• theneverfox@pawb.social
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    15 hours ago

    Voting with your wallet is a lie, like recycling plastic

    You can’t do collective action individually. You can make the house hurt a little bit, but you’ll never force them to change through what you buy. The house always wins, unless you get together to change the rules

    • steeznson@lemmy.world
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      7 hours ago

      I disagree with this. You can already see a recent example of Canadian consumers avoiding US imports, creating pressure on US companies, and the US government reacting by making moves to curtail the original tarrifs proposal.

      Obviously the Canadian boycott was only one component but I believe it did have a meaningful impact.

      Kind of agree with you re:plastics. Last time I read about it they could only be recycled once into inferior quality plastic. Ironically in this case I’d suggest voting with your wallet is a solution to the plastic problem since businesses will react to more consumers switching to responsibly packaged products like paper bags for fruit + veg from a local grocers. One of the large supermarket chains in the UK, Waitrose, switched to paper bags due to public pressure in the past few years.

      • theneverfox@pawb.social
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        6 hours ago

        The Canadian boycotts are not “voting with your wallet”, they’re collective action.

        Canadians, together, decided to boycott American goods. Their leaders cancelled deals. Their local stores and suppliers decided they’d rather source from anywhere else. The Canadian government started working on trade deals with everyone else

        The nation of Canada as a whole is boycotting American goods. They’re not doing this individually, they have an organized response