I get the boycotts for Target, Walmart, and Amazon for rolling back their DEI programs and bowing to Trump. What companies are treating employees fair or standing up for human decency? Seems like Costco gets brought up?
Most things I need I can get from my local grocery store which seems pretty non evil but where do you go if you need like a new keyboard?
Newman’s Own. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newman’s_Own
If there’s a place that you just can’t stomach to shop because of how they treat their employees then I highly recommend you do not shop there. I was avoiding Walmart before avoiding Walmart was cool.
However…
Boycotts only really work when organized, towards an end goal. What was Walmart doing before, what is it doing now, what do we want it to do, and who’s coordinating? That’s how you change corporate policy through boycott.
If certain DEI policies are important enough to you to boycott when a company removes them then that’s fine. I guess it’s also worth asking what it is about any given program that makes it good enough for not, which companies should or shouldn’t have it, why, and all that.
Gog
If its publicly traded, you can bet it sucks.
If it’s not publicly traded it can actually be worse, too. Like the other poster said, you need some kind of actual strategy to make a boycott worthwhile.
Bandcamp, because it is the best place for independent music and there is nothing close to it.
Steam, because they started with non-horrible DRM (compared to other options) and now they are one of the companies that help Linux succeed for gaming (Steam Deck is just a Linux computer with controllers attached, and Proton is awesome for running Windows games on Linux).
Steam, because they started with non-horrible DRM (compared to other options)
Au contraire, Steam was LOATHED back in the day, they were the first to force you to install a store just to play a single game.
For other games, you needed to enter a CD key on install (which keygens helped with) and then you needed the CD itself in the drive (which cracks helped with). Steam started the trend of online DRM in games, which was then adopted by others who made even more draconian offerings (I think for Spore you could only get 3 hardware IDs registered?)
I’m not sure if it’s still true, but I seem to recall SC Johnson having profits as the lowest of their corporate objectives with higher ones being things like improving people’s lives and bringing value to the world.
Granted, it’s all just text, and times change, but I’d be curious to know if there’s any truth to it, especially today.
You mean the fuckers who gave kids cancer with talcom powder and have done everything in their power to not pay damages?
Yeah. Fuck. That.
Nope. That’s Johnson & Johnson. Different company.
I believe you mean Johnson & Johnson, which is a different company.
No idea about the morals of SC Johnson, I hadn’t heard of them till now, but have used a product or 2.
I’d say Steam.
Only as long as Gabe Newell runs it. After that it will enshittify like any other company that needs to make profits.
Private equity is salivating over the idea of
running his carefully built brand into the groundmaximizing value extraction from steam.The current meta here is that things like brand loyalty and reputation are not really worth preserving, and are only as good as whatever short-term gains you can squeeze out of them.
Let’s hope musket doesn’t buy it.
This Steam?
King Arthur Flour!
Dr Bronners soap has specifically reaffirmed their DEI policies since Trump’s reelection, and they have a 5-to-1 cap on the top-level exec’s salaries compared to their lowest paid retirement-vested employees. They seem to walk the walk from what I’ve seen and read.
The only one that comes directly to mind is Valve.
Besides that I’m not going to follow this narrative too much of finding “the good ones”.
I don’t really believe in ethical consumption, but Penzys spices are awesome! They’re such troll too, I love it!
NetBSD, Signal Foundation, other FOSS orgs
Costco
It should be noted that they are actively trying to bust their workers union so maybe boycott them when your local asks you to.
ACAB: All Corporations Are Bastards. Corporations are not your friends. Brands aren’t your friends.
Stop letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Yup. Everyone has to buy something. The point is to direct people to do that at places that are LES evil rather than giving in and saying “nothing matters I guess I’ll just do whatever.” Defeatism is collaboration.
I used to not vote because all politicians are evil. Someone pointed out that if everyone picks the lesser of two evils then things are going to get less evil. I’ve voted every opportunity since.
Corporations are just legal structure organizing people together to do something. The soup kitchen, local artisan, person cutting hair out of their house, they all set up an LLC to operate under. They didn’t instantly become evil.
But if I need to buy a blender, plywood, or underwear (my shopping list this weekend), I’m going to have to buy it from a corporation. If I could buy it from a less evil corp then hopefully I make things less evil.
