Edit: Jesus Christ, people. If you buy a $150 Thinkpad made by slave labor instead of a $1,200 MacBook made by slave labor, you’re still supporting a capitalist economy based on slave labor. We all do. We have no choice. The number of smug liberals in the comments saying “well I buy a cheap used laptop” or “well I buy coffee beans and make my own coffee” are completely missing the fucking point.
Don’t tell yourself your consumption is moral. All of us make unethical choices every day because there is no ethical consumption under capitalism. Accept your shame and guilt and let it drive you to do better.
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Oo k. But why the male actor guy?
In response to your edit, there’s a difference between being forced to buy products that employ slave labor and choosing to buy something that is extremely overpriced because of capitalism. Yes you need to live within the system, but that doesn’t mean you buy the most expensive and wasteful version and then claim “well I had no choice!”. You have choices. You’re just being willfully ignorant of them and shifting the blame to someone else. Heaven forbid you become part of the solution and not just another addition to the problem.
Seeing so many responses like this to the edit makes me happy. This is the intellectually consistent position imo: if you’re going to take the position that “this is the world we live in” (which is valid) then you must also accept that there are degrees of consumption and actively choosing one of the worst ones without a strong rationale is less moral.
It’s a little telling though that they left the apple logo as the only untouched portion of the lid lol.
If you really hated capitalism but were forced to participate, at least the first sticker you put on the laptop would cover the company name/logo.
So a perspective I haven’t seen here yet: in many places, Starbucks is the only suitable third space left. I.e. place that is not work/school or home. I have non-Starbucks cafes nearby, but due to astronomical and increasing rent for all the independent cafes in walking distance, they are in smaller buildings and they can’t afford to have people sitting for hours on laptops using the WiFi/talking to friends/reading a book. I still support my local cafes for food and coffee, or really short meetings with folks, but if I need to get out of the house and spend time in public where I’m not obligated to speedrun my coffee, Starbucks is The Choice.
And that’s why i might be inside of a Starbucks while hating capitalism. Because capitalism made Starbucks the only corporation able to afford proper cafe space.
(There is a library nearby, yes, but not with good space for sitting down and working on a laptop. And even having THAT Is a massive privilege)
(Also I actually do have a MacBook that I do my personal stuff on, because of various bits of software i need that are OS specific, which is annoying as heck but i got used to my work mac anyways and then found a nice one used… so yeah.)
that would be me with my $150 kitted out ebay special thinkpad (ignore that i own four of them, they’re spare parts and i can gift them to people. They’re good laptops) somewhere, in a place, i don’t like business establishments.
Got a refurbished $200 Thinkpad T460 on eBay. It’s in really good condition. I installed Mint on it and it works great.
i did a display swap on my w520 last night, it’s running a 1080p display now. Paired with my t520 with a 1366 display i’ve got a really good combination of mobile productivity machines. One for writing, one for work.
That is way beyond my abilities. I wish I knew enough to swap the speakers. They’re shit.
it’s all pretty easy stuff. Especially with the older modules. You just need to be somewhat careful and very organized lol. I’m not actually sure if there is a speaker swap you can do on these tbh. That would be fairly easy to do though.
As for the display swap, on the xx20 series you just remove the bottom plate, the keyboard, and then the top bezel, and then you can remove the screws that mount the display (the ones in the back) unroute all the wiring, and disconnect any connectors, and then do the same on another unit, and the reverse it. Twice. And boom, display swap. On the newer models i imagine it’s harder to do though. Particularly the ones where the keyboard isn’t removable from the top side.
unroute all the wiring
And that’s where I would fuck it up. Or wiring it back up again rather.
Edit: Looks like it can be done but fuck if I’m going to try.
https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Lenovo+ThinkPad+T460+Speakers+Replacement/143405
yeah that can be a little rough, take a picture beforehand if you really care. That’ll help. The older models are a little overwhelming with the amount of wires but entirely manageable.
I edited my post above. Looks like you can replace the speakers, but it’s a lot more work and a lot more chance of fucking up than I’m willing to chance. Maybe I’ll just get a bluetooth speaker.
