I’m kind of surprised that this seems to be an unpopular opinion around here, since I’ve always thought of Lemmy as being pretty leftist as opposed to liberal/capitalist, but there seems to be a base assumption here that voting with your dollar and trying to purchase the most “ethical” thing through the most “ethical” channels is worth the time and energy.
To me it has always seemed intuitive. I mean, what is the goal anyway? If the goal is to destroy the company you hate and replace it with the one you like (which btw you won’t, for many reasons), you’re doomed from the start because capitalism is gonna capitalism, and that brand you like and think is more ethical is at the end of a day, still a brand whose primary purpose is to make money, and they will put that above all else. If the goal is for the unethical company to make a smaller, more specific change, you’re also doomed because the company you’re silently protesting has no idea why you’ve stopped spending money with them, and likely doesn’t care so long as others continue to spend.
To me, it seems more about making you feel good about yourself than bringing about real change. Which is further supported by the hostility that often comes with ethical consumerism towards people who don’t engage with it - people who fundamentally agree with them but who apparently must be shunned for their purchasing decisions. Obviously I’m all up for humiliating Cybertruck owners or whatever, but there’s a limit (looking at you, anti-Brave thread that pops up every month or so).
This brings me into the other problems with ethical consumerist rhetoric - it takes an inordinate amount of time because you have to research every company you engage with in every area to find the “most ethical” one, whatever that means, as well as the subsidiaries of those companies so you can recognize them in the wild. Many of these companies are monopolies or oligopolies and actively try to hide their subsidiaries. This time could be better spent toward much more productive activities that actually have the potential to bring about change. “More ethical” products also tend to be more expensive, and for this reason low income people typically can’t engage in ethical consumerism. This money is likely also better spent donated toward organizations trying to bring about real sociopolitical/economic change.
I also draw a distinction between “vote with your dollar”/“ethical consumerist” rhetoric and well-organized boycotts with specific demands because these types of boycotts have actually been effective in the past, and it makes intuitive sense why. When you have a lot of organized people who together have lots of buying power asking for one specific thing, with the carrot of “if you do x specific thing, we will come back and start spending again,” rather than the vague ethical consumerist position of “you’re not ethical enough for me,” all of a sudden it makes good financial sense to the company to make that specific change. The successful boycotts I’ve seen in the past have met both of these criteria.
Sorry this got to be so long and sorry if there are errors in it, I just kind of word vomited.
True.
There are several fundamental problems, which, together, are anti-fragile/robust:
Assymetrical-leverage: corporations act to alter markets to suit them, & exactly as management generally won’t tollerate the workers acting together, to level-the-playing-field against management’s coherent torque,
so, too, corporations won’t tolerate individuals or activists leveling the playing-field against them, either.
Also, there’s nobody competing against moneyarchy/concentration-of-wealth-archy.
For all the leftists complaining vociferously that businesses ought be paying livingwage, etc, … all the left has to do is create businesses which do that?
& nobody will.
Natural Selection works, whether anybody competes against the “bad guys” or not, though: IF nobody competes against them, THEN … Natural Selection picks them, & they rule the future.
ONLY IF someone competes against moneyarchy & concentration-of-wealth-archy CAN Natural Selection ever decide otherwise.
Also, without real education & real journalism, there’s no point in pretending the other 2 dimensions have all they need to coerce our world into level-playing-field.
Here’s a gift of excellent-meanings from a rather well-known author, Taleb, who also identifies problems with economics…
https://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/tenprinciples.pdf
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Not a counter argument, not supposed to be one.
For me it’s less about bringing change and more about not giving money to people/corpos I dislike. It’s not perfect, I for sure don’t have a 100% success rate, but I feel better spending a bit more at a company that is probably fine instead of at Amazon and co.
I don’t expect any one company to change because of this, let alone the system. It’s just out of my own volition. I can’t avoid trading with companies and people in general, but I can choose who I trade with.
EDIT: Perhaps it’s because I’m under the impression that shitty corpos will do shitty things with the money I give them, so by not spending my money with them I know that I won’t be funding whatever it is they’re doing personally. Does it make a difference if I alone do it? Definitely not. Do I still feel better knowing I didn’t just directly fund something awful? Kinda
Things exist where resources are. It’s a simple and always valid rule to live by. Direct your resources to the things you think wise to see exist. Withhold your resources from the things you think wise to not exist.
I don’t really understand the purpose of “unpopular opinion”, so if I’m supposed to change your opinion, I won’t. However, what would you think about a vegan running around yelling, “meat is murder” and then sitting down to eat a bacon double cheeseburger?
What if really came to say is that your view has been covered before. Some choice quotes from the article:
any election that requires you to “vote with your wallet” is always won by the people with the thickest wallets
Conversely,
The Montgomery bus boycott was an organized project, put together by a powerful membership organization, the NAACP, that demanded far more of its members than merely shopping very carefully. The boycott was the end stage of an organized resistance, not a substitute for it.
Go read the article, it’ll refine your argument and maybe soften some aspects of it.
what would you think about a vegan running around yelling, “meat is murder” and then sitting down to eat a bacon double cheeseburger?
The hypocrisy argument really doesn’t hold much water. Real “yet you participate in society. Curious!” energy. It is ok to advocate for systemic change while participating in an unethical society. I think it’s more honest to acknowledge the limits of what your individual buying power can do. I’ll read the article though. Cory Doctorow is great.
Why doesn’t the hypocrisy argument hold water? I do it with some things to be able to look myself in the mirror. For example, I was shopping for a new pillow and was planning to get a My Pillow and then things happened and I can’t see myself laying my head on one. There are hundreds of good people who work hard to make it a good pillow, but the top guy put togerher a plan to overthrow the US government. I can’t get behind that.
