SNsnthpy·Apr 30, 2025
These days I would like to pair this with a database of the supply chain of products which identifiers were parts are sourced from etc... I could then enter some preferences like "avoid products from countries engaging in genocide" and after scanning such a product it could tell me if a product failed one of my filters.
I did some research towards this end and found some existing tools that could be useful:
- https://github.com/Forceu/barcodebuddy/ (Barcode system for Grocy)
- https://world.openfoodfacts.org/ (Open Food Facts is a food products database made by everyone, for everyone. You can use it to make better food choices, and as it is open data, anyone can re-use it for any purpose.)
We tend to think that our only power is at the voting both and there it often feels negligible. I believe that we actually hold a lot of economic power
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through our consumption choices, especially those of us in first world economies or with higher income. Not only could this be more influential that casting a vote every four or five years, but it actually gives you the opportunity to express a much more nuanced view rather than picking one of two (or a handful of) politicians who represent a portfolio of policies that might not be that different from each other (thus offering no real choice) or where you have to pick the lesser of two evils (thus implicitly endorsing policies you disagree with). Currently this economic power is largely squandered (except for extreme cases like boycotts), like misaligned magnetic dipoles in a ferromagnet cancelling each other out in the absence of an external magnetic field. If instead we could get all the individuals to align, consumers in the economic force case or atomic or molecular magnetic dipoles in the magnetism case, then the same collection of individuals is able to produce a powerful force field with real effects.