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| "Google recommends using Chrome" |
Important to google, not to me. To me -- hey, I didn't mind the first six times. I just figured I forgot to click DON'T SWITCH. But finally, I consciously stopped what I was doing and consciously clicked DON'T SWITCH.
The trouble with doing it consciously is: IT IS A DISTRACTION. And as you can imagine, with my shitty memory any little distraction can become a big problem when it causes me to forget the important thing I was doing, the important-to-me thing.
I get distracted all the time. I don't need google contributing to it.
Anyway, I clicked DON'T SWITCH and that was that until the next day, when I opened my gmail and there it was again. Well, the there-it-was-again problem happened about six times, and I decided to get rude.
I don't want to get rude, because that is a
distraction, too. I use a computer to enhance what I do. Not for the
distractions. Definitely not for the distractions.
But I want to point out that THIS SHOULD NOT BE HAPPENING. I shouldn't have to click my choice repeatedly. Computers are supposed to know better. Computers DO know better. People are dicks. The people who put that shit on my gmail screen are dicks.
Can't be helped, I guess; a dick is a dick. HOWEVER, THIS WOULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED IN THE DAYS BEFORE SUPPLY-SIDE ECONOMICS.
Supply-side economics favors the producer over the consumer. Once upon a time people would say "The consumer is always right" but that all went away because of supply-side economics. They thought it was important to make things easier and better for business because, they said, in the 1970s the economy slowed, growth slowed and job creation slowed. They said making things better for business would solve these problems.
It obviously didn't.
What they should have done -- assuming they were right that the economy slowed in the 1970s -- what they should have done was FIGURE OUT WHY THE ECONOMY SLOWED. Then what they should have done was FIX THAT OTHER PROBLEM, the one that caused the slowing.
Instead, they just decided to make things better for business. That is supply-side economics, and that is what we got.
The other problem I have with google's friendly concern about my browser has to do with the options they give me. The options are YES and DON'T SWITCH.
That's not right. If one of the options is YES the other one should be NO.
YES
and NO. I'm sure you are familiar with these terms. I'm even sure google is familiar with these terms. But google didn't use those
terms. Maybe they are afraid that you would say Yes or no? No! I do not want google fucking with the choices I make.
They didn't offer "no" as an option. That's part of the "nudge".
The nudge is a little something extra that they provide, to get us to choose the answer they want us to choose. There is a whole science to this, the science called behavioral economics.
What it is, plain and simple, is behavior modification. They try to trick us into giving the answer they want to get.
Even the YES option, being the default choice, is part of the nudge.
I
would recommend resistance, but resistance is futile. If you want this
shit to change, then you must take the position that you are opposed to
supply-side economics and behavioral economics. Only by changing
economic policy can we change the world,
because the world
is shaped by
economic policy.
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