What I’m saying is, in society, the corporations often do something that you just hate.
Ranging from anti consumer practices, data tracking, all the way to supporting a political candidate you dislike or even in extreme cases, going full nazi. So theres a wide spectrum of “evil” that corporations do, where along that line do you say “nope, I’m out” and boycott? I mean, we can’t boycott for every minor transgression, or every thing its CEO says, because there are only like a few companies out there, so if you are too restrictive in drawing that line, you would be essentially cutting yourself off of the capitalist society, and have to grow food by yourself. So when do you boycott?
This is probably a hot take in many circles, but I do not boycott companies.
The purpose of a business is to make money. I do not fault a business for doing something in pursuit of maximizing their money any more than I fault a goat for eating a tin can or a stove for burning my dinner.
I fault our government for not protecting the human rights of the people that business harmed, and I fault the individuals who work in that business for knowingly helping to cause human misery.
The sole exception to this is companies like meta, who have intentionally worked with foreign actors to subvert our democracy. That is treason, and by extension they have made their company an instrument of a foreign power. That entity should be forcibly dissolved and the people in power should be prosecuted under the relevant statutes.
I’ll boycott companies.
Something being technically legal doesn’t necessarily make it moral or OK and whilst I absolutely agree that laws and regulations should be in place to prevent horrible behaviour, it’s not reasonable to expect this in every case.
I’ll absolutely make a decision to withdraw my custom if I don’t agree that a company is acting appropriately, it’s the only power you have as a consumer and the only thing companies care about is getting your money.
Oh legality absolutely does not equate morality, although we obviously work to correlate them as much as possible.
I will admit, much of my reasoning here is driven by the fact that I live in suburban America, and if I expect to buy literally anything, I buy it from or using a company that does something horrific. It isn’t reasonable to boycott based on even something as simple as “don’t kill people”, because…well I don’t have an alternative.
I stopped buying Nike after I heard that they responsored Michael Vick after he was found guilty of hosting a dog fighting ring and killing the dogs himself. Was years ago and still refuse
Depends how easy it is to avoid using. When there are lots of choices it’s easy to switch. Hard to boycott the website that handles half of all retail in the USA.
If you mean Amazon, hard at first but once you get into the habit it’s not hard at all. Whatever you would search Amazon for, search DuckDuckGo for or your websearch of choice and put -amazon in. There are SO MANY online stores out there, with perfectly reasonable prices and even free and fast shipping.
Some general recs:
B&H Photo or Microcenter for anything electronic or computer related
For clothes, if you have any clothes you already enjoy, go directly to their brand website
For food items, local grocery stores often offer online shopping and shipping. If it’s a specialty item or imported the import companies sometimes have their own websites.
For something hard to find you can’t find another site for, try Ebay.
I’ve been avoiding Amazon for about three years now. I do business with all sorts of independent retailers and have only had good experiences with them. I encourage everyone to get out of the trap of thinking that Amazon is the only option.
Slave labor = boycott. Child labor = boycott. MAGA = boycott.
I live in the south, and if a small business is pushing their religion or politics to their customers, that’s an instant no from me.
Slave labor = boycott. Child labor = boycott.
yea… about that…
I guess you cant use phones anymore. Apple, Samsung, and almost every manufacturer had reports of using underpaid minors in China/India/Vietnam.
It’s difficult. But I try to avoid buying from companies that do this shit when I can, and I try to buy from companies that at least claim they are trying to do something about it.
“Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good” is a valid strategy.
There’s a ton of privately owned mid sized companies that you’ve never heard of that heavily fund the GOP. The Unihleins that own Uline are a prime example. There’s thousands of these multi millionaires out there running companies that make things you use everyday that you don’t think of. The guy who owns the trucking company that delivers stuff to your grocery store. The contractor that builds the roads you drive on. The company that rebuilds the pumps that run your local water supply and on and on. There’s so many of these people out there that you can’t avoid them at all.
Where possible I have ceased purchasing anything from them.
I also try to purchase second hand tech and fix what I have for as long as it makes sense to keep using it.
I dont wear clothes with brands as I dont want to pay a ridiculous price to be a walking advertisement of sweatshop labor where the poor soul got paid fuck all to stick a logo onto some fabric that’s is sold for the equivalent of a months wages.
I activly call them out on some fake social media accounts just for this to use their ads against them.
There are also many sea excursions to be had. 🦜
I have greatly reduced my consumption, particularly of new products. I’ve blocked most major socials by DNS in hosts of my PC (lots of japanese businesses still use some as their only way of stating business hours and info and same with updated disaster info, so I don’t block on my phone but don’t use unless I must). I don’t buy from companies who have a record of human rights positions and environmental policies that I disagree with whoever possible.
Small things like the CEO performing a nazi salute, and others not getting mad at that.
How can you boycott a company when you already bought their product six years ago and weren’t planning on replacing it any time soon? Asking for a friend…
The unrealistic option: Sell the car, buy another brand. This slightly reduces demand. (I don’t think it is reasonable to expect people to do this)
More realistic options: Slap a sticker on your car: “I bought this car before I knew he was a nazi”
Leave a bad review, at the app store and other places you can.
I’ve noticed that shitty customer service is where I usually draw the line. And I’m not talking someone rude or the like. But when something shitty happens (company level, not employee level) and I make a complaint or submit a bad review and they either remove my comment or block my account, or some other shit like that. That’s when they’re blacklisted.
if (product.evil >= product.quality + (product.quality - competition.quality)) { boycott(product); }Damn. This is perfect.
Being a DIYer is a good way to boycott stuff. Scumbag mechanic trying to screw you on the oil change? DIY. Scumbag cloud company, trying to hold your data hostage? DIY, self host or write your own!
Obviously it doesn’t work with everything, but for certain things it works really well.
It’s really hard to boycott when you’ve been de-skilled and depend on a service.
First of all there’s no such thing as ethical consumption under capatilism, however for me being disabled with only food stamps I get little to no options to boycott anything
Boycotting as it’s often explained is one of those kinds of things I can only imagine myself doing as a last resort. One could say I have, for example, boycotted bananas since both of the major banana companies have a history of exploitation, but that wouldn’t necessarily be my mindset if, say, a provider of a tech service had questionable views and someone asked if I was going to use the service (which, at the same time, does not mean I don’t condemn the tech service provider).
When people agree with me
For me it’s a graph where Y is the likelihood that I will boycott and X how easy/convenient it is to find a replacement inversely related to how terrible said company is.
So the worse a company, the harder I will work to find a replacement.
Have you been able to keep Nestle out of your life?
