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Voting with your dollars doesn't really work. You are and ant and the people who feel like you are a small percentage. I stopped shopping at Wal-Mart around 20

Voting with your dollars doesn't really work. You are and ant and the people who feel like you are a small percentage. I stopped shopping at Wal-Mart around 2007, and Amazon in 2016. My purchased don't make a dent. I share my opinions and know several others who don't shop at Wal-Mart, but I remember during the 2008 financial crisis, people who had previously refused to shop at Wal-Mart were doing it again, verbally hating it, because they had kids and tight budgets and they saving nearly a $1/item on some things. We can try to affect things with our purchases and advertising those decisions to others, but honestly, they don't even compare in the slightest to the power of corporate advertising at scale.

uoaei 6y ago
True. But change happens from the ground up, and as more people glom onto a more morals-based view on their spending habits, other efforts will become easier to organize and wrangle until sufficient pressure can be put from below to change the circumstances in real ways. This is mainly about changing culture, which informs laws when that culture becomes widespread. And it helps me sleep at night ;)
bhupy 6y ago
> Voting with your dollars doesn't really work. You are and ant and the people who feel like you are a small percentage. Couldn't you say the same thing about actual voting, though? In an election, what difference does your one vote make, in the grand scheme of things? Has there ever been an election where the margin was low enough that your one vote would have made a real difference?
- djsumdog 6y ago
  Oh absolutely! Especially in non-representational voting systems like in the US. Australia has order of preference (ranking) so you can't throw your vote away and NZ has MMP to evenly distribute half the party seats by % of the population that votes for them. American voting is pretty next to useless. I did a whole video on that: https://battlepenguin.com/politics/video/does-voting-make-a-difference/ https://battlepenguin.com/politics/video/does-voting-make-a-...
  - uoaei 6y ago
    I like the ongoing debate between different voting schemes. I prefer approval voting over other things like RCV/IRV -- it reflects "average" percentages of approval directly and results in the least dissatisfaction, averaged across the population. No spoiler effects, which still exist in FPTP and RCV. The most interesting and IMO overlooked part is how easy it is to communicate to the voter how they should vote. