• shplane@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

    Encouraging people to vote with their wallet creates collective action. How do you think these things start? You telling people not to bother is exactly how you prevent it.

    • theneverfox@pawb.social
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      4 days ago

      No, that’s backwards. You don’t reduce plastic by recycling, you don’t change corporate behavior by not buying their stuff

      If a company loses a customer, that’s nothing. If a company has less sales, that’s a marketing problem. They aren’t going to operate more morally now, because it’s a business problem and a PR problem

      Boycotts are very different. You get a block of people together, you tell them “we’re all boycotting you because X”, and then they see it in their numbers. You do it loudly. The investors get nervous, you’ve very publicly connected the cause and effect, other businesses might join in to take advantage, etc

      You have to organize first, it’s great to shop ethically if you can, but you’re just acting as the market as a whole… Are they going to start farming more sustainably, or are they going to try to convince consumers they are? One of these things is much easier and cheaper

      If you’re organized, you can come back with “hey everyone, they’re bullshitting us, keep up the boycott”

      The dangerous part of this is that without organization, people feel like they’re fixing the problem when they’re not. It gives an illusion of control that isn’t there

      • shplane@lemmy.world
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        4 days ago

        Voting with your wallet can be a boycott. Seems like you’re really mincing words here and creating a false equivalent to recycling plastic that no one else is using as a comparison.

        • theneverfox@pawb.social
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          4 days ago

          It’s not a false equivalence, it’s the same exact thing

          Its a lie. The lie is “you can do collective action individually”. You can’t… That’s not how any of this works

          Boycotts are real. Voting with your wallet is just shopping.

          There’s no message to it, no power - just a slice of consumers to market to differently or a need to pivot

            • theneverfox@pawb.social
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              4 days ago

              No, you can’t. You can reduce your consumption, and that’s great

              But you have to eat. You have to wear clothes. You likely have to drive and to pay rent or buy appliances. You have to buy entertainment, because honestly most everything is monitised to crazy levels.

              You can’t opt out. You can be a different kind of shopper. You can be an anomolus data point. But even if you live in a self built lean to and live as a freegan vegan, you’ve changed nothing if you’ve done it alone