• affiliate@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    [boycotting] is the only way we can fight back against corporate greed

    this is a symptom of a greater problem in the united states. boycotting is never going to be as effective as legislative change because boycotts take a monumental amount of effort to organize and it’s very easy for people to lose interest/move on as time passes. the government needs to start doing something about these companies being too greedy (e.g. break them up, force price caps, nationalize them, etc)

    • cosmicrookie@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      because boycotts take a monumental amount of effort to organize

      It really doesn’t. If you don’t like something about a company, tell them and don’t spend your money there. It does not need to be organised. The greater issue is not that it requires monumental effort but that people are not even willing of minimal effort. “Sure Amazon is bad… But I can’t live without prime….”

      • irmoz@reddthat.com
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        9 months ago

        If you don’t like something about a company, tell them and don’t spend your money there.

        That’s not a boycott, it’s an individual change of spending habits

        It’s not a boycott if you’re alone

      • affiliate@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        here’s the full sentence you’re quoting:

        boycotting is never going to be as effective as legislative change because boycotts take a monumental amount of effort to organize and it’s very easy for people to lose interest/move on as time passes.

        sure, you can simply decide to do a one-person boycott of a company, and that wouldn’t take much effort at all to organize. but when it comes to actually changing the behavior of a company, the actions of one consumer are not going to be nearly as effective as a piece of legislation. so, you’ll probably need to get many people to band together and collectively decide to stop buying a company’s products. this leads back to the “monumental effort” part of the sentence.

        also, in order for people to decide that they don’t like what a company is doing, they need to first be told that the company is doing those things. who’s going to tell them?

        • cosmicrookie@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          I’d argue that if people do not like something a company does, and simply stop buying from it, it’s the same as an organised boycott. I assume that I won’t be the only one disliking the companys actions and that there will be more who do the same.

          People simply need to realise that as consumers, we have the power to change things. It’s not too different to voting. Your actions count, even though they may seem small. If we all react instead of maindleslt consuming, companies will listen. They may not react but they will listen.

          They already know everything about their consumers and adjust their products accordingly to maximize sales. If people start writing to them that they have stopped buying their products or services because of this or that, they will definetelly notice

      • Neato@ttrpg.network
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        9 months ago

        Sure. But for a successful boycott you need hundreds of thousands to millions of participants over weeks to months. Can you organize that? You’re taking for granted the type of publicity campaign needed to organize a boycott like this and then you’d need to actually find enough people who care enough and have the willpower to participate. No one’s going to care if 100M people boycott a place that were already not going there. You need to convince those who regularly patronize that business.