The key thing to remember is that a one day blackout won’t have an effect on the corporations. What it will do is get more people comfortable with taking action. If you can go one day without buying from Amazon, two days isn’t much more, and then a week, and then a month. The idea is to ratchet up the action.
Just like how fascism has a progression to slowly “boil the frog,” collective societal action does, too. This isn’t an end but a beginning.
The problem with this approach is that the frog knows you are trying to boil it.
I don’t think it’s much of a problem. People taking part want to do something to combat Trump and Elon, but many don’t know how. And let’s face it, it’s kinda scary to try to go up against powerful people. This is an easy, low-threat way to get started. It’s for Jim and Jane down the street who want to do something but don’t know what and are afraid of going all in right now.
So, if they boycott for just a day as a symbol, they see it’s not so bad. Hell, they may even make it two or three just on their own. Then the next call to blackout comes a month later, but this time it’s for a week. Easy. Now, this time, they find alternative local businesses who align with their positions to get “emergency” supplies from. Then the next call comes for a month’s blackout, and they realize that they haven’t been buying from the big companies at all, so that’s easy.
But, they still feel like they aren’t doing enough. Isn’t fighting supposed to be harder? So, they decide to attend a small protest. Then a bigger protest. Suddenly, Jim and Jane realize that they are going to city hall meetings, protests, etc., which they never thought they’d get involved in. And it started with just taking a day off from buying things.
Obviously, this won’t happen for everyone where they get hyper-involved. For most, it’ll probably just be doing the economic blackouts for however long at a time or just finding alternate places to do business so they feel like they’re helping. And you know what, that’s fine. If people turn away from the big businesses, even just 20%, that will start to show up.
This is a much better plan. Much better. We should be organizing longer pauses with different targets. We should have a different one every week or longer.
Really, that’s still weak. Why go back to Amazon at all after a week or two? Anything you can find on Amazon, you can purchase elsewhere.
I say, delete your goddamned Amazon account already. Don’t give them one more penny. You certainly don’t have to. They’re not the only retailer in town for fuck’s sake.
It’s the very least we can do.
Getting people to take part in actions that have no effect on their target can eventually make them feel that all such actions are pointless, though.
It can always be spun as a symbolic statement, but giving it the appearance of an economic boycott leads to confusion about how effective boycotts actually work.
One day at a time. Isn’t that what the 12 Step groups say? People in this thread saying this won’t do anything. You have to start somewhere. Don’t be defeatist. Get involved. Unless you are just trolling to keep people from doing anything.
Doomer do-nothings are so incredibly frustrating. I get the frustration, but spreading apathy is not useful. Authoritarianism flourishes when apathy takes root among the populace.
Real doing something is a long term boycott. Not a one day thing. Real doing something is labor organization, unions allow collaboration at a higher level, and allow you to strike back at the throat.
Even protesting at a leftist capital is doing more than a single day’s blackout.
Go exercise your second amendment by a conservative senator’s house if you really want to do something (and I don’t mean that as a shoot them euphemism. Make them uncomfortable.)
The organization that organized the economic blackout has longer-term boycotts planned in the coming weeks. This is just the opening salvo. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
This is it. If we want to have any effect it needs to be much longer than a day. One month would make a statement. You could even cave out food. You could also have people cancel their endless list of subscriptions or just scale back their lifestyle for a greater effect than a one day pause.
you are doing nothing.
this is not resistance, it’s embarrassing. you all deserve what you get.
Americans have not had to protest like this in many many decades. That is it’s been “good enough” for a large part of the population to not really do anything, so there is no system that people can tap into like in France. So thinking that you are going to get a million+ people to go into the streets and shut everything down for a few weeks isn’t realistic.
American protest opposition also has a great response to these gatherings by getting them to turn into riots so there is justification for military style responses. Which makes people on the fence hesitant. Getting people to dip their toe in the lake of resistance is the best way forward. It’s slow, it looks silly and limiting but if it works it emboldens more people to do more.
There really is this need to feel like people are doing something even if they’re doing nothing.
Single day boycotts are completely ineffectual for a variety of reasons, reason #1 being the vast majority are either unaware or apathetic, #2 being even those who participate aren’t skipping particpation entirely, they just shift their economic participation to the day before or the day after.
So the end result is a zero sum game, but when you tell people that, they respond with “At least I’m trying!” 🤷♂️
For real. Most Americans have probably never even participated in a “buy nothing” day, much less a pocket book protest against a government.
I don’t see what’s wrong with starting with one day, letting people get used to the concept, then dialing up the frequency once word of mouth has spread.
pacified slave mentality.
i despise you all and will enjoy seeing this accomplish nothing.
i have no respect for slaves without will, you don’t deserve saving
I just been not buying things most days. Anti-consumerism 2025
If everyone just holds off buying their shit until March 1st, or buys everything they will need Feb 27, then this blip won’t have any effect.
You’ve got the right idea, if we want to actually hit them where it hurts. I’m doing the same, but not really by choice. I’m just broke.
They don’t care. It’s a game about holding out the longest. Protest all you want.
