Consumer first; Citizen second
Consumer first; Citizen second
We have reached the final stage of the neoliberal fever dream. From housing, to media, to printers, to everything else. Get ready to own nothing; pay rent on everything.
From housing, to media, to printers, to everything else. Get ready to own nothing; pay rent on everything.
Disclaimer: I am the author
One of the main factors contributing to this problem is how customers simply give up their rights for convenience. Pro-customer options don't disappear. They die a slow painful death.
Take the example of DRM in books. All the easy options like from Amazon are DRM encumbered. But the DRM-free options are still available if you are willing to search a bit. They don't cost much extra either. But people don't care. And direct sellers providing DRM-free books wither away in neglect. Similar examples are still around for reparable devices, DRM-free multimedia, etc.
Consumers rights are not a given. Like any rights, those are the ones you have to defend. You have to put at least a little bit of effort to protect it. When I suggested this recently, I was accused of 'victim-blaming'. What escape is there when the victims are not ready to fight back?
What you say is true and I can understand it is frustrating. But I really don't know how to convince people. Convenience is king and you need to have strong political opinions to abstain. I am a nerd, but still I often need double the time to find the "alternative" way of owning things.
I recently wanted to get the Harry Potter audio books for listening on my phone. I basically had two "official" options:
- Buying all E-books as mp3 download for 235€
- Amazon Audible for 10€ per Month
You can clearly see that in reality, the industry gives you only one option - audible. For 235€ you can have 2 years of e-book subscriptions.
Maybe you would say "hey, 235€ may seem expensive but in exchange you will get to own the stuff you pay for!". The thing is: you can get the whole audiobook collection on mp3-CD for just 70€ on Amazon?
In the end I bough an external CD-ROM drive and bought the mp3-CD box used for 40€.
It's not about that stupid Audiobook or whether the price is justified. The point I want to make is that the industry makes is so hard for individuals to own things, that I almost see this as a lost battle. The way I chose, took almost 2 weeks, days of research, a frustrated lemmy post, two online orders and 2 hours time to copy the mp3s.
And the thing is, it's the same for everything else - you want to buy a vacuum cleaner? Oh better look if it comes with special cleaner bags for 30€ per bag. Let's not talk about printers.
Every little item needs so much research, only for the aspects of planned obsolescence and true ownership. We do not even talk about social or environmental aspects...
How the fuck should I expect others to spend so much time on energy on consumption things? Honestly, sometimes I am a bit envious of the people that just do not care. But only sometimes.
Sorry, that somehow developed into a rant
I mostly agree with your comment. And you are absolutely not 'victim-blaming'. I think some might mistake your stance with a 'vote with your wallet' sentiment, but I interpret your comment about 'fighting back' as more than that.
Obviously, it is better to seek out the better options as a consumer, but that is not enough. People are not stupid for not seeking out alternatives, when the game is rigged against them in the first place. Fighting back also means trying to unrig the game. How one is supposed to achieve that is a question that I don't have a satisfying answer for. I for myself, started by educating myself, by becoming more vocal about the defects of the status quo, and by advocating for change. It's not a lot, but it can reach into your circle of friends. I attempted to reach a bit further with this blog post, even though it might just reach people that don't need any convincing.
In the spirit of trying to make a difference, what are some of the DRM-free options? Let's point people directly to better alternatives :)
I know of libro.fm for audiobooks.
A lot of this boils down to the tragedy of the commons - what you said about book DRM is a textbook example of that.
And usually the tragedy of the commons needs to be solved through agreement or arbitration. But agreement across a huge number of people is almost impossible; and arbitration would likely need to rely on governments - but governments exist primarily to defend the interest of the power-holders, not of their citizens.
I saw your comment 3 months late 😄 In the blog post I actually mention the tragedy of the commons. The problem with the theory is that it is only applicable in fixed empirical settings. For this reason, I think it is quite dangerous to apply this theory generally. It is actually a key ingredient in neoliberal economics, where it is argued that privatization of commons is necessary, because they are tragic. I had to unlearn this notion myself. I recommend the book 'Governing the Commons' by Elinor Ostrom on the topic, it's a collection of case studies which shows that commons are only tragic under certain preconditions.
All the easy options like from Amazon are DRM encumbered. But the DRM-free options are still available if you are willing to search a bit.
Are they? Where (other than piracy)? A lot of books seems to be sold exclusively with DRM from what I can tell. Some are even exclusive to Amazon.
I think there's a bit of a defect in the argument about renting. Renting can be cheaper than buying all-in and more convenient if it's run without profit, or low profit. When the renteers are few and there's no established mechanism to prevent arbitrary increases in rent prices you do get into the situation where we are. Renting can become expensive and extortionate. But this is why I think people went for renting. It was cheaper and more convenient than buying. The thing is though, the lack of processes preventing renting to get expensive also exist in buying. When there's few for-profit suppliers, buying can become extortionate too. The free market has gaping holes when it comes to this and it relies on the government to plug them. But the profitable players in the market don't want those holes plugged so they take over the government with the profits. So it seems to me that there's no reliable solution found that doesn't involve collective action by a significant part of the citizens whether the dominant model is renting or buying. I'm fairly certain trade unions are an important part of a solution, since they reduce the profit collected by the decision-makers in corporations, leaving less for buying governments, and gaining the ability to buy governments on the majority's behalf. But I don't know if it's enough.
I absolutely hate it for medias like music or movies. Back in the time, you had your CD and DVD/BD in physical format. Now there's music you about cannot buy to own. Same for old movies, you cannot find them physically, only rent them on youtube for instance.