• A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world
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    18 hours ago

    I understand the sentiment, but doesn’t “the industry” essentially produce things that are for “us”, even if indirectly?

    No. They produce for income. For brand imaging. To keep shelf space and maintain market presence.

    And they do that by producing significantly more than the market requires. More than customers would ever want to buy.

    They do it by making low quality slop products that they specifically engineer to be as unrepairable as possible, to fail as soon as they can get away with it, to force consumers to buy replacements more frequently than they would ever want to.

    Do you go to the store and go “Wow, I wish this brand would generate more waste to take up shelf space so (competitor) cant have it?”

    Do you look at a brand and go “I will only support this company if it fills the landfills every 3 months with perfectly usable products?”

    Do you go “Wow, I wanna pay 500 dollars for this device thats gonna fail in 18 months and need to be replaced, because repairing it is gonna cost so much that its better just to get a new one again”?

    Do you go “god, I like this product, I really hope entire communities lost their access to clean water to cool the AI’s that generated the design?”

    No?

    Neither do I.

    Because they don’t serve the interest of the customer. They serve the market, which has taken a life of its own (which is especially apparently with the AI scam bubble, where companies keep making promises to buy future products from each other with the same imaginary trillion dollars that keeps getting passed around, generating endless imaginary value without producing anything… and when the AI bubble pops, its going to crash harder than the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs)

    If they served the interests of the customers, they’d keep prices low, and pay high, and produce quality goods that people would have the money to buy.

    By putting the burden on the end consumer for climate change and pollution, they are escaping blame, and are allowed to continue to pollute and accelerate the decline of our climate. Its like blaming you for growing a tomato, while ignoring the industrial farm that mowed down 2 million acres of south american rainforest to produce alfalfa for saudi horses.

    • kent_eh@lemmy.ca
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      17 hours ago

      If people stop buying a thing, any company that wants money is going to stop making that thing.

      They have no financial incentive to pay the cost of manufacturing if they can’t sell their widget.

    • DefederateLemmyMl@feddit.nl
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      17 hours ago

      No. They produce for income

      I never said they were altruistic. I’m saying: at the end of the line, there is a consumer buying the stuff they polluted for.