazon’s bottom line.

This person had no idea about your beliefs and you pick the receipt of a gift as the moment to inform them through rejection? That seems rather mean for something where Bezos has already been paid.

>A far greater (and less needlessly entrapping) commitment to that would be to drop all traffic from AWS. Watch the Internet break, and never contribute to Amazon’s bottom line.

"Watch the Internet break" basically makes this a non-starter for everyone.

Ever since AWS has become so ubiquitous it's hard. Bezos make more money from my OSS work from people using it on AWS than I'll ever make myself, that's the reality of OSS work these days

Thats how it is for every job though the seller make more money the close they are to the end user. The baker makes more for his bread than the millar makes for his flour but he makes more than the farmer does for his grain. Each step adds value and makes a larger share. Your software without the hardware and infrastructure isn't as valuable to the end user on its own.

I agree with your sentiment, but equally with the other reply that points out how this may backfire and embarrass the gift giver.

I've previously turned down Amazon gift cards at things like social games nights, quizzes etc in the past and asked instead for the equivalent value to be donated to charity. In this case I think there's less risk of embarrassing the giver (there's no personal connection) but hopefully achieves something similar to your intent.

Gift cards in general are a scam, I never understood why giving money is a problem.

Because people tend to be encouraged not to handle cash anymore by much of payment infra being centered around cards/metadata resale.

A Paypal or similar transfer is also money...

I said money not cash. Paypal or bank transfers are also money

I like getting Alexa devices every holiday and putting them straight into the garbage without unboxing.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com