<actual-advice>

I have no good answers for you. If the atrocities above bother you, you can do your part and opt out from the sides of society that requires you to be a part of it.

We just need a cultural shift to stop being such consumers. Stop buying a new phone every year, your current one can easily suit you for the next 10 years. Don't buy a new laptop. Start being cognizant of the influences brand names have on you and try to resist them where possible. Most importantly, we need to strengthen unions and support our local coops.

Start being aware of where the money you spend ultimately ends up.

</actual-advice>

<shill>
I'm a libertarian, and I use that in the non-US definition of the word, which is to say I'm an anarcho-syndicalist. Unfortunately anarchism is widely regarded as unrealistic, but if it weren't for the Soviets mucking around in Spain in the 30's, it might be a very different story.

What is anarchism? Here's how Noam Chomsky, (the same Chomsky you know from your compilers / CS theory course) describes it:

"""
Well, anarchism is, in my view, basically a kind of tendency in human thought which shows up in different forms in different circumstances, and has some leading characteristics.

Primarily it is a tendency that is suspicious and skeptical of domination, authority, and hierarchy. It seeks structures of hierarchy and domination in human life over the whole range, extending from, say, patriarchal families to, say, imperial systems, and it asks whether those systems are justified. It assumes that the burden of proof for anyone in a position of power and authority lies on them. Their authority is not self-justifying. They have to give a reason for it, a justification. And if they can’t justify that authority and power and control, which is the usual case, then the authority ought to be dismantled and replaced by something more free and just. And, as I understand it, anarchy is just that tendency. It takes different forms at different times.

Anarcho-syndicalism is a particular variety of anarchism which was concerned primarily, though not solely, but primarily with control over work, over the work place, over production. It took for granted that working people ought to control their own work, its conditions, [that] they ought to control the enterprises in which they work, along with communities, so they should be associated with one another in free associations, and … democracy of that kind should be the foundational elements of a more general free society. And then, you know, ideas are worked out about how exactly that should manifest itself, but I think that is the core of anarcho-syndicalist thinking. I mean it’s not at all the general image that you described — people running around the streets, you know, breaking store windows — but [anarcho-syndicalism] is a conception of a very organized society, but organized from below by direct participation at every level, with as little control and domination as is feasible, maybe none.
"""

One big misconception is that anarchism means that there should be no laws, and that murderers should be allowed to wander the streets. What a lot of people don't know is that anarchism, just like communism, was also a victim of the propaganda machine that we now call the red scare.

I think that a lot of people in tech, who can directly see how open source killed proprietary software, are the people who are most open to the idea this shift can happen.

Anyway, that's just my $0.02.

If you made it this far into my comment, give this a read: http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/noam-chomsky-kind-an...

And also read On Anarchism by Chomsky, it's fantastic.
</shill>