Your not allowed to have things if you don’t support capitalism, you must live like a preindustrial peasant or else you are a hypocrite. /s
Really a fucken mac and a cup of coffee is trivial compared to billionaires and their private jets and mega yachts.
1200$ isn’t even that much for a luxury item jeez and its not even really a luxury item. For an absolute fuck load of jobs, as well as online billing and banking and a whole host of other crap its 100% a requirement to own your own laptop. Yes it would be great if that wasn’t necessary, hence the anti capitalism, but individuals fucking themselves over by trying to pointlessly abstain from participating is not going to solve things.
I don’t drive, I don’t own a car, I fucking hate cars, but I don’t shit on people who have one because I understand its necessary for them. And even with me trying to abstain I still end up dependent on cars a lot and in a lot of ways it fucking makes my life more difficult. I am fucking mad at the systems that made that a requirement not at the people who are just trying to survive in the system. Its not magic how we ended up here, people in power made choices.
Thats what’s so annoying about these lines of reasoning is you get accused of hypocrisy if you don’t intentionally make your life shit
1200$ isn’t even that much for a luxury item jeez and its not even really a luxury item. For an absolute fuck load of jobs, as well as online billing and banking and a whole host of other crap its 100% a requirement to own your own laptop.
hot take: maybe im a tech nerd and this is why, but i would feel genuinely bad if i spent more than like 300-500 dollars on a laptop.
An Apple laptop is just a totally inappropriate amount of money spent on a laptop for the overwhelming majority of use cases.
If you really want to smash capitalism buy used gear and run Linux
even for the use cases where you would be doing productivity, because apple refuses to build them to do fuck all for some reason. Though with the m series macs, you can just pay an additional 500 dollars and get an actually usable amount of ram. It used to be a lot worse on the intel macs because apple didnt understand heat dissipation
If you want to smash capitalism in general, engage in the second hand market wherever possible, it’s your friend, it saves you money, it saves ewaste from the planet, and it prevents you from giving money to the big corpo.
Same
Macs naturally can not be stolen or obtain second hand as a gift or in some other sort of deal.
Huh? You can absolutely change mac ownership if the current associated account holder is involved. It’s a very simple process.
Now, if you need to remove an activation lock without the involvement of the registered account holder, it’s a huge pain in the ass (had to go through this with a work laptop a year ago).
Sarcasm, friend
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Oh shit, I wonder if that means then person in the original picture could have gotten that Mac secondhand for less than $1,200
I don’t know how fancy that one is but I’ve pulled at least five working MacBooks from corporate ewaste. All were out of their absurdly-short OS support but Linux Mint (and I’m assuming a bunch of other distros) run great on them. I’ve handed all of them off since reinstalling but I liked the hardware enough to use one as a writing computer until someone needed it.
Ugh, corporate eWaste. I do tech work for a company, and outside of getting verbal approval from someone high enough up to take home two monitors when we acquired another company and we were doing an all hands on deck full replacement of their gear, there’s never been a way for me to recycle waste gear for personal use that wouldn’t put my employment at risk.
No process for letting employees recycle or reclaim gear. Chuck it in the dedicated bin, once a month a third party recycler comes around, takes it away. Supposedly they wipe or destroy the drives, but no word on what they do with the rest of it. Can’t find a damn thing on where/how they resell it, and I’ve spoken with the person in charge of purchasing and depreciating our hardware. Seen way too much hardware tossed that could go to great use, just not as a desktop anymore.
Like, my own collection of old hardware doesn’t have anything in it newer than a decade old, and it’s all budget stuff acquired from family.
Meanwhile there’s four year old business grade desktops being effectively thrown away that I’m seeing go for $300 used. Just let me build my home network without going broke dammit!
Yup, my last 2 MBP laptops have been from a junk pile and came to me free/cheap from a buddy who was able to grab a bunch.
All in all, everything I do on a laptop is in a webui, a terminal or within a remote VM so I mostly dgaf about what it can natively run, but the hardware is great and it can load the nix (and brew) package managers, so I really haven’t found much that I want it to do that it can’t. Hell, even games I can just Steam Link to another machine and play if I want.
