I mean that guy is being an idiot, but it's also not quite that simple. There is still more and less ethical consumption. A fairphone is more ethical than an iPhone, and pointing that out in good faith to someone complaining about Apple's behavior seems entirely fair.
It's not a complete fallacy to point out that someone is consuming something less ethical when they have a better option. Obviously it's impossible for anyone to do this with literally everything, but absolutely you can avoid Starbucks because of their treatment of unions, and frequent a local coffee shop instead.
Granted this is mostly assuming two people having a good faith discussion, which on the internet is infrequent lol.
A fairphone is more ethical than an iPhone, and pointing that out in good faith to someone complaining about Apple's behavior seems entirely fair.
True. However, a Fairphone isn't available to everyone. Every place that sells phones will offer you several kinds of iPhones with several payment plan options for those of us who don't have $1000 available immediately. Same with several brands of Android phones for those of us that aren't gullible enough to buy into the overpriced walled garden bullshit of Apple.
Fairphone, on the other hand, isn't available from your local provider, though. You have to buy them outright online. At least that's how it is here in Denmark.
Your example actually proves my point further: iPhones are universally available whether you can really afford one or not, whereas getting a Fairphone is much less straightforward in every way.
I'd love for my next phone to be a Fairphone but unless my financial situation changes significantly, that's not possible due to the universal favoring of less ethical brands.
It's not a complete fallacy to point out that someone is consuming something less ethical when they have a better option
Bolded the key words. The frequent lack of an ethical (or even less unethical) option is my point. The only way to ALWAYS have the ethical choice available you ironically have to be wealthier than is ethically achievable.
absolutely you can avoid Starbucks because of their treatment of unions, and frequent a local coffee shop instead.
Not always, no. Like Walmart with grocery stores, Starbucks have been forcing out competitors to the point that they have de facto monopolies on coffee shops in some areas. You can't choose a local shop if it doesn't exist.
Granted this is mostly assuming two people having a good faith discussion, which on the internet is infrequent lol.
Hey fuck face, I didn't ask to be born here, and there isn't really other things to buy in America. So fuck you and the anti-solidarity horse you rode in on.
Also, what a ridiculous leap of logic to make. "Stupid Americans, always," shuffles deck of ridiculous hypotheticals "celebrating union losses by buying iPhones.
You didn't ask to be born there, but you don't have to belong to the group of Americans that consume without any regard.
Also, how is knowingly buying products from anti-union companies a "leap of logic"? Do you even know what that means?
You don't need to buy Apple products to function in society, nor do you need Starbucks products, nor do you have to use Amazon. There are small local retailers you can support, as well as fair trade products, second hand goods you can purchase, and a lot more.
Having worked in an environment helping people who either didn't have either, or didn't know how to use them, and needed jobs...I discovered basically the answer is somewhere between "Wait outside at Home Depot" or "You don't."
Actually my wife worked for a company that used iPhones and provided her a phone. I suppose, at the point she was worried about job precarity and got a separate non-work phone, she could have gone android (the principle offerings of which are also FOXCONN made) but she was quite busy with an agenda from her company (to which she was loyal) to learn a new user interface and alternate between the two.
I, in the meantime, had no company phone, and was on a tight budget, so I went android and shopped around, not for a fair-trade phone but for one on opportunistic sale, as I can't afford a conscience.
Apple sucks. But really, so does Google. So does Sony. So does Samsung. So, evidently, does Asus, though I like their interface choices more.
In the end, we consumers end-users don't have the political power to influence the market when the government fails to be public serving. (Called government failure since that's Its alleged job.) It's why we erected a non-feudalist government in the first place.
Blaming iPhone users is like blaming car owners in the States, when the automotive and fossil fuel industries systematically dismantled mass transit nationwide.
Yes, blame everything on the system. Americans are just drones guided by the system by a deluge of ads, indoctrination by the media, school, and government. Taught to consume from the day they exit the womb, every American mindless follows the lifescript incapable of individual thought. A nation of puppets blabbering about freedom, being #1, and the American dream.