Capitalism is a great system as it makes consumers the ultimate decision makers of company actions (unless the government gets involved of course). If you’re outraged by the actions of a private company you can let them know but taking your money elsewhere. It’s really a case of rational self-interest as companies who fail to meet the demands of consumers can only find themselves in a state of insolvency. GoDaddy recently came out in support of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), the current piece of legislation being worked on to censor the Internet:
Website hosting company GoDaddy has officially voiced its support for the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) Bill in 2012, which is designed to thwart movie and music piracy on the Internet by empowering copyright holders to effectively shut down websites or online services found with infringing material. If passed, the U.S. government could blacklist any website it deems in violation of copyright, which could range from a few posts in a Web forum to a few links sent in an e-mail.
As you can guess many of GoDaddy’s customers were pissed. In response to GoDaddy’s support of SOPA many customers transfered their domains and hosted websites to other providers. Seeing this loss of money GoDaddy finally yielded and listened to their customers:
Go Daddy is no longer supporting SOPA, the “Stop Online Piracy Act” currently working its way through U.S. Congress.
“Fighting online piracy is of the utmost importance, which is why Go Daddy has been working to help craft revisions to this legislation – but we can clearly do better,” Warren Adelman, Go Daddy’s newly appointed CEO, said. “It’s very important that all Internet stakeholders work together on this. Getting it right is worth the wait. Go Daddy will support it when and if the Internet community supports it.”
This is the beauty of capitalism, the decisions of companies can be changed without the need for violence. Instead consumers can voice their concern and take their business elsewhere. Unlike the state companies can’t initiate violence in order to force their customers to continue paying.