Lately I’m running into more and more situations where I am forced to patronize a private company in the course of doing a transaction with my government. For example, a government office stops accepting cash payment for something (e.g. a public parking permit). Residents cannot pay for the permit unless they enter the marketplace and do business with a private bank. From there, the bank might force you to have a mobile phone (yes, this is common in Europe for example).
Example 2:
Some gov offices require the general public to call them or email them because they no longer have an open office that can be visited in person. Of course calling means subscribing to phone service (payphones no longer exist). To send an email, I can theoretically connect a laptop to a library network and use my own mail server to send it, but most gov offices block email that comes from IP that Google/SpamHaus/whoever does not approve, thus forcing you to subscribe to a private sector service in order to do a public transaction. At the same time, snail-mail is increasingly under threat & fax is already ½ dead.
Example 3:
A public university in Denmark refuses access to some parts of the school’s information systems unless you provide a GSM number so they can do a 2FA SMS. If a student opposes connecting to GSM networks due to the huge attack surface and privacy risks, they are simply excluded from systems with that limitation & their right to a public education is hindered. The school library e-books are being bogarted by Cloudflare’s walled garden, where a private company restricts access to the books based on factors like your IP address & browser.
Example 4:
Twitter decides who may microblog to their public representatives.
So where are my people?
So, I’m bothered by this because most private companies demonstrate untrustworthyness & incompetence. I think I should be able to disconnect and access all public services with minimal reliance on the private sector. IMO the lack of that option is injustice. There is an immeasurably huge amount of garbage tech on the web subjecting people to CAPTCHAs, intrusive ads, dysfunctional javascript, dark patterns, etc. Society has proven inability to counter that and it will keep getting worse. I think the ONLY real fix is to have a right to be offline. The power to say:
“the gov wants to push this broken reCAPTCHA that forces me to feed a surveillance capitalist --- no thanks. Give me an offline private-sector-free way to do this transaction”
There is substantial chatter in the #fedi about all the shit tech being pushed on us & countless little tricks and hacks to try to sidestep it. But there is almost no chatter about the real high-level solution which would encompass two rights:
- a right to be free from the private sector marketplace; and
- the right to be offline
Of course there could only be very recent philosophers who would think of the right to be offline. But I wonder if any philosophers in history have published anything influential as far as the right to not be forced into the private sector marketplace. By that, I don’t mean anti-capitalism (of course that’s well covered).. but I mean given the premise is that you’re trapped inside a capitalist system, there would likely be bodies of philosophy aligned with rights/powers to boycott.
(update) The famous Leary quote “Turn on, tune in, drop out” seems to be kind of consistent in an abstract way. Not necessarily as far as the ideology but in inspiring action.
I have a book of essays on this topic (sorta) that I've been meaning to read but I haven't gotten to it yet. If you want to get ahead of me, it's called Resisting the Virtual Life. I found it in a local used bookstore.
The kicker though, is that it's from 1995! so it may be less relevant now, but I'm excited to see what issues they foresaw.
Beyond that I don't know. But I'm sure more modern thinkers have talked about it. I'll have to scan and upload my copy of Resisting the virtual life... it doesn't seem to be on LibGen
A lot of cyberpunk stories explicitly deal with this problem. It was foreseen and mapped out exhaustively decades ago. To their credit most authors weren't cynical enough to imagine how horrifically bad things would get. I'd suggest looking in to Modi's attempts to get rid of cash in India as a means of social control. It'd be a good starting point for the state of the art in using identity as a weapon of oppression.
Yeah, its always funny to me when people are like "oh this is a modern phenomenon people of the past wouldn't understand it" like nah not really. Shit is A) predictable, and B) analagous shit has happened for the past 150 years at least
I should check out what's happening in india though
The neoliberalization of society has resulted in a state (and public institutions) which has effectively emptied itself out, privatizing assets and responsibilities, and allowing the market to fill every single niche even to the point that the state itself relies on private enterprise to carry out its own public functions, whether explicitly or implicitly. The government passes you to the surveillance capitalist because they are on the same team: capital.