My last job was disposing of a 2021 model and I was dumb enough to ask if I could have it rather than just taking it and got told no … Sold for scrap by the pound! I could have left a 10$ bill in it’s place and theyd have gotten more profit, fucking ridiculous.
Also a product isn’t a bad product, just because it is produced under capitalism. A computers ability to compute does not depend on its mode of production.
Like fighting against the fur trade in a Canada Goose jacket.
“It’s okay to resist capitalism on an iPhone. The feudal lord who owned the pitchforks the peasants killed him with probably observed the irony too.” -Ben Stiller
i understand what you’re saying, but technically a computers computing ability is entirely dependent on how it’s produced. Especially in the case of apple, where with intel they really like not giving you any cooling at all, i guess they thought it was funny or something? Or with the new M series macs where they dont give you any ram, because god forbid people use normal amounts of ram.
As Linux enthusiast I think I have to jump in and say if you’re not using a 10-year-old Thinkpad bought second hand running EndeavorOS you’re not a true socialist
(Obviously I’m not serious but Poe’s Law is a bitch)
Are there any Thinkpads with dedicated gpus? I did a bit of a search but could only find ones with integrated graphics which for me is a deal breaker
ThinkPad X1 Extreme. Good luck on getting it at a low price, though.
Yes several. Some have quadro graphics for professionals too.
Erm I run arch by the way
jump ininterject for a momentFTFY.
If you’re not running a Libreboot Thinkpad T500 with Hyperbola GNU/Linux installed, you’re not a true socialist.
Bait post
Yeah, BS. If you choose to buy an apple product, new or used, you are still supporting capitalism even if in name only. The product is almost synonymous with pursuing a social cache rather than just useful and mundane functionality.
If you buy any product, you are supporting Capitalism. There’s very few ways to not support Capitalism at all, especially with regards to tech.
That sounds like a hard position to defend. I would love to hear what car you have.
A decade + old Honda bought used with 100k+ miles on it. There’s no social cache with that old car.
You did say new or used isn’t a deciding factor. Correct me if I’m wrong, butIt really sounded like you didn’t care how old the laptop was. A car is one of the biggest status symbols in modern society and I’d argue that my airpods on the bus laugh at your CR-V on the freeway thinking you’re the better socialist. (Sarcasm by the way, my real position is that judging people by their possessions is the real capitalist kool-aid and you’re drinking it just as much by buying into the Idea that certain brands put you on “the other team”. Also I’m the worst socialist, I can’t defend my consumerism in any area except transportation)
You’ve removed choice from the discussion when that was the point I was trying to make. The meme specified someone choosing expensive cache items and slapping an AnCap sticker on it, the point being some form of hypocrisy. My point is one has a choice to buy a trendy expensive item or a cheaper just as functional item, used or new is irrelevant. My judgment is based on what we’re discussing in this meme with the context it was presented, and it’s disingenuous for you to arbitrarily remove that context of that discussion and accuse me of drinking kool aid.
That’s not an AnCap (anarcho-capitalism) sticker it’s an anti-capitalisim sticker, but it’s obvious you knew that and just mixed up the acronyms so forgive me for being pedantic but it is important for the point I wanted to make. I don’t want you to think I forgot the context of the meme, but you shouldn’t forget the context of your comment. You have said directly that any apple product, new or used, with an anti-capitalist sticker on it would indicate hypocrisy by the owner. I said that would be a hard position to defend, and then got you to say that your car isn’t an example of hypocrisy using the fact that it’s used as support. I think that’s a solid hit on my point that your argument is difficult to defend because for some reason you get that defense and she doesn’t
On the totally separate personal values-driven argument in the context of the meme, anti-capitalist doesn’t mean “responsible and frugal capitalism”. It means anti-capitalism, and while sure, there’s probably some hypocrisy there, the idea that the brand you pick says something about you is absolutely not one of the points they as a movement are making. For hypocrisy you have to show them saying one thing and doing a contrary one. To say that certain specific brands aren’t acceptable for people against capitalism is a misunderstand of anti-capitalisim. They all get nationalized and you’re still allowed to have cool shit in Star Trek.
