> Isn't putting this onto the consumer a little bit of a cop out?
It is the other way around, consumers wanting to keep consuming and feeling good about it while blaming someone else.
It is the other way around, consumers wanting to keep consuming and feeling good about it while blaming someone else.
I want cars I can wrench on, and software I can trust. I want things that are mine first, not the manufacturers.
It. Will. Not. Happen. Short of doing it ourselves, because businesses can't spawn around those values.
So to hell with you pinning this on "well it's the consumers fault". To hell with that. The conspicuously absent feature is entirely a byproduct of industry. Not consumers. No one can consume what "industry" decides is bad for business.
You might want certain things, but that does not mean you can afford to pay the price that would be sufficient to serve the market (since there would be so few like you). Consumers, as a group, will most likely choose price and getting the job done quickly.
Also, some things in life might just be so technically advanced that you will not find all the optionality you want.
What do you think "doing it ourselves" is? If you want open hardware and nobody makes it, you make it, or do a Go Fund Me etc. Then somebody makes it.
Notwithstanding what other people say, customers do actually prefer these things, if nothing else because they cost less. Once somebody makes a free and open chip design, companies will prefer to put that chip design in their devices because then they don't have to pay for one and don't have to deal with BS where their own customers want updates but upstream provides neither updates nor documentation. Because now upstream is a community anybody can participate in that keeps providing updates for 20+ years.
Customers don't prefer these things only when they're forced into an unnecessary trade off against something else. You want a Ford or Toyota running open source software but your choices are a closed source product in mass production or a kit car you have to assemble from parts. You don't want to assemble it from parts so you pick the first one. But that only sustains as long as nobody is making a competitive mass-produced car which is open source.
As soon as you have one, the permissionlessness is an advantage. Repairs are cheaper so TCO is lower so Consumer's Reports tells normies to buy it. Then the competition has to do the same thing because it's better.
Consolidated markets are a problem. If you wanted to do "iPhone, but open" you can't just glue a screen to a RISC-V CPU, the chip has to be competitive and have third party apps etc. etc.
But not everything is like that. If you wanted to do "desktop PC, but open hardware," that's the sort of thing people are actively working on and could plausibly succeed. So support them, contribute, and buy it when it's available, because it's not impossible.
Strong disagree. It feels like an attempt to convince the public at large that a) they still have significant agency and b) they should feel extremely guilty and/or empowered by that. This paradox is usually a polite fiction at best, and in the worst-case it's a well-orchestrated psy-op.
Like how "recycling" in many communities is just a different funnel that goes to the same dump, or how many good water-preserving citizens are encouraged to have short showers while we ignore the thirsty golf course next door. What are the real scenarios where the habits of the general consumer actually matter, if we stack them up against corporate consumption and those inefficiencies? Does it really make any sense for John Q. Public to feel bad about driving a gas-guzzler to work when the international shipping industry or the municipal/state government isn't looking to upgrade to electric? Or we could talk about the conspicuously missing mass-transit projects that would remove the need for the cars we're supposed to feel guilty about. Why are consumers who are already hard-pressed expected to lead the charge anyway?
> feeling good about it while blaming someone else
But we don't feel good! We feel bad because we got the wrong light bulbs and dishwashers. Every "drop in the bucket" matters, but going after drops in the first place is a paradox, so we won't feel good after we're living in dark rooms with dirty dishes either. I sure hope this actually matters and it isn't a scam to sell more dishwashers and light bulbs! Like come on, efficient appliances are great, but does it really matter when coal was still ~10% of total U.S. energy consumption in 2022? (source: https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/coal/use-of-coal.php )
Yes, recycling was a ruse to allow people to keep consuming and feeling good about it.
>or how many good water-preserving citizens are encouraged to have short showers while we ignore the thirsty golf course next door.
This one is a valid example, and it is very easy to solve. Marginal water prices. The more water you use, the more you pay. Same with electricity.
> Does it really make any sense for John Q. Public to feel bad about driving a gas-guzzler to work when the international shipping industry or the municipal/state government isn't looking to upgrade to electric?
Yes, because it’s John Q Public that will not vote for a politician to increase fossil fuel taxes high enough to curb excess consumption. In one fell swoop, the problem of carbon emissions and plastic degradation could be solved, but John Q Public WANTS cheap travel and cheap out of season fruits.
Also, in this specific example, John Q Public is literally opting to buy gas (and electric) guzzlers instead of more energy efficient vehicles. Nobody forced anyone to buy big SUVs and compact SUVs.
>Or we could talk about the conspicuously missing mass-transit projects that would remove the need for the cars we're supposed to feel guilty about.
Because John Q Public (at least those with kids) wants detached single family homes on a 0.1 to 0.25 acre lot with a 2 car garage and a front and back yard. And mass transit simply is not tenable at those low population densities.
There’s a few people out there willing to make the sacrifices, but by and large, the population will opt for short term comforts.
Kind of like this:
It is objectively true that the public has significant agency, and the empirical evidence is the number of companies that took a political stance on some issue and then had to reverse it because of (uncoordinated) public backlash. Your unfounded assertions are categorically refuted by concrete examples such as Target and Bud Light publicly reversing their stances on some issues after consumer backlash.