To address these two points:
- a right to be free from the private sector marketplace; and
- the right to be offline
Both are impossible to achieve under the capitalist mode of production. Just as capital monopolizes our time in the workplace, it monopolizes our time outside of it. The majority of our interactions inside and outside the workplace, are subjected to "the private market". If you want to get rid of this, you have to rid yourself of the private capitalist market economy itself. In capitalism, there is no way to escape the logic of the market, which turns you and your life into a commodity. It is its very function. In a capitalist society, even the state itself serves to bolster the strength of the private market even as that market eats away at its own function.
Sure, you can log off, you can refuse to have a cell phone, you can refuse all the things which your are subjected to, but you will effectively be barred from participation in society as such. You can't see the ebooks needed to go to school, you will have difficulty accessing banking services, etc..
But I wonder if any philosophers in history have published anything influential as far as the right to not be forced into the private sector marketplace.
Marx. Sorry, but you cannot get around the greatest critic of capitalism if you want to understand the functions of capitalism. The way tech functions in our lives is a product of our socioeconomic system.
but I mean given the premise is that you’re trapped inside a capitalist system, there would likely be bodies of philosophy aligned with rights/powers to boycott.
Boycotts accomplish almost nothing, and are far harder to organize than many people think. Let's say you boycott twitter and it goes bankrupt. Twitter2 will just do the same thing under a different name. Unless it becomes a public utility, it will be in private hands and exist to extract profit. The only way out of these problems is out of capitalism.
That said, here are some essays, books and media I have seen/read or just know about that are at least tangentially related:
Postscript on the Societies of Control, Deleuze, 1990. https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/gilles-deleuze-postscript-on-the-societies-of-control
Written before the hegemony of tech in our lives, its is very prescient in terms of the movement from a disciplinary society, to a society of control. Some parts here are better than others.
Psychopolitics, Byung-Chul Han
I have my issues with this book, but it does get to certain aspects of neoliberalism which makes it a good starter text.
The Stack, Benjamin Bratton
I haven't read this one, but have been recommended it. Deals with technology on a global scale.
How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy
I've been told its better than it looks, but I have no idea. May be interesting.
Some other media:
This Machine Kills Podcast
A podcast critical of tech and capitalism. Both of the hosts write as well, and you can look into them to see if there is anything of interest to you.
Tech Won't Save Us Podcast
Paris Marx's podcast. You can also read their writing, as its relevant.
All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace Documentary, Adam Curtis
Won't make you feel warm and fuzzy.
And some websites you may not know about, but can help you out regarding your second example:
sci-hub.se, run by an explicit communist
Libgen.is
annas-archive.org, newer, little idea about who made it, but it basically just scrapes the top two and z-lib iirc
the state itself relies on private enterprise to carry out its own public functions
It’s not inherently a problem that the gov uses private enterprise. E.g. the courts have bathrooms and those bathrooms have toilet paper. I would find it a silly extreme to draw a hard line and say the gov must produce its own toilet paper, for example, in order to be freely separate from the private sector.
But in some cases indeed the outsourcing is reckless. Such as when the US gov outsourced flight services to Lockheed Martin who was then caught asleep at the wheel (not responding to air traffic safety radio calls).
So I’m okay with private sector toilet paper, but not enthusiastic about the private sector doing tasks that need safety or privacy.
To address these two points:
- a right to be free from the private sector marketplace; and
- the right to be offline
Both are impossible to achieve under the capitalist mode of production.
I don’t think so. But perhaps you are thinking of them as absolute rights. None of the rights we have today are absolute rights AFAIK. The two rights above could be protected at least to the extent that they don’t interfere with other rights under capitalism.
Just as capital monopolizes our time in the workplace, it monopolizes our time outside of it. The majority of our interactions inside and outside the workplace, are subjected to “the private market”.
The private market in that context is optional in most of the world as I know it. You don’t have to work for someone else under the umbrella of a private company. If you want, you can work in the public sector directly for the gov, or you can scrap employment entirely and do the off-grid survivalist Henry David Thoreau thing.
If you want to get rid of this, you have to rid yourself of the private capitalist market economy itself.
I don’t think so. I’m not trying to stop Alice from working for Bob. Live and let live. We need not scrap capitalism entirely just to have alternatives. Alternatives can coexist.
