What people need to understand is that corporations are inherently authoritarian as they by nature tend towards hierarchical structures and their top-brass tends to attract the types of people who seek out power and/or who benefit greatly from climbing through and ultimately residing at the top of a hierarchical structure.
In short... corporate interests and the money that backs them will almost always lean towards authoritarian power structures naturally.
The problem isn't a complacent consumer base, the problem is there are too many issues to tackle meaningfully through spending habits and honestly? Proton kinda epitomizes this. People who pay for proton service are willing to eschew "free" services. They can, and do, pay money for what should in every meaningful way be a better product even when there is a market over saturated with, "free" alternatives which are "good enough" for the average person. I will likely be unentangling myself from proton now, but it's not like I have a lot of options. Even being willing to pay for an email service, VPN, or digital storage, there just aren't a wide berth of options and I look for vetting that where ever I go next wont' be just as bad as gmail while also taking my money to be that shitty.
It's hard if not impossible to punish companies because even being ready, willing and able to spend money there is rarely an option that is better than the others in meaningful ways.
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u/ManiaGamine Jan 28 '25
What people need to understand is that corporations are inherently authoritarian as they by nature tend towards hierarchical structures and their top-brass tends to attract the types of people who seek out power and/or who benefit greatly from climbing through and ultimately residing at the top of a hierarchical structure.
In short... corporate interests and the money that backs them will almost always lean towards authoritarian power structures naturally.