We had an interesting discussion of our money and our values at the Ethical Society of Austin on Sunday. On Monday, I scrolled through my news feed and saw that T-Mobile was inviting (?) Space X to buy it. Maybe it was another Elon Musk entity, I don't recall, but the association with Elon Musk was enough to settle the issue for me. I had been, for a while, unhappy about T-Mobile's service and business model, and that news story was enough to overcome my personal state of inertia to make me cancel T-Mobile and choose another cell phone provider.
When it comes to technology in 2026, we don't have a huge number of choices that do not support a corrupt billionaire, so my new cell provider (Consumer Cellular) is backed by AT&T (whose current level of corruption I am not familiar with, but I have no doubt that I could find something that would make me twitch if I looked hard enough). CC is, however, backed by AARP, and AARP, while not perfect, is active in some areas of concern to me.
I'm not a trees and fleas kind of girl, so I'm not going to eliminate all technology or comfort from my life. However, I am willing to do the occasional heavy lifting needed to find ways to put my money to other uses. In this case, there was enough heavy lifting that I had to pat myself on the back for making it through the maze of changing from my cell service without losing my phone number or my patience with the number of hoops to jump through when leaving one service provider and signing on with another.
One surprise was the ease of unlocking my phone. Apparently government regulations do matter for the consumer. Another was the clarity of the intructions from Consumer Cellular for making the switch. Given their host and its constituency, such detail and coaching, while not perfect (for me), was encouraging and actually quite supportive. Would that other technology providers (looking at you, Google) would be similarly clear and detailed.
A theme in this essay is "not perfect." Nothing seems to be perfect these days---nor am I. I am willing to accept better over best as I try to make my self and the way I live my life more Ethical. Ethics does begin with a choice, and this choice is, I believe, a step in the right direction.
