"Slave labor" is not being used as hyperbole in this context. It is the conventional definition. A job that complies with the 13th amendment without exception is not slavery.
> What has failed us is putting people like Ajit Pai in charge of the FCC and the federal government trying to remove net neutrality.
Net neutrality is good, but so far it hasn't fucked with us so I don't know what you are saying... What really messed up the internet/world is the centralization... Google, Facebook, etc... which allows them to control speech on a major scale.
My semi-ranty post is more on the topic of actual large carriers/telcos/cable company/ILECs/last mile and middle mile ISPs. Although google has some last mile stuff through their acquisition of webpass they are not in the same market segment.
There are definitely a whole lot of screwed up things going with walled garden social media platforms and centralization there as well.
As this article very aptly points out, "centralization" and it's counterpart, "decentralization" have very little to do with how, "free" a system is. Consider that when Standard Oil was broken up it became more powerful and as many small companies than one large megalith. I'm no fan of Google, Facebook, the like (..._) but it wasn't these institutions that failed us necessarily-- it was an uneducated and tasteless public which had demand for, "dopamine-rich" social experiences and a lack of insight into what the real causes of innovation have historically been that created the many-headed tech Hydra of the day. The present crisis is an educational and cultural crisis. The structural characteristics of institutions isn't the only determining factor in terms of how the public comes to participate in technology. It's actual marginal in the grand-scheme.
tl;dr-- Freedom of Speech is stifled in the United States not because of tech companies but because of its toxic, unrectified post-Civil War culture where-in huge swaths (100 millions) of people are systemically kept in cycles of social stagnancy as a result of the real realities of human life in post-industrial societies. We've chosen the Machine for ourselves and the desperation of Americans (you see it in the Trump people) is the manifest spirit of people caught in the teeth of the gears of history. What makes this so appalling to us is the almost religious belief that this is period of great historical exceptionality-- consider though that Caesar, Alexander, Hegel, and Napoleon also considered their time, "exceptional." Consider the October Revolution and Marx' historicism.
Life is better than it's ever been. We're upset because out expectations are made artificially high by our own lack of historical prudence and a strange overabundance of imagination. The post-war culture lied to us and told us anything was possible. We're constantly traumatized by the fact that we're not living in a perfect world. Bless our little hearts.
People like Ajit Pai are flies in the ointment. When the priests see what's happened they'll throw the whole jar away and I'm quite sure all the little flies will have learned their lesson; that is of course until they have the cunning to become wasps or dragonflies.
You should try walmart.com for ordering... they stepped up their game... it's not uncommon for them to do 3 deliveries for a $35 order with free shipping to get you the stuff as fast as possible... Most of the time I wish they would combine items to avoid the waste but that's what they do.
Yeah, I've considered Walmart, but it kind of defeats the purpose for me. It doesn't do a lot of good to replace one monopolistic behemoth with a different monopolistic behemoth.
I don't think there is a small mom & pop one stop shop, but if you are willing to buy different things from different stores, you have options. I buy most of my electronics from B&H, and things like fasteners from McMaster-Carr.
Amazon does feel pretty unavoidable for the long tail, though.
I'm surprised that these specialty retailers have not banded together to form some kind of syndicate with a common web front end to take orders. That sort of thing could be an Amazon-killer. Combined with a doordash-like delivery service it could offer same-day delivery and reliable product vetting.
Isn't that kind of what Shopify, Fast, and some other company that I only heard off because they laid off half their staff doing?
I haven't researched the industry extensively, but I'm guessing that companies like to keep customer data to themselves and curate what they think is the ideal checkout experience. (Everyone should copy McMaster, though.) That's why you see companies happy to delegate the financing involved in buying their products to credit card companies, but still make their own website/checkout/fulfillment rather than letting, say, Amazon do that for them. (Shopify does seem to have quite a lot of traction, however.)
None of those companies are syndicates, i.e. none of them are owned by the retailers they represent. They're trying to just be middlemen. That won't work.