… or maybe she thought it’s an edgy sticker and fits her style?
Idk. But if you really were serious about smashing capitalism, it’s kinda irrelevant how much stuff you buy, there’s a lot of groundwork to be done, organizing and educating. For all we know, that may be what she’s doing in that photo.
If she dressed in rags, owned nothing and was homeless, I fail to see how that would accomplish anything more.
Although I prefer to support local businesses, not a fan of massive corporate chains. My city has dozens of local coffee shops that serve fair trade products. I can walk to a half dozen of them, whether or not I bring my ancient 2011 laptop. But I do love my principles being questioned by smug internet randos so 🖕
Eh, never fear your principles being questioned even by “smug internet randos”. Lest you become the smug internet rando yourself.
Introspection is a never ending task.
Nobody is forcing you to buy a mac and a Starbucks 🤣
Lmao participate in capitalism or die! That means you should spend all your money on the most expensive version of all your luxury items instead of using an old PC and making coffee at home. Internet hard-lefties need to take a look in the mirror, go outside, and readjust their priorities. Its these jokers that leftists get lumped in with that make us look bad. Yes, the original picture in this post is hilarious and ironic for all the same reasons it was originally posted, and I say that as someone who might agree with most of the laptop person’s political views
What a stupid fucking analogy. Protesting capitalism with stickers in Starbucks = living under slavery. Fuck off.
Exactly my first thought, this is a stupid meme.
Nope sorry, there are many much less capitalistically aggressive alternatives to starbucks and apple. Slaves on the other hand literally (and not figuratively as in here) needed to keep slaving to stay alive. I would seriously feel cramps in my stomach if I walked into a starbucks with that sticker.
Yep used thinkpad and some kind of Linux sounds more like it.
Buying a used Thinkpad doesn’t change the fact that it was made by slave labor. It might make you feel better to buy one, but it changes absolutely nothing. You still bought an item made in part by slaves or near-slaves. And you’re keeping the market alive for that to continue.
Buying used means you aren’t actually contributing to slave labor at all. Buying new would.
Also where are you getting this laptops are made with slave labor idea? We aren’t talking clothing here.
If you buy used, the manufacturer makes zero profit. It’s a pretty substantial difference ethically.
You are of course giving money to someone who likely has already purchased another laptop, indirectly supporting their consumerism, but I mean it’s still one less new laptop and one less landfill item, it’s definitely among the lesser evils.
All your options are “capitalistically aggressive”. It’s a sign of immaturity to me that people think they’re above it all while still being totally and utterly dependent on capitalist economics. Acting like buying a fair phone makes you better than others is just laughable. It’s a drop in the bucket compared to all your other unavoidable contributions to capitalists.
Not to mention that many of these “better” options are only available to people with money, which makes the entire claim even more ironic. Many of us going this “alternate” less aggressive route can only do so because we benefit from inequality in the first place.
Your argument in no way refutes the point the comic makes.
nope, there is for instance a ton of difference between someone who buys a used phone and uses it for 5 years vs someone who buys a new phone each time a new model comes out. Similarly there is a difference to how much you enable or enhance this system when you make conscious choices about which brands to use (ones that are a part of it or ones that actively redefine and make things worse).
I would agree however that it really makes no sense to of course try to infer all of these from a single photo, maybe this person is super anti consumerism in all other aspects, maybe she is repairing someone else’s computer etc. Nevertheless apple is the last brand you should be using if you want to put a smash capitalism sticker on your laptop, you can at least show the will to have your os open source. Otherwise it is like going to a steak house to eat steak with a “stop animal slaughter” shirt. It is the exact definition for me of acting like you are above it all without showing the effort to be.
Apple is a dumb choice always, but theres no fucking replacement for starbucks and you cannot convince me otherwise.
I would think the exact opposite. Apple’s monopoly practices (you notice they just got mega sued by the USG for antitrust violations, right?) mean if you want to effectively collaborate with people inside the Apple ecosystem you need to use Apple products.
On the other hand, Starbucks is easily replaceable, unless you’re in some sort of food desert urban wasteland, there are local coffee shops everywhere.
