Goodbye for now America
Back in the year 1999, everyone was afraid that Y2K was going to fry all the computer chips and cause planes to fall out of the sky. Now if a plane falls out of the sky, it’s probably a Boeing. American companies used to be the pinnacle of the world but have fallen behind for some time. Rather than leading the global market with innovative ideas and solutions, American companies rely on antitrust monopolistic behaviours to maintain their entrenched market positions and wealth.
As a small business owner, I can sympathise that sometimes times get tough and you have to make some difficult decisions. But that is not the scenario playing out, at the heights of power, in the United States right now. The blatant abuses of the law, of human rights and imperialistic actions of the incoming administration have led me to believe that American companies are no longer safe to do business with.
I will be de-provisioning American companies from my tech stack and advising clients to do the same. In the interest of ensuring that we follow relevant local laws, avoiding American companies may soon become a matter of legal and industry compliance rather than an ideological choice which I think I still have the luxury to make right now. It’s currently entirely possible that someone at a major American company could disable my emails, breach my data security and otherwise cause problems. If that were to happen and I had to switch in a pinch, it wouldn’t take me too long to recover but it would be a stressful transition fraught with peril. I have backups of backups and copies of my data in so many locations it’d make Carmen Sandiego’s head spin… but I am still vulnerable to downtime.
So what does a tech stack without American tech companies look like? Not too shabby actually! I think we have been over reliant on cheap US cloud prices and fat chook style startups for too long. That dependence on American leadership has caused global competition in digital to stagnate — you can tell because despite access to the internet and the same equipment being available to the rest of the world few countries have investments that can counter the United States. On the topic of AI, a lot of people are looking at China but that doesn’t affect my business, nor many others right now.
We use a couple of major American vendors, all of whom I have found alternatives for and have begun switching over to:
- Dropbox, replace with pCloud from Switzerland
- GMail, replace with Gandi email from France
- Microsoft 365, replace with a combo of LibreOffice + local Australian email hosting
- Vultr (VPS), replace with local Australian VPS hosting
I have also begun to reduce my usage of major platforms like YouTube, Facebook and others. I will exclusively use the Fediverse alternatives once I can figure out what chat program to migrate my childhood friends to.
It’s a painful and annoying process, and switching to local Australian companies is going to cost me money, but every time I see a news headline come out of America the more certain I am this is not only the right thing to do, but there is an increased urgency to do this each passing day. I am sad to say goodbye to America for now, but I know there is strength and resilience in the hearts of the American people. I believe they will bounce back eventually, and until they do I’ll hang onto these timeless words from The New Colossus that are written at the base of the Statue of Liberty.
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
Thank you for reading! Want more content? Find me on
- Medium: https://medium.com/@paulbrzeski
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-b-23620b209/
- Website: https://www.paulbrzeski.com
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@paulbrzeski4237/
