Comment by throw10920
6 days ago
You're confused about the meaning of "voting with your wallet".
> But it's true.
It's not - you're talking about something else entirely. When @umvi says "vote with your wallet" they mean buy things whose values you support. You, and GP @thrance, are not describing that - you're describing people buying things on autopilot without respect to values - the exact opposite. So, no, we haven't had decades of "unsuccessful voting with your wallet" because consumers have been mentally checked out for decades.
> So "voting with wallet" doesn't really work, because you will be outvoted by majority of people who don't know what they're getting into
That's literally how normal democracy works - if the majority of the populace is uninformed, then they'll vote in an uninformed way, and the solution is for them to get informed and start doing research and making conscious decisions. That's what @umvi means when they say "vote with your wallet." - active participation instead of passive existence.
You're confusing the lack of active participation with the presence of it.
>You're confused about the meaning of "voting with your wallet".
>You're confusing the lack of active participation with the presence of it.
Probably.
>you're describing people buying things on autopilot without respect to values
That is probably where I am confused - I'm not sure that people "do not respect the values". It's either that they have values, but those values are imposed, or it's what you describe, that people just don't think deeply about it. And from my personal experience I really can't tell. But when I read the web, everyone apparently figured it out, and do indeed consciously decide.
Then why do you call it "vote with your wallet" and not "buy stuff you like"? If you don't intend for your purchase to weigh in on anything, why do you call it "voting"?
If that's truly what you mean by "vote with your wallet", then yeah, we're on the same page. I almost only play solo games, most of them indie.
The problem with democracy: people on average have average intelligence and you don't solve difficult problems with average intelligence. That being said, it's still better than anything else we've tried.
Right - I'm also hand-waving a bit here and lumping democratic republics in with "true democracies" for the sake of simplicity, but you're absolutely correct.