Fuck people in the apple ecosystem. Coffee in diners don’t replace the dessert frappuccinos.
I don’t care about the ecosystem but I care about having macOS. And I care about not having overpriced coffee abominations from starbucks, when I can make better coffee at home for less money.
No one’s talking about diners. We’re talking actual coffee shop or cafe.
Of course any place that just has a coffee machine alongside everything else they do is going to be shit compared to a place that specializes in coffee.
And any sugar bomb dessert drink is going to be “better” than a bog standard cuppa joe.
That’s like going to a sushi restaurant, getting the chicken tenders they have on the menu just so parents can placate picky children, and complaining that it doesn’t stack up to a wings that specializes in wings.
It’s apples and oranges man.
Look, my wife’s from a small town where the main employer pulled out almost 50 years ago. Then they spent a shit ton of tax money on trying to build some stuff to become a cargo transport hub, which failed as no companies bought in. 90% of their downtown is empty storefronts and boarded up windows.
They have two entirely local coffee shops that I can personally vouch to do equal to Starbucks. Personally I think the one blows the pants off Starbucks, but I’m willing to concede in the court of opinion. There’s at least two other coffee places within 10 minutes, two breakfast places, and two sandwich shops that have dessert coffee that stacks up as well, so I’m told.
You could buy the small mansion that sits on the hill overlooking a forested residential area there for the cost of a small townhouse anywhere else. Lovely town, lovely people in it. Impovershed as all hell. There’s still great options besides “Yeah I think Earl put a new pot on sometime today, let me check”.
Out on the highway, exits, and rest stops thereabouts, there’s even franchise alternatives to Starbucks. Dunkin Doughnuts are goddamn everywhere. Tim Hortons, at least up in the northern US. East coast from roughly New York down to Virginia (don’t quote me on the specific bounds) there’s Wawa gas stations, where if they have the sandwich counter they have dessert drinks. Pretty sure there’s other gas station chains that are stepping up too, I just don’t travel like I used to, especially since the pandemic. Dunkincs my go to “I don’t know the area and don’t have time” choice. Much more limited menu options, but I feel it holds up.
Look, you’re more than allowed to have your own fucking tastes and preferences, or maybe you’re literally addicted to Starbuck’s infamously pumped up caffeine levels. Just please don’t pretend like Starbucks is the only option for a good dessert coffee drink.
Oh no, you support a notably horrible corporation and like their products! Welcome to the party. The overwhelming amount of people, even the most socially and human rights concious, are far from perfect in that regard. Everyone has to make their own choices about the battles they fight and where they expend their effort.
Tim Horton’s coffee is total garbage though
Wow. So, you’re just openly admitting to being a selfish prick and that you have shit taste?
So brave.
Lol whats selfish about not wanting to support the Mac ecosystem? It has lots of effort for minimal return, it’s completely uneconomic for every use case. Plus, it adds incentive to keep using Apple products, which is harmful to its users.
Where even is the Starbucks in the photo?
I thought under her butt but maybe not. Is that their seating?
this is a very good point, I am now more angry with myself for not looking carefully and jumping to a conclusion and swallowed the story like a pill
Locally owned cafes???
oh wow what a novel concept, never have I heard of such a thing like eight times in this thread, thank you for sharing your incredibly useful opinion.
Please tell me how I can build ios apps, test multiple browsers (including safari), and test on any iPhone without mac? I don’t want to use a mac but it’s not “always a dumb choice”. Sometimes (by design) there is no choice.
Here is an idea for you, don’t build iOS Apps. If iOS users want to use regular apps or browsers then they’ll have to jailbreak their devices or stop using devices that intentionally limit them. Enabling their poor decisions doesn’t help them.
As a bonus it removes your apple developer fees as well as cuts your development costs by maybe half or even more.
You’re deluded
The vast majority of devs doing it for a career don’t get to choose what kind of apps they build.
I assure you everybody has a choice with every action they take, but purely for the sake of argument if you didn’t choose then your superiors did and in that case I’m criticizing your superiors stupid decisions, savvy?