Sure, you can log off, you can refuse to have a cell phone, you can refuse all the things which your are subjected to, but you will effectively be barred from participation in society as such. You can’t see the ebooks needed to go to school, you will have difficulty accessing banking services, etc…
When you say being offline bars someone from participation in society, that’s too abstract & overly generalized. If company X demands that I have a mobile phone (e.g. Twitter demands I share my GSM number which they verify via SMS), I can scrap both. It sounds like your complaint is that they are bundled - that I cannot use Twitter without a phone. That’s unfortunate but I would not go as far as to force all capitalist players to support customers who want to opt out of the rest of capitalism. For me it’s good enough¹ that I can reject Twitter and mobile phones both together.
The only problem I’m fixated on is when a public service forces me to gave a mobile phone or Facebook account. Fixing that problem does not require scrapping capitalism entirely. It merely requires a right to be offline and a right to be free from the private sector. If these rights were to exist & I were to invoke those rights in the Danish university, it would not require ending capitalism. It would just require the school to give RSA tokens as a 2FA alternative.
Footnote 1: I’m neglecting the separate problem that elected gov officials are exclusively microblog-reachable on Twitter. But I address that at the end.
Boycotts accomplish almost nothing, and are far harder to organize than many people think.
Some people think a boycott is necessarily organized with some kind of goal or expected impact. That is not at all what I meant. I have hundreds of boycotts going right now just by myself personally. 1-person boycotts. These are not to take down a company. My goal with my unorganized solo boycotts is to simply ensure that I am not part of the problem myself. And to that extent the goals are accomplished. I should have a right to boycott regardless of whether the boycott brings down the company. It is in fact the boycotter who decides what the goal is.
You may think a 1-person boycott is weak. But consider this: I was the only student who boycotted Facebook. All the other students, staff, and the school itself all used Facebook. But because I had my 1-person boycott, everyone in the school was forced to step outside of Facebook if they wanted to reach me. I abandoned the school shortly after entry, but I could have (or should have been able to) stay & argue that the school was denying me a right to public education by imposing Facebook. I missed announcements of official school seminars & events by not being in Facebook. You can fix that problem by making school comms in-house. You need not scrap all of capitalism.
Let’s say you boycott twitter and it goes bankrupt. Twitter2 will just do the same thing under a different name. Unless it becomes a public utility, it will be in private hands and exist to extract profit. The only way out of these problems is out of capitalism.
The only problem with Twitter under the thesis of my OP is that elected public reps are exclusively microblog-reachable on Twitter. And worse, Twitter is exclusive. But that could also be fixed by installing a “freedom from the private sector marketplace” in parallel with free speech (1A in the US), which would then force gov reps into the fedi. We don’t need the impossibly giant leap of making Twitter’s existence impossible; we just need some public/private separation. Schools and gov reps & other people working in the capacity of their public duty should be forced onto gov-operated fedi servers so they are reachable by the public. I wouldn’t give a shit if they still had Twitter accounts for personal use only. Live and let live while serving the /whole/ public.
I appreciate all your references. I’ll have to check them out.
I just want to say I appreciate you engaging here in good faith and not just calling us tankies or whatever and running off. I think you'll find a lot of people here who share your struggle to disconnect, but honestly we are quite committed to "scrapping capitalism entirely" as you put it.
I second Psychopolitics as a pretty good and quick read if you want an explicitly philosophical text. But I will warn you it does not view the ubiquitous technologies that have come to dominate society as merely mistakes that the state should correct or allow us to opt out of, but as fundamentally a new form of control over society that uses our own minds against us to achieve more societal control despite employing far less blatant physical coercion (not in a "there's a big cabal controlling the world" way, but in a "this phenomenon emerged from the material conditions of capitalism in the 20th and now 21st centuries" way). At least that's my recollection, I haven't re-read it in a couple years
You aren't wrong that this is a problem, and I'd likely support a "right to logoff", were it proposed, but the problem is definitely inherent to at least our current stage of capitalism, and no neoliberal state has any incentive that I can think of to grant people this right.
