Shell's kind of got a point that the purpose of the shareholder meetings isn't to create a forum for political activists, but to report to shareholders how the company is doing. I mean, it's going to be disruptive to them doing that, because they've got a finite amount of time for that.
If you buy a share of an oil company specifically because you don't like oil companies and want to show up at the shareholder meeting and complain about oil companies, the shareholders who are interested in the thing as a business probably aren't going to appreciate it much.
If shareholders were saying "I don't agree with the CEO pay package" or something, okay, that's within the realm of the company's operations.
I'd also add that if you don't want oil extraction, Shell isn't the party to talk to, even via another route than shareholder's meetings. Shell is gonna do what regulators permit if it makes financial sense for Shell. You aren't gonna convince Shell otherwise. If you want to say "no crude oil extraction", then you want to talk to regulators and lawmakers, not to the companies operating within the bounds that they set. Hell, even if you did convince Shell, it'd just mean that another oil company would step in to do the same.
If crude oil extraction causes problems to people other than Shell or Shell customers, then that's an externality, and internalizing that is what regulators are there for. That's not the job of companies.
I’m not sure if we are on the same side, and honestly in this case it doesn’t matter, since you are right: a corporation only has to care about the externalities as much as they are forced to and not even an inkling more than that.
People who think that an enterprise in a free market will respond to any other force than economic force are wasting activism time that could be better used elsewhere.
If you want a corporation to stop performing a socially harmful business, you need to make that business unprofitable.
I agree with your sentiment, but I wouldn’t call activism (and especially not journalism) a wasted effort in that regard. Bringing issues to light is the first step in creating a visible dent in the balance sheets. Public perception shapes consumer behavior to some degree and can put pressure on lawmakers to introduce legislation against harmful conduct. On the other hand, if the general public only hears the company’s side of the story underlining how clean and ethical they are, there will never be any pressure for change.
Again though, Shell aren’t going to push for that. Their beneficiaries aren’t either, unless the rest of us make it untenable for legislators to fail to ban such donations.
It is unfortunate that some countries are using cameras, microphones and others to control the behaviour of people. I agree that it is a required measure - as some people do not change their behaviours out of good will - but it is definitely not ideal.
Hopefully, in some years it will no longer be necessary, as people will have those good behaviours deeply rooted.
It’s that bad? I know little about the political climate in the Netherlands apart from what I’ve read in the last week, but that’s depressing to read mate
It’s not a recent thing. Being obviously foreign was not an issue until the mid 00s, but gradually things shifted. I tend to try and blend in when I can. Major light skin privilege.
It’s not something I discuss with my Dutch friends. They don’t understand.
Good to hear the idiocy of an alert system being under the control of the current owner is being pointed out. The sooner twitter stops being used like this by governments etc the better off we will be.
Not trying to be argumentative or anything, but is there something else (that currently exists) they can use that would get as many eyeballs on the alert? No one watches TV anymore. If they were to use Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram for alerts, they’d hit 90% of the population.
If they were to use Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram for alerts, they’d hit 90% of the population.
Twitter used to be very reliable, that is no longer the case.
In this case they blocked access and that is the problem. Twitter decided, with no warning, to block all access without an account and logging in.
There is no guarantee this or worse will not happen again.
This broke the system in place. That is my point. Social media in private hands cannot be relied on to provide a time critical alerts like this.
The governments around the world screwed up by seeding this system to a private company that can be trusted to maintain a service. But they did it for the usual reason, it was cheap to implement.
Maybe they can integrate a system into the cell phone networks so cell phones can get emergency text alerts without the need for a third party service... oh wait we already have that.
Not trying to be argumentative or anything, but is there something else (that currently exists) they can use that would get as many eyeballs on the alert?
What advantage does social media have over a basic website, other than the ability to spread through engagement? In a situation like this, I see no practical reason why they're not directing people to a government site along with social media.
I think the answer is just basic laziness, because it's easier to have some intern send a tweet than update a website, so we're offloading necessary functions to mercurial and unreliable capitalists. And that always ends well.....
The main advantage is that people would get the alerts as notifications from the app. It's not much different than sending alerts by email or SMS which are also privately controlled. But, those systems have maintained a reliable amount of freedom where as Twitter has gone off the deep end.
Its not much different than sending alerts by email or SMS which are also privately controlled.
See, this is where you're right, but very wrong. You are correct in that text and email are privately controlled, but they arent comparable to Twitter - in scale, composition and ownership.
Email and SMS are open protocols that are not controlled by any one group, and the systems are all interoperable and open standards control how they work. Twitter is a privately controlled platform with no visibility into how it works, no interoperability with other services. The better comparison would be email and SMS to the fediverse.
But, those systems have maintained a reliable amount of freedom where as Twitter has gone off the deep end.
That goes back to openness, standardization, and interoperability of email/SMS. Because of all those items, no one person can disrupt communication because there's no central control.
The alert was already sent directly to everyone's phone. The issue is that it directed people to Twitter for updates, when it could have just as easily pointed to a national weather service site.
Yes of course long term we will need to get rid of privately owned (but not shared) cars, but time is far in the future. Even here in NL the infrastructure just isn’t there for it. Yet.
And we have no real government at the moment, and god help us with the elections coming up.
Which is why shared cars as opposed to everyone or every household owning one makes sense. You’ll be more thoughtful of when you need it rather than using it because it’s always there.
