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.
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.
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.
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.
If you don’t see that mega corps like Amazon are a bigger problem for society than the individuals in your town there’s a lot more to go into than I can right now. Perhaps I can come back to this later. PS. All this debate is in good faith!