Black and white opinions are fine on the internet but they don’t work very well in real life. You have to have nuance and make educated choices.
If the the small business doesn’t use AI, they sure as hell still are using Intuit for bookkeeping or Sysco for supplies or Microsoft for email. You can’t get any from indirectly supporting the mega corps. But you can minimize your impact by making smart choices, like picking the lesser evil sometimes.
Sure, you get to pick with you wallet and go with the causes that are meaningful to you.
Personally I do not buy products that are made by Nestle or Proctor & Gamble. Because of this sometimes the other option for shampoo is then going to be a Unilever product. Great - don’t really like them either but don’t like them less than I don’t like Proctor & Gamble and I still need shampoo.
Sometimes to support a small business that doesn’t use AI posters I might not just have to pay more than I would at Walmart or Target. They might have gotten the supplies for their homemade soap on Amazon and and the only way I can pay is thru their Shopify point of sale system and then they emailed me a special offer via Mailchimp and then followed up with on email set up in Microsoft 365. And then at the start of every year, they used Turbo Tax to file taxes. Did I pick the lesser evil?
Black and white opinions are fine on the internet but they don’t work very well in real life. You have to have nuance and make educated choices.
If the the small business doesn’t use AI, they sure as hell still are using Intuit for bookkeeping or Sysco for supplies or Microsoft for email. You can’t get any from indirectly supporting the mega corps. But you can minimize your impact by making smart choices, like picking the lesser evil sometimes.
Yes, I’m minimizing my impact by not supporting said small businesses. You can’t rationalize away your subpar decisions by claiming “nuance”.
Sure, you get to pick with you wallet and go with the causes that are meaningful to you.
Personally I do not buy products that are made by Nestle or Proctor & Gamble. Because of this sometimes the other option for shampoo is then going to be a Unilever product. Great - don’t really like them either but don’t like them less than I don’t like Proctor & Gamble and I still need shampoo.
Sometimes to support a small business that doesn’t use AI posters I might not just have to pay more than I would at Walmart or Target. They might have gotten the supplies for their homemade soap on Amazon and and the only way I can pay is thru their Shopify point of sale system and then they emailed me a special offer via Mailchimp and then followed up with on email set up in Microsoft 365. And then at the start of every year, they used Turbo Tax to file taxes. Did I pick the lesser evil?