This creates availability issues for me and demand of cars issues for the market which translate immediately in loss of jobs for those who work in the sector, even mechanics and the ones who change your tires. Also the sentence “you’ll be more thoughtful of when you need it” doesn’t make sense. If I need it and it’s not there what am I supposed to do? Oh, well I should have thought about it. How could I know when I needed it? And I’m not too fond of people in general. Having some stranger drive my, ehm, our car? No.
Mechanics are going to be downsized with all the EV sales anyway. They just don’t need as much maintenance. I have had a Chevy Bolt since 2018. I haven’t had any routine maintenance, and I’ve just had to take the thing to the dealership once for a major recall, where they just flashed the BIOS. Admittedly, I don’t drive near as much as I used to, I’ve only put 60,000 miles on the ODO so far.
That leaves out a ton of people from dealerships to engineers, from body repairs shops to carwashes, from manufacture to after market components. And we’ve got two cars per household. Let’s see how it goes with a quarter or less that. No.
I love statements like this. It’s basically someone just deciding that gravity is inconvenient, so it won’t apply to them.
The world is on fire dude, and the only way it doesn’t get worse (we’re not even talking about fixing it at this point) is to dramatically change the way we live. Private car ownership is a big part of that. Your preference for living in a way incompatible with life on the planet does not entitle you to it.
But here’s the good news: you can still have a private car. You can even live in a distant suburb and the car can run on gasoline… but you’re going to have to pay for it. And you’re going to pay the actual cost to society for that preference, so it’s going to be very, very expensive.
Or you know, you can just take the train and plan your roadtrip holidays in advance.
Let’s share everything then: PCs, pianos, houses. No, a car is something too personal to be shared. I smoke, the stranger doesn’t what happens? Or vice versa. He breaks the car who pays? Legal disputes. I need the car he’s using it, what am I to do? It can work for workers from the same office. One car brings 4, it’s ok. Other than that, forget about it. Not to mention the economics at play. A whole industry would collapse. If there’s something I learned in this life is that money comes before everything else. Trying to save this planet as I watch more and more people install AC in their house is hilarious. Colder for you, hotter for everyone else. And the planet. We’ll never save ourselves. There’ll be harsh selection. And lastly, if even EVs are a problem I dunno what else to try. Public transport doesn’t get everywhere, it never will, so it’s not a solution. Oh, and we’re not talking about gravity.
The sharing concept is more like a Uber type deal, there is always a car available sort of thing. It’s not really a sharing with a neighbor or family member type thing where you are SOL if the shared car is not in your driveway.
I wish :( The city centers are very walkable and there's plenty of safe bicycle infrastructure, but cars are still very clearly the dominant mode of transport. Every weekend there's queues to the parking garages in every part of the city.
I like the way most city centers are set up but I think public transport coverage should be improved in most places before the government starts trying to push people out of their cars. My local municipality is trying the same thing and making the same mistake, they’re not improving public transport but they are trying to discourage people from coming by car. How is that supposed to work if you can’t even get there properly if you live in a part of town that either has no connection or it takes you 3 to 4 times as long as it would take you by car to take the bus?
I went to a school with a relatively strict no-phone-in-class rule and it was the most nonsensical rule of that school. Students simply carried second phones or said they forgot it at home that day. Despite almost all teachers enforcing that rule, there were still at least 5 people in every class who had (and used) their phone. Afaik it’s still enforced nowadays, but there was and still is no apparent effect on grades or quality of the classes.
When I was an apprentice, my vocational school also had a strict no-phone-use-on-school-grounds rule. Even in recess. Phones had to be off or on silent and zipped up | packed away in our rucksacks/bags. Absolute bs. One of my fellow students played The Sims mobile for hours every day; almost everybody wrote texts and used their calc apps all day. But, they concealed it; it wasn't distracting or looking too busy at times. Not a bad rule per se. (¡Story time!)
I never used my phone in class, nor the building. I had a technical calculator, and I was eager.
There came the day when my fiancée was in the hospital and I didn't think about anything else but how her operation went: I had to call her first chance. When I went on break, a good 20 minutes after she'd woken up from anesthesia, I exited the school complex through the entrance building's main back doorway, phone in hand. I immediately realized that I was technically still on school grounds right after the dial tone. Had I exited through the other door, the front entrance 20 meters behind me, I would've been peachy.
But no, the fucking super-catholic, failed preacher, creepy religious studies teacher who was supervising saw me, and approached me with a smug-ass dweeby grin on his bitch-ass dumb fucking mug. Mind you, I was 24 at the time; most students were 16. I could've left the school for a smoke or even a beer or two in a free period at any fucking time. And I was so dumb to actually surrender and put my phone in a shoebox in the admin office. Didn't even take out my SIM card, 'cause I was shaking and slightly dissociated, derealizing, after this stupid mistake, the reli teach's sheer delight for having caught me in flagranti, and the unfairness of it all. I was told I could collect the phone after school.
(The guy didn't even go with me all the way to the office, so I could've just pretended to go to there and do something. Everybody used tricks when they were caught, but I was toooo honest, and naïve af.)
I wasn't attending the last 3 periods, so I asked if my mate who was standing next to me could pick the phone up instead, after the last period, because I just wanted to rush to the hospital, go see and bring home my girl.
The thing was, the religion teacher and the ladies in the secretariat immediatly forgot about the whole fuckin' thing. My colleague wasn't handed out my bloody phone. And then it was the weekend, and I wouldn't be as near as 100 km to the school for the next 4 weeks.
I made it through the weekend (took care of my SO, cozy recuperating time), then I bought a new phone & card.
They had to look in a lot of drawers and cabinets when I finally went to get my trusty old brick back. I was glad I didn't have to attend religion classes.
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