That reads to me like a hand wavy an excuse for not asking what we can do to make our system more representative of the voters’ will when it should be.
A comedian with a dustbin on their head (Count Binface) would probably have a much more consumer focussed view that their contemporaries. Binface's policies do include such things as reducing the price of a 99 Flake ice cream to 99p and capping the cost of croissants - joke policies, but better than politicians just kow-towing to corporate interests.
Power in numbers is with the people. Power in votes is with whoever has the votes. Power in money is with the billionaires. Power comes in many forms and isn't fungible.
No, Money, Votes, etc has value because the general public gives it value. All billionaires could be instantly broke if the general public decided they were broke. Votes are ultimately a method of control not an inherent power unto themselves.
Societies have gotten really good at convincing people they don’t have power so it’s rarely exercised but it’s always worth remembering the difference between abstraction and the underlying reality.
If I stop believing that money has value, men with guns will come to my house and force me out of it and change the locks.
If they stop believing money has value (so they wouldn't want to come to my house), men with guns will come to their house, force them out of it and change the locks.
This isn't a voluntary system, it's a forcibly imposed one.
If you haven’t been paying attention lately, laws are only as good as they are enforced and it has become obvious that the ruling class is not going to enforce laws against themselves.
The solution here is not something most people are willing to inconvenience themselves over
Rewind a bit over 100 years and the robber barons had an iron grip over the US economy, US politics, and people who understood the mechanisms despaired at ever prying it away from them.
Then the wind shifted and, suddenly, we could and we did. It took them decades to undo that progress and decades more to reassert their grip.
Don't self-sabotage by imagining that it is impossible to achieve change through democracy. We've done it before and we can do it again.
Can we though? There is marked difference in how the government reacts to populist demands. Notably, they learned from Vietnam how to manipulate the population to divide public opinion. I am not sure people today can overcome such organized machinations.
Laws are meaningless de jure. Especially where megacorps are concerned, the de facto law (ie the only one that matters) is the text, multiplied by the enforcement mechanism, multiplied by the political will to enforce, multiplied by the 10-15 year process of the megacorps draining their legal warchests into challenges and appeals. Then, after all that, maybe… you get a change to corporate behavior.
The laws in this country are primarily written by and for large corporations. They’re not going to meaningfully practically restrain them just because something got passed.
Laws are great and all. But what we really need is a massive boycott. Stop buying shit manufactured or sold by Sony for a year. That alone will probably force them to backtrack every single anti consumer decision they've made recently.
You are not going to get the guy at 7-11 or the cashier at Target who just bought a PS5 for her son to boycott watching movies on it. Boycotts only work if it is demonstrably going to make their life worse if they don't. Losing access to a movie that interested you 15 years ago when you were still in high school is not one of those things.
For me, it was when they removed the Linux capability from the PS3 (or technically, they removed the ability to have it be able to run Linux and also use it to play PS3 games). I wasn't personally affected by the rootkit fiasco as I was pirating music back then (I mean I still do, but I did back then as well). I should have taken that as a warning as I was fully aware of what kind of company they were, but was attracted by the shiny PS3 games. Nowadays, I mainly play games on my SteamDeck and do appreciate Valve's treatment of customers - the hardware is mine and I can do what I want with it such as easily upgrade the NVM drive (I'm glad I put a 2TB disk in it back when the prices were lower).
There's a reason why they teach the prisoner's dilemma on day 1 of business school: a group which is more fragmented has less power. From the consumer perspective, this is why monopolies are bad and this is why boycotts don't work. From the slimy businessman perspective, this is why monopolies are good and boycotts are the only way consumers should be allowed to push back. Boycotts are empirically understood to be an ineffective strategy -- which, of course, is usually exactly what the people proposing them as an alternative to legislation are usually after.
For the love of god please understand 80% of people are trying to just get on day by day. They don't give a shit about any of this. They probably don't even realize it's happening. Some subset of them might be hit by this but most just don't care.
The point of a government in society is for people who give a shit to guide this kind of thing.
No, I won't understand. These people who don't give a shit, they are the problem. They're the ones who finance these corporations and enable their abusive practices.
Boycotts don't work nearly as well nowadays because
a) Consumers don't have enough money already, so they're both stressed out and getting fewer things for themselves. These combine to mean that they're less likely to be willing to give up what little luxuries they have left, even if you're just asking them to substitute one media property for another.
b) The companies being targeted are just too damn big. The consolidation that began in the '80s has reached truly ludicrous levels in 2026, meaning that the company can just...ignore drops in profits for months or even years while consumers get worn out.