It is so damn stupid if you’re developing a product and limiting yourself to a specific group because of some stupid moral that not everyone shares. Makes 0 sense in business context but sure go for it.
Lmao, the only limiting factor in this equation is Apple.
I… do you really think Starbucks sells good… anything? I mean, serious question. Do you think their drinks taste good?
Sorry you’re being down voted for having an opinion :-( – even if it’s a horrible one.
Starbucks along with McDonald’s has the most throat ripping base coffee of any chain in the UK.
If I have use a chain I’ll go to Costa but I’d rather use a local trader.
Yeah the coffee and most of the food items at Mickey D’s is garbo, but I’d fight a dude for a more ethical means of obtaining a big mac in less than 10 minutes.
McCafe coffee is actually pretty decent in Aus, if i had to get something fast food it’d be maccas anytime, but we have so many thousands of cafes that i never have to go more tgan a street or two for a good one.
I wish there was a replacement for starbucks.
I wish it were possible for an ethical restaurant chain in general at the scale of what we have in the USA, I bet the good timeline has those.
Here I am being more judgey about Starbucks.
I’m no Apple fan but I’m no hater either. They’re overpriced but most people who have them are buying them for the style/aesthetic/image…and while that may indeed be shallow, if that’s what they want and the apple stuff delivers it for them and makes them happy, I suppose it’s money well spent (to them).
The coffee on the other hand, if they’re in any city or suburb of any decent size, there’s probably a small local option that’s at the very least as good as Starbucks coffee and likely significantly better.
Alright but if you’re driving 6 hours across the USA you can get consistently good starbucks in every other town you pass by, but yes I’m sure there might better tasting gourmet options for similar price range in the most populous cities in the nation.
Apple is still a detriment to the end users, though, so I don’t care if it gives them momentary happiness.
Exactly, one of the main complaints about macs (being so proprietary and locked down is one of the main selling points. They’re the king of “just works” because they don’t allow a damn thing that might make it not.
I like to tinker so obv that’s garbo, but if you want to get your grandma something and not have to come around once a month to “fix,” Mac might be the answer. 🤷
In my experience locked down hardware just works until it doesn’t just work, and at that point it’s much harder to get working. When my auntie wants to know how to make sure she doesn’t delete her iphone contacts by accident, I need to have the device in my hands and figure out the answer. If she had an android like a normal person, then I could just tell her because I know the answer off the top of my head.
I tried to play Warframe with a friend whose only gaming device is a Switch last year, and it was a massive pain. We eventually got it working, but my friend came close to giving up many times. If she’d had a PC, it would have just worked.
How’s Lenovo’s sustainability versus Apple’s?
if it has linux installed, then much better at least from a software standpoint
apple and Starbucks are capitalists. Using their products and services is not “capitalism” but “consumerism”
spending a wage you earned is the opposite of capitalism
Sure, but it’s the fact that out of any other choice to pick, she chose to still give her money to the most aggressively capitalist companies. You can say it’s consumerism, but what point is she even making then? She sat down at a Starbucks to get her overpriced coffee, on a $1200 Macbook with a sticker on it that says “SMASH CAPITALISM”, it’s blatantly hyprocritcal.
maybe she’s there with a gift card she got given and a laptop that was also a gift?
Also my work computer is a Mac, now, and was also when I worked for a print and design company years ago.
maybe she’s an artist and Macs are often considered de rigueur for image and movie editing
maybe she’s not very technical, grew up using a Mac and is sticking to what she knows, who are we to criticise someone for not being skilled at tech, when we are not skilled at javelin throwing, or glass blowing or pointilism or whatever.
There are alternatives out there. That’s all. If you want to say ‘SMASH CAPITALISM’, then don’t pick the most garbage possible way to make your point. At the end of the day, your still buying/using them, especially from the most aggressively capitalist companies such as Apple and Starbucks. You could always sell off the laptop and gift card and support your local businesses instead. There are still local computer shops out there that sell off used hardware.