In the prosecution of its purposes, the Slave Power has obtained the control of both the great political parties. Their recent nominations were made to serve its interests, to secure its supremacy, and especially to promote the extension of Slavery.
…
I hear the old political saw, that “we must take the least of two evils.” My friend from Ohio [Mr. Giddings] has already riddled this excuse, so that I might well leave it untouched; but I cannot forbear a brief observation. It is admitted, then, that Cass and Taylor both are evils. For myself, if two evils are presented to me, I will take neither. There are occasions of political difference, I admit, when it may become expedient to vote for a candidate who does not completely represent our sentiments. There are matters legitimately within the range of expediency and compromise. The Tariff and the Currency are of this character. If a candidate differs from me on these more or less, I may yet vote for him. But the question before the country is of another character. This will not admit of compromise. It is not within the domain of expediency. To be wrong on this is to be wholly wrong. It is not merely expedient for us to defend Freedom, when assailed, but our duty so to do, unreservedly, and careless of consequences.
-Abolitionist Charles Sumner, encouraging a third party vote in the 1848 election
Yes, because a third party vote is going to do so much in a FPTP system.
One way to fight the corporations is to stop worshipping at the altar of blind consumerism, and embrace the concept of “Reuse, Repair, Recycle.”
Stop buying stuff you dont need. Keep using what you have, sell/buy used items, repair things, and if it cant be fixed or repurposed, then recycle it.
Repairing things is a big one. Often repairs are remarkably easy. My wife has been ready to replace numerous appliances over the years, and I figured it was worth taking a shot at fixing it, if I can save a few hundred bucks, and successfully extended the life by years.
Very satisfying, and it forces your wife to rethink her conclusion that you are an incompetent dolt.
Sorry. My underwear is beyond repair
lol. Intimates are poorly constructed, but we also ask a lot of them. In all seriousness though, I have repaired undies and bras and gotten another 6 months to a year out of them.
Voting for lesser evil just slows down the evil, it doesn’t reverse it. It’s still going in the wrong direction.
If people would vote for good that’d be a choice. Consistently voting for “less evil” works towards that goal - having good candidates.
If “more evil” candidates keep winning, what message does that send to candidates?
Yeah. Lots of people didn’t vote because we had two evils. The greater evil won…
You cant run a candidate who supports a far right wing genocide from the left and expect to win. Its really that simple. It’ll probably be that simple next time as well.
What we need is Russian and israeli influence kept out of the US government with no exceptions. Zionist influence on the dems is why Harris lost, not some ‘voters dont understand that voting for evil is just necesssary’ like you pretend. Stop telling the voters they need to be ok with war crimes. Thats cowardly BS. I’ll never be OK with murder and you shouldnt ever be either.
LLCs are specifically unincorporated associations, i.e not corporations.
deleted by creator
Thank you. This sent me on a rabbit hole of differences between LLC and Corporations. LLC being a pass through protects the owners a little bit but passes through all the tax and some of the liability (hence Limited Liability). I remember reading something about how banks got significantly more risky with investments and predatorily with their practices when they started moving from partnerships to corporate structures.
Maybe we should get rid of corporations and force all companies into a partnership or LLC structure. Less to hide behind.
pointed out that if everyone picks the lesser of two evils then things are going to get less evil
That’s just absolutely not how it works even if you take it at face value. Both evils can be greater than the one rn, that has absolutely no bearing on which one is “lesser” among them.
Repeal of Citizens United and change that.
All Corporations Are Bastards, in a four hundred year unbroken chain going all the way back to the English East India Company and Dutch East India Company, and even before those.
I get that, but anarchy doesn’t manufacture shower tiles and I need to buy some.
I’m not saying we should boycott every corporation. I’m saying it’s a fool’s errand because there is no ethical consumption under capitalism.
And we shouldn’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. A poke with a stick isn’t good but it’s sure as shit better then a pistol whipping.
We’re not trying to boycott EVERY corporations. We’re voting with our wallets for the lesser evil the same way we vote at the ballots for the lesser evil.
“we’re doing something that has never worked before”
Open source orgs
