• FlowVoid@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    puts the burden of action on the individual

    If the “problem” is that you are unhappy when a shitty new product appears, then the problem is you. Because you’ve embraced consumerism so deeply that you don’t know what to do with shitty new products.

    Here’s an idea: don’t buy them. Not in order to send someone a message, “vote” for a better product, or otherwise take on the burden of product development. Don’t buy them because you don’t need an endless stream of new products, especially shitty new products. You don’t even need to buy great new products to be happy.

    Just to take one example, I open Word docs on Office 2010. Not because I have been trying to send a message to Microsoft for over a decade. Maybe their newest version of Office is great. I wouldn’t know. But Word 2010 still works fine, so I don’t need another one. Diablo 3 still works fine too. I don’t want or need to convince a company to build a new improved version. They need to convince me to buy it.

    • Haui@discuss.tchncs.de
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      1 year ago

      I agree with you on all accounts. You should not buy stuff just because it is new.

      But I think you didn’t get the point of the text that I posted:

      Companies abandon their old products which leads to security risks due lack of updates. Same goes btw for kitchen appliances. If you bought a fridge 10 yrs ago it might still work, not super effiecient and maybe missing the newest gimicks but that is fine with me. What bothers me is that you won’t get a technician to repair your old fridge for less than you pay for a new one. The parts are too sparse and expensive for that.

      And it is the same with nearly every product out there. You used to be able to buy shoes that make it 10 yrs. Today that is rare not because companies want that but because most people have no need for it.

      And that is where policy comes in. Consumerism needs to go. Only way to do that is either information (which I doubt will work) or outlawing large parts of it and forcing sustainability on everyone.