I'm currently working on a post called "You can't vote with your purchases" which is something I feel a lot of libertarians and capitalists spew out. Don't like Wal-Mart? Don't shop there.
The trouble is you really can't. Edward Bernays and Anna Freud really changed the game when they started teaching companies how to market to people emotionally to draw them in. I know tons of people, myself included, who don't shop at Wal-Mart, but it doesn't make a dent. Wal-Mart can still manipulate millions of people with their extensive ad campaigns, and most people simply don't care.
Tobacco companies got women to smoke more by disusing it as being part of women's rights (look up Torches of Freedom).
McDonalds led a PR campaign against "frivolous lawsuits" from the women who got 3rd degree, life threatening burns from their coffee, that people still believe to this day (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNWh6Kw3ejQ).
The Baptist church didn't put a dent in Disney by boycotting them. Even MLKings Montgomery bus boycotts didn't succeed due to financial pressure. They succeeded because the news and media attention got so huge that the Supreme Court had to step in.
Every company does something unethical. Your processors are manufactured in Malaysia by people who get paid barely enough to live on, your shoes are made in Africa by companies driving people off their land and into the cities to work in factories, your shirts are made in South American sweat shops .. just by living in a high income country (US, EU, AU, even Russia) you are part of a river of exploitation (the book The Culture of Make Believe goes into this in detail).
To vote with purchases requires all the actors to be active, uncompromising and aware .. and that simply never will be the case.
There are efforts to record the history and origin of manufactured items using bkockchain in the supply chain. It will probably end up increasing the price of the items though because only items created in a sustainable way will want to publish to a public ledger. You will be able to vote with purchase, it will just become increadibly expenisve to do so.
http://fightthefuture.org/videos/does-voting-make-a-differen...
I'm currently working on a post called "You can't vote with your purchases" which is something I feel a lot of libertarians and capitalists spew out. Don't like Wal-Mart? Don't shop there.
The trouble is you really can't. Edward Bernays and Anna Freud really changed the game when they started teaching companies how to market to people emotionally to draw them in. I know tons of people, myself included, who don't shop at Wal-Mart, but it doesn't make a dent. Wal-Mart can still manipulate millions of people with their extensive ad campaigns, and most people simply don't care.
Tobacco companies got women to smoke more by disusing it as being part of women's rights (look up Torches of Freedom).
McDonalds led a PR campaign against "frivolous lawsuits" from the women who got 3rd degree, life threatening burns from their coffee, that people still believe to this day (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNWh6Kw3ejQ).
The Baptist church didn't put a dent in Disney by boycotting them. Even MLKings Montgomery bus boycotts didn't succeed due to financial pressure. They succeeded because the news and media attention got so huge that the Supreme Court had to step in.
Every company does something unethical. Your processors are manufactured in Malaysia by people who get paid barely enough to live on, your shoes are made in Africa by companies driving people off their land and into the cities to work in factories, your shirts are made in South American sweat shops .. just by living in a high income country (US, EU, AU, even Russia) you are part of a river of exploitation (the book The Culture of Make Believe goes into this in detail).
To vote with purchases requires all the actors to be active, uncompromising and aware .. and that simply never will be the case.