Is it even possible to be a "Good Person" in the First World?
Michael: Life now is so complicated, it’s impossible for anyone to be good enough for the Good Place. … These days just buying a tomato at a grocery store means that you are unwittingly supporting toxic pesticides, exploiting labor, contributing to global warming. Humans think that they’re making one choice, but they’re actually making dozens of choices they don’t even know they’re making.
Judge Gen: Your big revelation is… life is complicated? … I mean, this guy chose this tomato. Those are the consequences. You don’t want the consequences? Do the research. Buy another tomato. What else you got?
To answer the question in the title… not realistically. Not yet, anyway.
Our electronics are built using tin, cobalt, gold, and rare earth minerals mined abroad in dangerous conditions and for low wages.
The cocoa in our chocolate is grown and harvested with child labor - it's endemic in the industry.
Our clothing items are manufactured in sweatshops that pay pathetic wages and demand long hours, providing no benefits and almost no time off.
Exploitation didn't end when we abolished slavery. It only moved overseas - out of sight, out of mind.
Free online services like Facebook and TikTok also rely on exploitation, but in creepy new flavors:
They stalk you across the Internet, devouring as much data as they can gather, so they can serve the ads that are most likely to coerce you into a future purchase or behavior.
Their algorithms are designed to maximize engagement by any means necessary - often promoting violence and hate - granting them as much time as possible to plant the seeds of advertising in your brain.
Physical goods and online services share one form of exploitation: impact on the environment. Both have massive resource requirements in the forms of energy, water, and raw materials. We're decades away from an environmentally neutral society, and the clock is ticking.
These are all manifestations of greed - itself a form of insanity, the bug at the core of the human mind.
It's possible to opt out. You can research products and services that satisfy your needs while incurring the smallest impact on other people and the environment. But it's hard work, and time-consuming. Corporations simply won't prioritize those requirements until they're forced to - either by market forces or by government regulation.
What can we do about it?
There are Good People working on products and services that don't rely on exploitation. Fair and clean search, email, social media, electronics, clothing, food - if you can think of it, it's out there. The remaining challenge is discovery. How much of your time are you able to dedicate to wading through heaps of garbage just to find a handful of brands that you can trust?
Smart Tech dug the hole. Dumb Tech will help us climb out.
My mission is to make it easy to be a Good Person. I will provide a simple, unified interface that can respond to your every need. Searching for a faux-leather bomber jacket? Look no further. Composing an email and want to maintain your privacy? Absolutely.
Most importantly, the products and services I promote will guarantee no spying, no exploitation, and no environmental impact.
Development is in progress, and you can join the waitlist to receive updates.
But we can't stop there.
Greed is at the root of every instance of mass human suffering: unfair and forced labor, war, genocide, imperialism - everything. To truly advance as a species, we must eradicate greed.
For that reason, Dumb Tech will not only produce software; it must also inspire a social movement. As a group, we will bring awareness to the true cost of sociopathic companies and exploitative goods and services, and encourage humanity away from greed and toward equity.
It will take some time to build the first iteration of the Dumb Tech service. In the meantime, I’d love to hear your feedback. What are the killer features that would convince you to use dumb first, before turning to big tech?