this post was submitted on 08 Nov 2024
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Individual Climate Action

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Boycotting is participating in society - in fact, even more so. (slrpnk.net)
submitted 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) by activistPnk@slrpnk.net to c/climate_action_individual@slrpnk.net
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The idea that boycotting is not participating in society could not be more perversely incorrect. Boycotting prioritizes society above yourself. Neglecting to boycott is the selfish act of putting your own personal benefit above all else and abandoning one of the few tools we have to improve things while feeding harms of society. Both kinds of consumption are “participation” but if you choose to feed the baddies then your participation is detrimental.

It’s really perverse to refer to boycotters as non-participants when they are actively taking on the burden of informing themselves of who the bad players are, tracking supply chains to brands, and sacrificing selfish benefits in order to participate in the least destructive way for the purpose of improving society.

Convenience zombies who just grab whatever they want may choose poorly, or not. But it’s worse than a coin toss whether the outcome is detrimental because the most harmful suppliers have the advantage of not being burdened by ethics. Scrapping ethics enables them to offer the most value for the money and undercut the more ethical choices. So if you simply neglect ethics in your consumer decision, you are only looking at value for the money and statistically expected to choose a more socially detrimental option.

It harms everyone because the lesser of evils gets driven out and the worst suppliers prevail. The US saw this with printers when Oki pulled out of the US marketplace. Now the least detrimental option tends to be Brother, which still exposes people to shenanigans. We lost the most ethical option while HP dominates.

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[–] solo@slrpnk.net 10 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

I would like to add that boycott can be very effective in applying pressure. So much so that the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement

BDS is a Palestinian-led movement for freedom, justice and equality. BDS upholds the simple principle that Palestinians are entitled to the same rights as the rest of humanity

is illegal in several places. Most of states in the US, Canada, France, Germany, UK are some of them - the traditional colonialists.

[–] activistPnk@slrpnk.net 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

Indeed they would not have made the cost and effort to ban BDS if it had no effect. From your link:

The states that have passed legislation making it illegal for state agencies to work with companies that boycott Israel include Texas, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Florida, Arizona, Georgia, Iowa, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Arkansas, Minnesota, Nevada, South Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Kansas, North Carolina, Utah, Missouri, Idaho, West Virginia, Colorado, Mississippi and New Hampshire.

Irony hi-lighted. Especially Michigan.

I sometimes take into account this list of the worst of the worst pro-forced-birth states when deciding on regional boycotts:

pro-forced-birth¹ states

  • Alabama
  • Arkansas
  • Georgia
  • Kentucky
  • Louisiana
  • Mississippi
  • Missouri
  • North Dakota
  • ~~Ohio~~ (fixed in 2023)

Regional boycotts are blunt, high-effort, and low effect. But if I need to break a tie between otherwise ethically similar market choices the regional boycotts come into play. For each of those states I look at the top 10-15 biggest corporations in those states and target them. That’s an old list though (pre-R/v/W overturn) and I think abortion law changed a bit after the overturn. But in any case maybe the intersection of pro-forced birth states with the anti-BDS states would be a relatively meaningful and managable to boycott. Result would be:

  • Alabama
  • Arkansas
  • Georgia
  • Mississippi
  • Missouri
  • ~~Ohio~~ (abortion policy fixed in 2023)

I probably need to update my pro-forced-birth list though. The end game is that revenue to businesses in that state feed state tax which then feeds the scumbag politicians there. So it’s a very round about way of indirectly defunding lousy policy makers.

¹ I say pro-forced-birth instead of pro-life for accuracy, because these states generally: oppose gun control, support death penalties, oppose welfare, oppose public healthcare, etc.. nothing about them is really pro-life.