As a someone who supports the right to life, you'd think I'd be interested in this app, but on reflection, I not interested.
Turning everything in ones life in to a form of politics would be way too draining I'd think and ultimately not a productive as one would like.
I'd rather spend ten minutes a day helping on a suicide prevention hotline, or donating resources to newly expectant mothers, than try to ferret out every last connection to abortion clinics by furtively scanning bar-codes every time I went shopping.
It's funny... the UX person in me was thinking it would be easier just to take a picture of your shopping cart and have it highlight the items you shouldn't purchase. Just based on packaging. Then I thought ... hey ... an even better idea would be to hold the phone up in front of the shelves and have all of the offending items X'd out.
Then I thought ... man ... all of this would be a LOT easier if Google Glass had a better camera! Maybe Apple will make a better pair of glasses and in the not too distant future we can just walk up the aisles and have all the products we wouldn't want to support X'd out for us.
Point is... in the future you will most likely not have to scan the bar code. The software will just put X'es over all of the products that are "bad" by some definition set by you. That would be a pretty interesting use of something like Glass I think.
Maybe you could also have it do face recognition and tie that in with sentiment analysis of people's twitter, facebook and Google+ feeds so that you can be cold and aloof or just plain avoid people with "bad" viewpoints.
To me, it seems too tribal and "total warfare"ish. Remembering and boycotting a few things... sure, although generally that doesn't have much effect. But tagging all products that have some association with people who don't fit your world view seems scary and close-minded to me.
Ah. I agree with your first point, it's ineffectual. But my hope would be that an app can help people boycott more effectively (who would guess that bottled waters are sold by Coke and Pepsi?) and have a greater total effect.
I don't think it would be like excluding all the products that don't fit my world view, but excluding all the products from actors whom I think are doing severe damage to the environments and legislatures of the world's nations.
> (who would guess that bottled waters are sold by Coke and Pepsi?)
Maybe it's a bit of a reach, but the Coke/Pepsi vending machines here have water in them and that was how I figured out each company also had their own brand of bottled water they also sold (Aquafina for Pepsi and Desani for Coke).
If you research it you'll find both are bottled filtered tap water. For awhile I tried figuring out where they were bottled, mostly unsuccessfully. The holy grail would have been finding competing plants in the same city bottling the same municipal tap water, but I was unsuccessful. Not all corporate bottling plants bottle all products at every plant, I couldn't figure out which of my coke products came from the nearest syrup plant in Chicago or bottling plant in Quincy although it seems all Pepsi products are reminiscent of the proverbial "thousand mile salad" and come from the sand states (or what we in the center of the country call fly over, because we fly over those states on our international vacations which we can easily afford because we don't live on the coasts)
Disagree with the owners on what? David Koch supports the Cato Institute, NOVA on PBS, and the American Museum of Natural History in New York. What if I disagree with libertarians but I like science? Should I buy or not buy some Dixie cups?
I agree that it's good for people to support companies they believe in, but that takes introspection and investigation. This app promotes neither.
The problem is that we do not have any discernable influence on our nominal political representatives. A workaround is that we might be able to influence the corporations that do have significant influence. It's worth a try.
The Citizens United decision means the money you spend is used to influence the political process. It's part of what you're buying, so why not factor it in to your purchasing decision?
It's part of what you're buying, so why not factor it in to your purchasing decision?
Because one hallmark of a civil society is the ability to have vigorous disagreements in the political sphere and yet continue to live and work together as a community.
I know quite a few people that are gay and would love to have the opportunity to get married in the state they reside in. So when Chick-fil-A dumps money into campaigns for ads against equality bills I sure as hell will not give them a single cent.
I can't pick and choose if I want to pay for tanks but I can certainly not pay companies that are actively trying to hurt the people I love with my money.
If your neighbor showed up on a list of people who donated to support Prop 8, would you stop inviting them to your BBQs? What if they "just" voted for a candidate who professed to be against marriage equality (like our current President in 2008)? That's what I mean about civil society.
Obviously its fabric will survive your boycott of Chick-fil-A, but letting the political bleed into all aspects of our lives is something I find intensely distasteful.
And if a charity is going to toss out donations of Harry Potter toys because they "promote witchcraft" they are out as well. I'm going to try this app.
So you prefer to spend your life doing band-aid actions instead trying to fix the probem in it's root, that is, money in the wrong pockets. All these problems you prefer to work with are consequence of an unfair and corrupt system that is screaming for a fix. These anti-ethical companies are the ones responsable for turning politics and democracy (if it exists) into a mere tool for personal and not social profit. Read a book called The Black Book on Brand Companies and start scanning barcodes.
Abortion clinics are tiny businesses compared to giant conglomerates like Koch. I don't think there's much boycotting you could do even if you wanted to.
Arguably you could boycott everyone who funds abortion clinics (e.g. Warren Buffett who is the #1 donor to Planned Parenthood). So, no NetJets for you.
I agree it becomes really silly beyond one or maybe two steps. IBM in the 1930s was about the limit of "second degree hate"; I'd still have been happy to mow the lawn of IBM employees back then. I probably would have had problems doing business with IBM directly if I'd known all the details. The only transactions I'd have done with nazis were sell side death transactions, i.e. real life Castle Wolfenstein.
You also get a certain amount of milage out of limited boycotts and only a little extra beyond that.
The Koch brothers probably aren't going to change their behavior no matter how much boycotts cut into their bottom line. If you cut off all revenue to every business they have an interest in, and everyone in the world refused to send them another dime even by buying up their failing businesses at fire sale prices, they would still be richer in their cash holdings than most people ever dream of being. They'd continue to have more influence on world affairs than most small nations.
On the other hand, most large corporations are more interested in money than politics, and politics is just a side game. So a moderately successful boycott of a single or small number of products sends enough of a signal back to corporate headquarters to change their behavior. If Whirlygig sales drop 10% because of their policy on Foozles, they aren't going to wait for Fizzbuzz sales to follow, they're going to reverse course immediately.
Turning everything in ones life in to a form of politics would be way too draining I'd think and ultimately not a productive as one would like.
I'd rather spend ten minutes a day helping on a suicide prevention hotline, or donating resources to newly expectant mothers, than try to ferret out every last connection to abortion clinics by furtively scanning bar-codes every time I went shopping.