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Even if we're purely selfish, wasting resources just to stick it to others is not really a productive use of our time.
Who in their right mind wants to stop others from getting what they want for it's own sake, or sees the quest for happiness as a competition?
I was pushing back on the idea that "homo economicus" or mainstream economics advocates for competitive sabotage. I have never heard academic economists advocate for this as a rational position.
If anything, the field is biased to over-emphasize positive collaboration.
The position of the parent post is some strange application of group competition for a scarce resource to happiness.
It assumes that someone's goal is not be be as happy as possible, but rather happier than others. This is the only situation where it makes sense to actively put in work to make other people more miserable.
Unless your mindset is one of “it’s not enough that I succeed; others must fail by my hand”.
That said I could easily imagine doing some stuff like this as a teenager for giggles. There’s some small joy in being a minor troublemaker in a way nobody would actually care about. It’s not something I’d brag about though.
Homo economicus would try get as much as possible for himself, or have others bear the cost (e.g. have society pay for roads but don't want to pay taxes).
They would not lower the quality of service for someone else out of spite without any gain for themselves, let alone waste time on it. They would also understand this would rise the cost of the service they might potentially want to use in the future.
Only narcissists would feel the desire to fuck up a service out of spite and ruin it for anyone else, just because they feel bad for not agreeing to the deal of having to pay
It is only in academic exercises where collaboration is made impossible that sociopathic behavior is optimal.
But I'm puzzled by the idea his actions make any sense as a _capitalist_ impulse (Of course neither of us know anything about OP except his story).
Resentment over what somebody else has is the quintessential mental sliver communism uses to drive people to destroy the system. Perhaps the OP was just engaging in an outburst of his own destructive revolutionary zeal against his fellow passengers because they had something he didn't.
I would disagree. Here in my corner of EU, public buses have a limited 30min - 1hour free wifi access. What most everyone does immediately getting in the bus is connect to the free wifi and start mindless scrolling on TikTok, Facebook or Instagram. Around 20-30% of the people are super obnoxious and play all the videos over loudspeaker or start calling their friends and speaking loudly as if they are in their home or something, until someone else yells at them. So far, I have only seen two person this month appearing to do something valuable(one was writing an email and another was checking local news).
Being able to enjoy entertainment (or, as you'd probably see it, "mindlessly waste the time" that you have to spend on the bus anyways) is what makes public transit bearable.
This is a culture problem, and has nothing to do with free Wi-Fi. This kind of thing never happens here in Japan, except maybe foreign tourists.
If you want free wifi, that's great but the private sector isn't going to do it for you. How many of these public nuisance hackers are advocating for large socialized programs to make wifi a human right on all manner of transport? Usually the hacker demographic is right-wing libertarian and would never advocate for socialism.
So you dont want socialism but you want socialized services? Curious.
If this person's story ended with "Then I started a website to advocate for regulations and pricing for better transport wifi," then that would be great! Instead he just drowned out the internet connection of paying customers who are now making angry calls at some poor tech support person making minimum wage in a poor country. He did nothing but hurt people out of his own immaturity and cheapness.
With Starlink you’re looking at a lot more than 15mbps. We’re at the point where some cruise lines offer free Wi-Fi and people still see multi megabit connections anyway.
Companies breaking with these trends face a backlash assuming a competitive marketplace.
Prices for such add-ons, especially ones that your average customer won't think of before, are also often unreasonably high because the operator knows they have a captive audience they can exploit - you either buy from them or go without.
Once my company instituted a per diem limit for meals while travelling, I stopped eating cheap food and would deliberately spend exactly the limit to spite the penny pinchers
If anything, I would guess they are anti-capitalists because they are so indignant about someone offering a paid service.
Right, so they can do all that important stuff on technology that was invented by nerds and hackers over the decades, while they were being demonized by society, bullied, put down, and shoved aside by the so-called sociable class.
Yeah, I’ll continue not shedding tears over Joe Sixpack’s inability to check his football scores for a few minutes.
If you piss in the punch bowl at a party attended by your in group and perceived out group, you’re going to be justifiably hated by both.
And probably not get invited to more parties.
Somehow people get in their mind that they are owed X, then spiral into bitterness and jealousy when they dont get it, and then lash out arbitrarily.
The part that I dont get is where the sense of entitlement comes from? Imagine such a deep sense of entitlement to free wifi on a boat that you feel the need to take revenge on innocents.