Edit: further thoughts - The toilet paper is a bad example. It's a physical commodity and is being bought without conditions and put to use, which yes is pretty much fine. A better example might be outsourcing the provision of bathroom supplies and cleaning entirely, which would allow the capitalists to nickel and dime their way to a situation where the bathroom becomes unusable, or the toilet paper dispenser becomes coin operated, etc. You give them an inch and they will work tirelessly to take a mile.
You can waste your energy until eternity constantly fighting with their inherent drive to rip the government off and take more power for themselves, with varying degrees of success, or you can accept that private property rights only serve capitalists, and choose to actually wield some power to, at the very least, bring capitalist enterprises to heel, if not eliminate the private ownership entirely. Every "right" you secure in a neoliberal society is at risk of just being undermined again in the future because you refuse to attack the root of the problem.
Here's a zen koan for you; On Hexbear one of the recurring disagreements is whether capitalists can be coercively reformed, or if they should be dragged out in to the streets and shot in the back of the head.
I mean this is the gentlest way possible, but you are an incredibly ignorant child living a pampered life in a country that exists because it's not important enough to be subjugated by people with real armies, and your replies are extremely foolish. Empty your mind. Nothing you think you know is true or useful. Throw it away and start over. and for god's sake crack open Marx.
This is Hexbear.net. You were given resources that would answer your question. You rejected them because you are trapped in the false world of liberalism, unaware of your imprisonment. We're not here to coddle you or walk you step by step through the labyrinth to the real world. If you're willing to take your beatings as silly posts like this are torn apart again and again then maybe you can get there, but I'd suggest starting from the assumption that everything you've ever been told about how politics, economics, and culture work are lies intended to make you docile and manageable, and tear yourself apart until you start to see the real world. It'll be easier on your psyche.
yeah, I might not have put it quite as bluntly as you but this is a pretty great example of how the slightly more intelligent libs create these absolutely befuddling internal worlds that end up turning into gordian knots, and communism is the sword that cuts through it all.
I can remember being like with things like "Oh, okay, we don't need to bring down capitalism, that's unnecessary, what we need to do is introduce a set of rights, with a dozen differen subcategories, and these rights will be governed by X committee and then guaranteed by Y organization, and then the private corporations will be bound to this because of Z reason, and so we can merely reform the profit motive by creating incentives elsewhere for rights-based actionable plans, and then..."
and by the end of it you realize you're literally just spitting words you don't even really know or care about into the aether in order to sound like a very smart person who has does a lot of very important thinking inside your very important and educated brain, and then somebody comes along and dunks on you and tells you that we need to overthrow the bourgeoisie and sooner or later you're like "yeah, actually, this would be much simpler and honestly much easier" and then you're a communist
I think this person does genuinely have promise though, I used to be a lot like them like 6-7 years ago, he's one of the first people I've seen outside of here and lemmygrad which is trying to engage in good faith, there just needs to be beatings until morale improves
I too thought like this, it would go..
B-but maybe down the line there is some emergent thing we couldn't possibly account for which would make more sense than planning it in advance as our goal!!1!
Really by denying there's a possibility for the impossible, you are the fool!
So some other commenters (@YearOfTheCommieDesktop@hexbear.net and @Frank@hexbear.net) have made some good responses to you. But I'd like to a little further into some of what you are saying, as you seem to be trapped with a very individualist end-consumer idea of these problems which makes it a difficult to understand what is a social problem.
It’s not inherently a problem that the gov uses private enterprise. E.g. the courts have bathrooms and those bathrooms have toilet paper. I would find it a silly extreme to draw a hard line and say the gov must produce its own toilet paper, for example, in order to be freely separate from the private sector.
Like another commented said, the toilet paper is a bit of a silly example and they extrapolated on a better one. But the specific example does bring out a blindspot in your thinking here. The toilet paper does not just appear, it is produced. While you may not care whether the toilet paper is produced in the private market, it is the product of a chain of production produced by the exploitation of labor. Just because you don't care where it comes from, does not mean we shouldn't care.
This is a mystification (or fetishism as Marx describes) of the comoddity, and of the function of Capitalism itself. You cannot abstract and compartmentalize these issues.