The idea isn’t who can hold out the longest, obviously the billionaires can. It’s the idea that we can all join together to do one so insanely simple event that the next one will just have all the more support.
The next events I’ve heard are the ones that actually start pushing boundaries, like walkouts, nation wide protests, and general strikes.
I used to do production coordination. This isn’t an issue. If Tony expects to sells two peaches a day, but this week he sold three yesterday and one today it’s all the same. The amounts average out over time. You will have to hit them for much, much longer than a day to have ANY effect.
One day or a handful of days is meaningless slacktivism.
The theory is fine, but there are several practical issues that mitigate the effect.
First, and most obvious, not everyone is participating. In fact, I’d bet that most people ignore the protest and go about their day without realizing there is a boycott. Nobody can block all the gas stations and supermarkets to keep customers away, so most stores won’t actually experience a perceptible loss, at least not enough to justify closing shop for the day. A lot of people exist without buying anything some days anyway. Stores will occasionally have days with low sales due to weather, or local festivities, or bad press, or
Second, the people participating are being told to get their shopping done the day before or wait until the day after to buy what they need. The boost in sales on either side will average out the labor and heating costs for stores. Most employees are paid weekly or biweekly, and a single day of low traffic something most shops already expect every now and then.
Third, this will mean nothing at all to online sales. Unless you’re Amazon or Instacart, hardly anyone does same day delivery services. Your daily overhead surplus capacity is a tiny fraction of the operating costs for the business. Online retailers measure activity in quarters, they don’t care about slow days.
Lastly, it’s far too diffuse to result in effective change. The loss is spread out over all commerce which means that nobody specific will be affected. What are the grievances? Who are you asking to change? What specifically are you asking them to do? If the demands for people to return to shopping are simply “wait 24 hours” then the ruling class can wait it out. The is exactly what happened with Occupy Wall Street. There was no clear endgame, so all they had to do was wait while the effort collapsed on itself. If it’s a hostage negotiation, you need demands. If it’s a show of force, then it needs to have more impact. If it’s an effort to educate consumers on the value of consuming less, then it needs to not be described as a temporary protest.
To be meaningful, it would help to be
- Targeted
- Longer
- More impactful to business
- Accompanied with specific demands
I’ll be participating because I agree with the sentiment (and I’m cash poor, so any excuse to save money), but I’m not holding my breath that it will make anyone change their behaviors.
Yep. Learned to farm. We should have an overabundance of food this year. I’ve been teaching my local communities to be self reliant and collectively bargain. We’re close to community policing, community gardens and expanding firearms training.
Did you know Grainger and other companies are willing to make a deal with large groups, like HOAs or Recreational groups, and offer discounts on services and tools?
Power to the people. This is what real change looks like.
Since Amazon doesn’t actually MAKE anything, just resells stuff, can’t we get a delete and cancel Amazon day too?
I canceled prime already. I’m also sourcing locally and from Canadian owned corps where I can.
There is in the making. https://www.mobilize.us/indivisible/
This is the start and will keep growing.
I swear I’ve tried to cancel my account like three times now. Why is it so hard?
Just buy shit elsewhere, Jesus Christ.
Where did you buy stuff before Amazon? Just do that.
Spreading defeatist comments and pessimism, saying that this won’t accomplish anything anyway and undermining the power of the collective is exactly what killed this movement in Croatia.
The movement started with a general spending boycott on fridays (so no money transactions - no stores, bars, gas stations, bank transactions etc), and a week long boycott of three supermarket chains that had the most egregious prices compared to other countries (those chains operate all over Europe, and their prices in other countries are far cheaper for the exact same products - despite lower operational costs in Croatia). After that, we switched to boycotting one chain every week.
The boycott was very effective. On the first friday of the boycott, the state financial department reported a 43% decrease in sales volume in the country. Just think about that for a second. And no - there has not been an increase in spending in the days before or after the boycott. In fact, they were still lower compared to the weeks before and the sales volume decreased in the following week by about 10%.
But like I said, unfortunately it died out over the next 4-5 weeks, with each boycott achieving lower decreases. And it died out exactly because of trolls that spread this defeatist attitude thinking they’re so smart for seeing the “real” picture. Laughable.
Of course, the astroturfing has been insane, they really went berserk after the first friday. There’s been an insane amount of bots posting comments that this doesn’t work, that we should be protesting the government instead (as if holding signs in front of government buildings hurts them more than 50% less money flowing into the state piggy bank), that this hurts the citizens more than the conglomerates, that this will cause them to increase the prices to cover the losses etc etc. Just ridiculous claims all over social media.
And yeah, people got deflated and the movement died out.
Thanks idiots.
People will stock up the day before and binge the day after. It’s not effective or realistic. This is slacktivism. It’s not pessimism to tell you that it’s a dumb plan.
Like I already said, no, they do not. The sales volume was lower on the days before and after too. The boycott actually changed consumer habits for a while there - people were buying only what they needed and refrained from all other spending.
I mean if you refrain from going to a cafe bar on friday, it’s not like you are going to make up for it on saturday. Same goes for all “luxury” items basically.