Conversely, I’m sure that United Way has a pedophile or rapist or other miscreant on the payroll. Giving to them indirectly funds that, but they’re not advertising their behavior so i can still feel good to give 'em my donations.
Why doesn’t the hypocrisy argument hold water?
The wrong boys can explain it better than I can if you’re willing to listen to a podcast about it. I find them very amusing so it’s long but an easy listen.
https://srslywrong.com/podcast/325-the-idea-of-hypocrisy/
The meme I was referencing is this: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/we-should-improve-society-somewhat
On a small scale it does nothing but if the sentiment is popular and people actually agree then it can in some.situations bring change. People’s opinions are often much less popular than they think.
However the massive companies are so diversified that they are impossible to boycott.
I’m guessing it’s effective to some extent, else companies wouldn’t spend so much time green washing, pink washing, etc. To some extent, I do try to support the lesser evil, even though I think there’s a lot of truth to, “there is no ethical consumption under capitalism.” I mostly just do it out of principal, not caring if it’s effective or not.
This is a good point, it certainly seems to impact branding/how companies choose to present themselves.
Aside from whether I think it can have any impact (I do), from a moral standpoint I just don’t want to give my money to evil.
Fair enough. I guess I just don’t have much faith that any profit seeking companies are not evil or won’t become evil once they find success, so I don’t really get any catharsis from moving from one to another over moral grounds. Which is why I try to focus on avoiding companies altogether when possible, instead going with community made alternatives (e.g. lemmy > reddit) which to me represent something more revolutionary. Any less fundamental changes than that generally feel pointless to me.
There’s definitely a difference between giving money to mom & pop down the street so they can afford their rent, and giving it to Bezos so he can fund fascism, right?
Honestly wouldn’t count on it. Most small business owners at least in my area are huge Trump supporters or zionists. And even if they weren’t, if everyone went there they’d just become the new Amazon. That’s how capitalism works.
Just because the world is complicated and there’s not a simple clean choice doesnt mean you should choose the most harmful option
How exactly do you come to the conclusion that buying from Amazon is “more harmful”? In my view, I have limited time and energy to sort these things out. Why spend time splitting hairs like this when there are more effective things I could be doing?
Cuz Bezos directly funds the regime with those profits
EDIT: On top of the fact that Amazon is an unwieldy giant monopoly conglomerate, and giving them money is already antithetical to free markets to begin with.
So does my local mom and pop business owner. In fact they probably donate a larger fraction of their net worth than bezos. And they fund changes that have a larger impact on my local area than bezos.
Exactly.
I know I’m not going to take down a Kaiju with a flare gun.
But I’m sure as shit still going to spit in it’s eye when I get the chance.
It’s no different than other kinds of voting: It only works if everyone is well-informed.
It is effective. The only reason you may feel that it isn’t effective, is because larger groups of people aren’t doing it.
Sure, 50 some odd people who decide to not shop at Amazon, you sneeze at that.
But if 100,000 or a million people, decided not to shop Amazon. Yeah that’s going to have an effect and it’ll say something.
that’s going to have an effect and it’ll say something.
Sure, if you somehow were able to accomplish this feat and get millions of people to stop going to Amazon, it would cut into Amazon’s profits. But what is the statement? And what is the desired outcome? Amazon won’t die, they have AWS which is most of their profits. Even if they did something equally shitty would likely replace them.
And where should consumers go instead? I don’t think walmart is more “ethical” overall than amazon, or costco or ebay or fedex or ups or whatever. So what’s the point? Why should I spend all this time and energy splitting hairs when I could be organizing, participating in established boycotts with specific actionable demands, striking, voting with my vote in the few direct democratic systems that exist, donating to organizations trying to make systemic change, and volunteering in my local community mutual aid groups?
And do you have any real world examples that worked (still not sure how we’re defining “worked” here) that weren’t well organized boycotts with specific demands?
Hopefully Walmart is not the only alternative you have to Amazon. Support smaller and local businesses. Your business does make a difference to their future.
Hey you’re the one who made the opinion in the first place, the ball is in your court on this one.
The statement is clear as day for you, I’m not spelling it out.
problems with ethical consumerist rhetoric
You are probably in Usa where the question of red/blue seems the only one that counts (while from an outside perspective, it is the one that counts the least).
Then you are right that you have hardly any influence on this question while doing your weekly grocery shopping.
But to know where you really put your money can make many other differences, and greater ones. But it needs some more thinking with your own head and your own heart.
Not letting some rhetorician or other do all the thinking for you.
I think voting with your wallet can be effective on smaller levels: in local communities where reputation matters, in a market where there are enough competitors (not monopolies), when the thing you are “voting” against is the only/major source of revenue, or when the demands are very specific. If anyone has an example of this strategy working on a large scale, I’d be curious to hear it.
Like you said, the organization you are boycotting has to be aware of why it is happening and what is the change that is being demanded. Then, a large enough number of people have to participate to make an impact, which can be hard to do when there aren’t many ethical alternatives. Many people aren’t aware just how many “smaller” companies are owned by the same handful of large corporations, the alternatives are expensive or inaccessible, or they simply don’t care enough to inconvenience themselves.
In some cases the owners of the boycotted organization have their roots deep enough in other institutions (government contracts, workplaces, schools) that they don’t depend on the average consumer.
Yup, that’s because it’s wholly possible for corporations to create an ecosystem where only the illusion of choice resists.
In many small towns throughout the US, your only choices for getting the things you need are Amazon or Walmart, for example.
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