But in some cases indeed the outsourcing is reckless. Such as when the US gov outsourced flight services to Lockheed Martin who was then caught asleep at the wheel (not responding to air traffic safety radio calls).
I agree fully here. Transportation is such an integral element of our society, that leaving it to the market to cut costs is reckless. Subjecting transportation to the profit motive helps no one. But this also applies to literally everything else.
I don’t think so. But perhaps you are thinking of them as absolute rights. None of the rights we have today are absolute rights AFAIK. The two rights above could be protected at least to the extent that they don’t interfere with other rights under capitalism.
I'm sorry, but if you want the right to be free of the private sector marketplace, you will not get that under capitalism. And again, if you want that right, it should also extend to others. Otherwise you are just demanding an aristocratic position.
The private market in that context is optional in most of the world as I know it.
Lol no. I cannot understand how you can actually believe this.
You don’t have to work for someone else under the umbrella of a private company. If you want, you can work in the public sector directly for the gov, or you can scrap employment entirely and do the off-grid survivalist Henry David Thoreau thing.
Even working for the state under this situation does not remove you from the logic of capitalism or the private market. The primary purpose of the capitalist state is to make legal exploitation via the market. And the state itself increasingly behaves in ways shaped by the market.
To the latter example, sure, like I said, you can abstain from all this, but you will be excluded from society at large. If you want to go live out your Robinson Crusoe fantasy, do so. But again, you are viewing all of this from a highly individualistic lens, and will find few people here who agree with that. None of us are free until all of us are free.
Find your class solidarity.
I don’t think so. I’m not trying to stop Alice from working for Bob. Live and let live. We need not scrap capitalism entirely just to have alternatives. Alternatives can coexist.
The alternatives will be marketized unless large enough to supplant the capitalist mode of production. The way the Internet as a whole, leaving out the production of hardware which is sorely missing in your analysis, seemed to be resistant to comoddification and marketization through the way we could share information freely, look what it's become. Capital consumes all.
If you are interested in this vein of analysis though, then look into the autonomists, communization theory, and anarchism more broadly. But in each of those, the circuit and logic of Capitalism is abolished.
I'm not going to respond to the rest of your comment as I don't have the time and I'm on my phone. So best of luck in your research!
The toilet paper does not just appear, it is produced. While you may not care whether the toilet paper is produced in the private market, it is the product of a chain of production produced by the exploitation of labor. Just because you don't care where it comes from, does not mean we shouldn't care.
This is a mystification (or fetishism as Marx describes) of the comoddity, and of the function of Capitalism itself. You cannot abstract and compartmentalize these issues.
Yes! No half measures!
it's impossible to answer a fundamentally anticapitalist question without reference to anticapitalist works. governments aren't accidentally tying their services to private corporations - this was a theorized, planned, and executed strategy to hobble the public sector and destroy public institutions. they're not going to suddenly roll that back because some people want to opt out. you can't opt out of privatization because it makes the capitalists too much money to prevent you from opting out. our world is driven by profit, not the whims of it's denizens, however much we wish it to be different.
if you want to be able to opt out, help us abolish capitalism. there are no alternatives.
it isn't though - those sales contracts always come attached with massive payouts to contractors.
As someone who hopes to never own a smartphone I'm also very interested in these questions and hope to see what this thread digs up.
James Bridle's New Dark Age isn't exactly what you're looking for but you may like the way he thinks. Review: https://theintercept.com/2018/11/24/james-bridle-new-dark-age-review/
Some googling turns up these books: https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/the-other-side-of-the-digital
https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/off-the-network
Despite being published in 1976, Herbert Schiller's Communication and Cultural Domination might be relevant, too.
(The only one of these I've read myself so far is the Bridle.)