Also, I mean, you don’t even need to be an expert to use Linux, it’s rather simple actually, especially with AI at our fingertips. It’s just the fact that they keep supporting the exact thing they despise, hence why it looks hypocritical. Do your part and stick to what you preach. It’s like a person that eats at a all-meat resturaunt with a t-shirt on that says “Vegan”.
used hardware
how do we know it’s not used? I’m just saying we’re putting a lot into this image. Not done a massive deep dive but off the top of my head Apple isn’t really that much worse than Samsung, Sony, NVIDIA, ASUS… Maybe there’s a few percentage points in it - but by any metric: revenue, employee corps, emissions, corruption, e-waste, personal politics or private lives of key figures… are they vastly different?
You dont have to be an expert to use Linux
Ehhhhh. I think you’re vastly over estimating how good people are at tech. Even young people. I reflect on trying to teach my grandmother how to text. Probably around 2004? She could use a VHS and DVD player, land line phone with caller ID, a microwave, set the time on the oven - but pressing keys on a phone to spell was beyond her and she got really frustrated. I also reflect on how someone I know in their early 30s was really annoyed by some old printer software they had from a printer they don’t own any more, and I said “why don’t you just uninstall it” and they didn’t know how.
The average user on lemmy can probably write a Hello world in some language, or at least create <html><head><title>Hello world</title></head><body>Hello world</body></html> … but I don’t know if the average person on the street can.
The average person on the street probably can’t install windows from scratch let alone dual boot Linux, let alone from a Mac OS.
I dont mean that to be snooty, I mean it to highlight you are taking a massive leap of faith in how good at computers most people are.
I mean not exactly. I am not sayin the person in the photo is but excessive consumerism is what capitalism needs to stand on.
well of course not “exactly.” To get to “exactly” we would both have to write hundreds of thousands of words.
My point is that a lot of people who are proponents of capitalism aren’t actually leveraging their capital as an investment to further expand it.
For example, I just bought a house. I “leveraged” 5% of the property price from my savings (earned by a wage, by the way, not by leveraging other capital) and the bank carried the rest (which it does by leveraging capital). It’s the banks’ house for the next 30 years. I can leverage my equity in the house as that equity grows (which would be a bad idea), but even when the house is paid off, I now have an asset, not capital. Were I to sell the house - now I have capital - but I can’t do anything with, really, practically, except buy another house, again from which lawyers, banks, realtors, etc will all extract capital but I will not.
The second point is that - you need a phone and laptop to survive in modern society, just like you needed a horse in days gone. People love to gloat that people who say “those who do no work but own methods of extracting wealth from those who do should profit less” are then buying something unavoidable from those who extract capital, and point out that they should have budgeted for a slightly lower price point in order to give the wealth extractors slightly less.
And honestly, they are welcome to that opinion. It doesn’t change my opinions at all. We just disagree. They believe people (often other than themselves) are entitled to more of a share in the profit they generated than I believe they should be, either for myself or for anyone.
Anyone is welcome to disagree I just don’t understand why they want to give up their own money. Especially as such people are usually desperately against taxation, which is the same mechanism except it benefits many instead of the few.
Shit excuses, buy local
Who’s my local laptop manufacturer?
Framework are fairly FOSS mentality, which is as “local” as it gets with hardware. Way better than apple.
Framework laptops are like $1700
Let’s say you do this. Now you just need to buy a slave labor-free phone, car, TV and hundreds of other items. Not to mention you’re paying taxes to a capitalist government.
Anyone who thinks you can escape the consequences of capitalism while existing in a capitalist country is just full of it. It’s like the leftist version of sovereign citizen nonsense
What Framework are doing is good, but pretending they’re more than a rich person thing right now is silly. AU$2,800 is not a reasonable price and is well out of the range of most people for a laptop.
I definitely wouldn’t mind buying an overpriced product just for the sake of supporting it, but it’s gonna be another decade before they ship to my country so it’s not a real choice for most, especially the price.
You just gotta go down to the local laptop breeder and pick out a baby
Find a local shop that refurbishes used machines and provides good warranty
Worked at a ‘local’ retail store. They ordered almost everything off amazon and marked it up. Some stuff came from Ali but most from Amazon.
Buying anything in a capitalist country makes you a consumer.
