Comment on I'm Tired of Pretending Tech is Making the World Better

• Tja@programming.dev ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Again, tech doesn’t FORCE anything, people choose to fuck customers (and workers) and sometimes happen to use tech as an excuse. You don’t need any tech to raise prices or lower wages, and those are some of the biggest problem we have. Whether I use an app or coins to pay for my parking is not the issue.

  In a world with lobbyists, monopolies, big corporations donating billions to politicians, a QR code is nowhere near the top of the problem list.

  And consumers are quite rational, the go consistently for the cheapest option that fulfills their need. You see it in online services, electronics, flights, etc.

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  • Rekorse@sh.itjust.works ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Surely you can have your cake and eat it too, right?

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    • Tja@programming.dev ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      I don’t understand the question…

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  • formulaBonk@lemm.ee ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    If consumers were rational Tesla stock wouldn’t be where it is, meme coins wouldn’t exist, nft craze wouldn’t have happened (btw all examples of tech spending money to trick dumb people). Consumers routinely DO NOT go for the cheapest possible option but frequently get tricked by stupid gimmicks and smoke and mirrors. For example - Colgate started wrapping their toothpaste boxes in a clear plastic that sparkles under grocery store lights. Despite raising prices, introducing wasteful plastic, and increased packaging costs they increased market share and profits - that’s not rational. You seem to have been sold on libertarian delusions.

    I never mentioned salaries and I very distinctly did mention that majority of the people in the world live in smaller communities with limited choices. If a tech overlord buys out their businesses (e.g buying all local newspaper and replacing them with mostly ai slop and agenda articles) there are not many alternatives. Insisting that because you have some choice in some matters it means everyone does is naive … and also another example of an irrational consumer lol

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    • Tja@programming.dev ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Consumers don’t buy stock, and deifnieltely not enough to influence trillion dollar company valuation, let’s begin with that.

      I never said they go for “the cheapest option, period”. They are willing to spend extra if they get perceived, or real, value, like aestelhetics (your example) , social status (cars for instance) or functionality (iPhone).

      I’m very far from libertarian, so let’s abstain about speculating about each other’s beliefs and let’s talk about ideas.

      Majaority of people in the world do NOT live in smaller communities, first, and tech only increases choices, second, so even if the first was true it’s still an argument in favor of tech. I can get the new York times (or the helsingin sanomat) in the smallest village of Germany, again thanks to technology.

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      • formulaBonk@lemm.ee ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        So you’re just gonna make stuff up as you feel it’s true?

        “Consumers do not buy stock” lol yes they do “iPhone can be the cheapest option” (as long as you don’t care how much you spend and it has perceived value” “Tech only increases choices” (biggest laugh I had in a while) “Most people in the world do not live in smaller communities”

        Fucking lol my dude. Sounds like you’re really projecting your life into facts of the world which is a common disease among programmers.

        You know that places outside of US exist right? You know that the tech created in US cities disproportionately adversely affects 3rd world countries. If you ignore all that and go full bootlick mode on tech oligarchs then yes all you say is true, but back in the real world you couldn’t be further off base

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• ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  most people are stuck with the couple choices they have in town and when tech comes in and forces the enshitificstion of services in order to pump stock price you’re stuck just eating this shit forever.

  Is that the fault of the technology, though, or is that the fault of the companies?

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  • formulaBonk@lemm.ee ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I keep hearing about it’s just “fault of companies” as if companies weren’t lead by the tech bros. By that logic all the pollution BP and other oil companies cause is just company decisions ! It’s not the fault of oil that greedy oil barons exist… yet it’s the burning oil causing the pollution (admittedly not best example but sort of holds)

    Often times the tech companies try to “disrupt” a particular industry by providing a tech based approach and then lobbying the legacy business out of existence thus limiting your choices. This is why the tech enshitification works, because there is no real competition. The uber wealthy simply force feed you what they want. Uber, Netflix, and Amazon all operated at a loss specifically to be able to starve out legitimate businesses and limit your choice to only what they provide. Now we don’t have much of independent book stores, taxis outside of big metro hubs, and god only knows what’s going on with streaming service prices.

    The ultimate fuck you from modern tech is the “if you don’t like it, don’t use it” while at the same time they work tirelessly for their tech “solution” to be the only choice.

    So yea a ton of tech sucks and exists only to extract value out of its users and not solve any concrete issue

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