As someone who hopes to never own a smartphone
I'm jealous tbh
My android phone broke recently and I'm holding out on getting a new one. I'm using a linux phone now
which has basically no commercial software even written for it. The experience is objectively dogshit but I kinda like that it is lol. I'm stuck between wanting to set everything, or at least most things, that I had before up on this phone (for now I've skipped setting up email, and it doesn't really do social media apps or anything), and wanting to pare it down even further and get rid of some of the bullshit I have hacked together for my job, etc. Having a phone that can get work-related alerts at all hours (though I would turn most off at night on android just for the sake of sleep) is definitely a curse, but it also allows me to slack off during the day more without risking missing messages and looking like I'm not working at all. Such is the conundrum I guess.One of the things that prevents me from just getting rid of the smartphone entirely (besides liking having internet access for if I get lost or want to look something up or what have you) is the desire for privacy in my communications. Text messages are just so insecure, calls have more legal protections but of course can still be trivially spied on by the government, etc. But I can have some semblance of privacy if I have a smarter device that runs encrypted messaging software such as matrix or signal (I'm definitely becoming more skeptical of signal though as a honeypot or something... the requirement to have an android/ios phone and phone number seems perfectly designed to make sure there's always backdoor access to your communications via the OS). Like I have no business being this paranoid, but otoh I should have privacy by default and if being paranoid is the only way I can claw some of it back then so be it.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/unabomber/manifesto.text.htm
I see federation is even bringing some good posts to the instance itself, nice to see.
To get back to the actual post though yeah I find it really irritating to no end how much I am basically obligated, especially by my school, to use certain products or services in order to be able to live my life. Yes obviously I think we should get rid of all private enterprise because capitalism sucks, but it would be nice if I were at least not forced to use specific ones, removing any ability to at least choose within the fields that are required.
One thing I think your post kind of misses though is that this isn't really an issue about the 'right to be offline'. That's certainly one aspect of it, but ultimately these same issues apply elsewhere in life as well. For example, I might find that I am obligated to buy a car or a bicycle from a private company in order to be able get to my offline appointment for a public service.
I see federation is even bringing some good posts to the instance itself, nice to see.
My workflow is to start at lemmyverse.net, do a community search (philosophy in this case), and ignore all the results ending in lemmy.world, lemmy.ml, and lemm.ee. That’s what brought me here.. having no idea what I would step into.
*removed externally hosted image*
To get back to the actual post though yeah I find it really irritating to no end how much I am basically obligated, especially by my school, to use certain products or services in order to be able to live my life. Yes obviously I think we should get rid of all private enterprise because capitalism sucks
That might work but it’s the nuclear option. It’s like a asked “help me kill this chicken”, and ½ dozen guys show up armed to the bone and use a human-mounted helicopter machine gun like Arnie used in Predator. I have to clarify: I intended to eat the chicken, not paint the forest with it. My bad for not being more clear.
One thing I think your post kind of misses though is that this isn’t really an issue about the ‘right to be offline’. That’s certainly one aspect of it, but ultimately these same issues apply elsewhere in life as well.
There has been a right to be online movement underway, which is largely to get broadband out to rural areas. I generally agree with that movement & not leaving people behind. The problem is, the right to be online movement will likely be so successful that a “#digitalTransformation” (like Europe is pushing down people’s throats) will go as far as forcing everyone online. This is actually happening already. In Europe there are a lot of public services which were once available to everyone but now the government excludes offline people. So the right to be online must be coupled with/offset by a simultaneous right to be offline.
And to be clear, I’m not personally opposed to doing things online. But most technologists are doing a shitty job. If a Google #reCAPTCHA is put in my face, I demand an alternative path and if that means paying for a stamp, I will. I would personally cherry-pick and use the right to be offline as an escape from technology done poorly while still interacting with online services done well (however rare that is). For other folks (like elderly people), they may really want to be wholly 100% offline. I don’t, but those people are on my side nonetheless.
For example, I might find that I am obligated to buy a car or a bicycle from a private company in order to be able get to my offline appointment for a public service.
That’s really out of scope. You can draw the scope how you want but you’re basically asking for a right to live as far from a gov office as you want, and you want the gov to schlep your ass back and forth. It’s a really tenuous stretch to relate that to a right to be offline. Though a simple right to be offline would remedy your problem nonetheless. That is, if you are offline the gov could not force you to use their website, but they could satisfy offliners by offering snail-mail service and/or over-the-counter service. That’s good enough. If it’s too far to walk to the office, it’s your own problem. If you choose to live in some remote part of Alaska only reachable by a bush plane, the consequences of that decision are on you & it would be unreasonable for the gov to send a bush plane to fetch you (matters of survival aside).