You painted an accurate picture about how people act in this case and for boycotts in general but let’s be honest, not buying movies from Sony and its store is the last thing most people would “suffer” from. There’s such a large supply of content today that ditching one source for another has almost no real impact.
How much content really is only on Sony’s store, and how much of it would wear you down if you didn’t consume it within X years?
There are truly painful boycotts (try boycotting the only ISP in your area), and boycotts that are an inconvenience. This one is a far cry from losing a luxury or getting worn out.
Completely different circumstances as the protest was very organised and the target far smaller than a multi national company and the reason was far more important than access to a few films
Boycotts are one thing, people simply not buying because a company's reputation is ruined is another. What I think we really need is simply to spread the word about how sony is a shitty company, let people know the stuff they buy from them gets deleted. That's enough to really smash up sony's revenue. Tech people naturally assume other people are highly informed about tech stuff, but they aren't, they're watching tiktok ai sexy cat videos and assume the reason grandma lost her copy to Alien: Resurrection was because grandma isn't very good at computers, not that sony deleted it. Indeed, I think, because sony is concurrently removing physical media the outrage probably will effect their bottom line in some ways when the next playstation comes out.
Look at how the firestone tire scandal in 2000 effected their company's bottom line. Or how the click of death effected the fortunes of the owners of Iomega. Reputation actually does matter sometimes.
In democracy, power comes from demos.
In capitalism, power comes from capital.
Demos doesn't have capital.
People never had power.
Whenever they've thought they won ... they just damaged position of someone powerful for someone even more powerful without even knowing it.
Unless you’re in, say, Ohio, where the government will simply overrule decisive mandates with years of procedural nonsense https://ohiocapitaljournal.com/2026/03/31/ohio-republican-la...
The government is selected by the people.
If the people decide to elect a comedian with a dustbin on their head, they can do. That apples to Chicago as much as Clacton
That reads to me like a hand wavy an excuse for not asking what we can do to make our system more representative of the voters’ will when it should be.
A comedian with a dustbin on their head (Count Binface) would probably have a much more consumer focussed view that their contemporaries. Binface's policies do include such things as reducing the price of a 99 Flake ice cream to 99p and capping the cost of croissants - joke policies, but better than politicians just kow-towing to corporate interests.
EU Chat Control would like a word as well
Ohioans need to elect better reps then, don't they?
It’s a lot easier to act as a few people than as millions. Let’s not pretend this is some fair fight.
Power in numbers is with the people. Power in votes is with whoever has the votes. Power in money is with the billionaires. Power comes in many forms and isn't fungible.
No, Money, Votes, etc has value because the general public gives it value. All billionaires could be instantly broke if the general public decided they were broke. Votes are ultimately a method of control not an inherent power unto themselves.
Societies have gotten really good at convincing people they don’t have power so it’s rarely exercised but it’s always worth remembering the difference between abstraction and the underlying reality.
If I stop believing that money has value, men with guns will come to my house and force me out of it and change the locks.
If they stop believing money has value (so they wouldn't want to come to my house), men with guns will come to their house, force them out of it and change the locks.
This isn't a voluntary system, it's a forcibly imposed one.
2 replies →
Eh. The people exercise their power constantly. Only historically not in the ways some people (read as: me) would prefer.
> value. All billionaires could be instantly broke if the general public decided they were broke.
Are we taking about abolishing the fiat currency system or bringing back the guillotines ?
1 reply →
ok but who enforces the law?
If you haven’t been paying attention lately, laws are only as good as they are enforced and it has become obvious that the ruling class is not going to enforce laws against themselves.
The solution here is not something most people are willing to inconvenience themselves over
Rewind a bit over 100 years and the robber barons had an iron grip over the US economy, US politics, and people who understood the mechanisms despaired at ever prying it away from them.
Then the wind shifted and, suddenly, we could and we did. It took them decades to undo that progress and decades more to reassert their grip.
Don't self-sabotage by imagining that it is impossible to achieve change through democracy. We've done it before and we can do it again.
Can we though? There is marked difference in how the government reacts to populist demands. Notably, they learned from Vietnam how to manipulate the population to divide public opinion. I am not sure people today can overcome such organized machinations.
2 replies →
Laws are meaningless de jure. Especially where megacorps are concerned, the de facto law (ie the only one that matters) is the text, multiplied by the enforcement mechanism, multiplied by the political will to enforce, multiplied by the 10-15 year process of the megacorps draining their legal warchests into challenges and appeals. Then, after all that, maybe… you get a change to corporate behavior.
The laws in this country are primarily written by and for large corporations. They’re not going to meaningfully practically restrain them just because something got passed.
