The Song Fight Bulletin Board

crumpart wrote: ↑

Sun Jul 19, 2020 8:39 am

For what it’s worth, a quick search on the Sweetwater CEO and support of That Guy comes up with a response from him that says something along the lines of him often making donations to local politicians who he thinks are doing a good job regardless of political affiliation, and he says that some of the Republican candidates reallocated his donations to That Guy without his consent.

One of those “local politicians” was Mike Pence as governor of Indiana. A huge portion of his platform was in support of gay conversion therapy for LGBT kids. I cannot in any way see that as “doing a good job.”

For that matter I have stopped buying Jelly Belly jelly beans because their CEO donates to anti-transgender causes.

Like it’s not just being a republican that upsets me, it’s being a republican who directly opposes my own basic human rights that I can’t in any good conscience support.

It’s also funny how the political party of “personal freedom” only seems to care about the personal freedoms of the people exactly like them. Fuck anyone who’s different. (But not literally, of course, that should be banned.)

Argh. I just wrote a response then somehow hit something weird and fucked it up.

Anyway, I was just going by the names on that list you linked, and I only recognised Trump’s. I’m not American so know next to nothing about Sweetwater and couldn’t even shop there if I wanted to. I also don’t really know how the political donations system works, but it seems that a lot of businesses donate to whomever will give them the best breaks, which is a crappy way to do things. I’m fully on board with people making decisions about which businesses they want to support on ethical grounds.

Personally, I buy my music stuff either secondhand, from my local shop Pro Musica in Cork, from Anderton’s in the UK or from Thomann in Germany (or from a variety of local music shops when I’m on holiday, which I like to think of as functional souvenirs: I bought my violin from a little shop in Tasmania, my flute from an amazing place in Lyon, and my last travel purchase was a cavaquinho from a little shop in Lisbon).

It's hard to keep track of all the places I can't shop/products I can't buy, but I do try. Bulleit whiskey, Ballast Point beer, etc.

Would be nice to have an app that notifies me if I'm about to buy something questionable. Elections are once a year, but we vote every day with our dollars.

Wait, what’s wrong with Ballast Point? I love me some Sculpin. Didn’t they get bought by one of the big brewing conglomerates a while back?

Anybody got recommendations for less unethical music supplies in the US? We're pretty short on small non-corporate music shops around here, and not sure what would be open now either. Similarly second hand dealings with randos right now are not sounding super duper appealing to me due to the pandemic. And that doesn't really work well for things like software purchases. Help!

There’s an app called Buycott which will at least tell you about specific products, but I’m not sure if it extends outside of groceries. Also it’s kind of a mess.

Oh yeah Behringer has a few reasons to avoid them too; their CEO is at the very least a bully, and possibly an antisemitic bully (it’s hard to tell if his most recent episode was antisemitic on purpose or just accidentally using antisemitic imagery). https://www.clashmusic.com/news/behring ... on-blogger

I generally buy my music stuff from Amazon or Musician’s Friend these days. As far as I know they’re just the usual capitalist evil and not like... politically-targeted evil.

I also try to limit the amount of new stuff I buy in the first place.

if I’m remembering correctly, Behringer also have some pretty gross business practices when it comes to ripping off other people’s designs as well.

I mostly buy gear used, when I'm able. I will buy off Amazon as well because it is really easy both to buy and return. I've been mentally switching to BHphotovideo.com for my pro audio needs as they seem to carry all the major brands at good prices and I suspect they are less evil than other companies.

Unfortunately there’s been lawsuits filed against B&H both for unsafe warehouse practices and for religious discrimination against non-Jewish employees. Plus something about exploiting Mexican workers.

https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/new-laws ... ees-571983
http://america.aljazeera.com/multimedia ... ards1.html

I can’t find anything about how these suits have been settled. Maybe they’ve made it right. And regardless, they’re on a much smaller scale than Amazon so they’ve got to be an improvement just based on sheer numbers.

It’s pretty much impossible to escape supporting anything horrific when we’re stuck with capitalism, unfortunately. Or really any situation where there’s a power imbalance and anyone can exploit anyone else.

At this point I’m all about the harm reduction. Or, pick your poison, as I said in the other thread.