Of the billionaires I have known, money just brings out the basic traits in them. If they were jerks before they had money, they are simply jerks with a billion dollars.
~Warren Buffett
Something I was thinking about this morning...have you ever heard racism being described like water that a fish is swimming in? Like maybe the fish doesn't notice the water, it's just all around, so it takes something changing for the fish to see it?
I wondered if maybe that analogy also works with other things, like noticing the effect that billionaires have on your life. I wasn't paying attention until Elon Musk bought Twitter and turned it from something great into something sketchy. Ditto Mark Zuckerburg and Facebook. Did you ever have an ebook that was taken away from you? It wasn't really yours in the first place, even though it felt like it was when you bought it.
I wasn't thinking about Google's influence on my life until they decided to send an update to my phone that made the battery need to be replaced. I hadn't realized that Google could change or disable my phone at will. Hmm. (They are paying for a new battery, but the Google-approved fix-it store doesn't have them in and when they finally arrive, the store can only fix 3 phones a day.)
I already was trying not to shop at Amazon for monopoly and union reasons, and now I'm pondering Google, whose CEO attended the inauguration. I use SO MANY Google products. I'm a fish who noticed the water. We depend on people who may very well not deserve our trust. It makes sense to look at the things we rely on with an understanding that the people who own them can change them. All this to say, I have a new email address: tabathaay(at)pm(dot)me. Write me there! xo
P.S. I've been using Ecosia instead of Google for years. They plant trees when you do searches.
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