Laws are great and all. But what we really need is a massive boycott. Stop buying shit manufactured or sold by Sony for a year. That alone will probably force them to backtrack every single anti consumer decision they've made recently.
You are not going to get the guy at 7-11 or the cashier at Target who just bought a PS5 for her son to boycott watching movies on it. Boycotts only work if it is demonstrably going to make their life worse if they don't. Losing access to a movie that interested you 15 years ago when you were still in high school is not one of those things.
I gave up on Sony for life when they tried to install a rootkit on my computer from an audio CD years ago and I see no reason to change.
For me, it was when they removed the Linux capability from the PS3 (or technically, they removed the ability to have it be able to run Linux and also use it to play PS3 games). I wasn't personally affected by the rootkit fiasco as I was pirating music back then (I mean I still do, but I did back then as well). I should have taken that as a warning as I was fully aware of what kind of company they were, but was attracted by the shiny PS3 games. Nowadays, I mainly play games on my SteamDeck and do appreciate Valve's treatment of customers - the hardware is mine and I can do what I want with it such as easily upgrade the NVM drive (I'm glad I put a 2TB disk in it back when the prices were lower).
There's a reason why they teach the prisoner's dilemma on day 1 of business school: a group which is more fragmented has less power. From the consumer perspective, this is why monopolies are bad and this is why boycotts don't work. From the slimy businessman perspective, this is why monopolies are good and boycotts are the only way consumers should be allowed to push back. Boycotts are empirically understood to be an ineffective strategy -- which, of course, is usually exactly what the people proposing them as an alternative to legislation are usually after.
For the love of god please understand 80% of people are trying to just get on day by day. They don't give a shit about any of this. They probably don't even realize it's happening. Some subset of them might be hit by this but most just don't care.
The point of a government in society is for people who give a shit to guide this kind of thing.
[dead]
No, I won't understand. These people who don't give a shit, they are the problem. They're the ones who finance these corporations and enable their abusive practices.
1 reply →
Boycotts don't work nearly as well nowadays because
a) Consumers don't have enough money already, so they're both stressed out and getting fewer things for themselves. These combine to mean that they're less likely to be willing to give up what little luxuries they have left, even if you're just asking them to substitute one media property for another.
b) The companies being targeted are just too damn big. The consolidation that began in the '80s has reached truly ludicrous levels in 2026, meaning that the company can just...ignore drops in profits for months or even years while consumers get worn out.
You painted an accurate picture about how people act in this case and for boycotts in general but let’s be honest, not buying movies from Sony and its store is the last thing most people would “suffer” from. There’s such a large supply of content today that ditching one source for another has almost no real impact.
How much content really is only on Sony’s store, and how much of it would wear you down if you didn’t consume it within X years?
There are truly painful boycotts (try boycotting the only ISP in your area), and boycotts that are an inconvenience. This one is a far cry from losing a luxury or getting worn out.
1 reply →
Also, corporate bullshit such as this should be stigmatized.
Yup, it's wild to see corporations effectively say "kiss my ass" and then watch people line up to do it :|
> But what we really need is a massive boycott
Is it? What’s the most effective boycott you can think of ever achieved?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montgomery_bus_boycott
Completely different circumstances as the protest was very organised and the target far smaller than a multi national company and the reason was far more important than access to a few films
Boycotts are one thing, people simply not buying because a company's reputation is ruined is another. What I think we really need is simply to spread the word about how sony is a shitty company, let people know the stuff they buy from them gets deleted. That's enough to really smash up sony's revenue. Tech people naturally assume other people are highly informed about tech stuff, but they aren't, they're watching tiktok ai sexy cat videos and assume the reason grandma lost her copy to Alien: Resurrection was because grandma isn't very good at computers, not that sony deleted it. Indeed, I think, because sony is concurrently removing physical media the outrage probably will effect their bottom line in some ways when the next playstation comes out.
Look at how the firestone tire scandal in 2000 effected their company's bottom line. Or how the click of death effected the fortunes of the owners of Iomega. Reputation actually does matter sometimes.
Maybe not the most effective but Helldivers rolled back the requirement to link a Playstation account (on PC) after massive outrage and pushback.
[dead]
In democracy, power comes from demos. In capitalism, power comes from capital.
Demos doesn't have capital. People never had power. Whenever they've thought they won ... they just damaged position of someone powerful for someone even more powerful without even knowing it.
> In democracy, power comes from demos. In capitalism, power comes from capital.
By this logic, in consumerism power comes from consumers, but maybe it's more complicated than that?
the power is not with the people (us) but with the people in power (corpos and politicians). We (they) can enact any laws we (they) want.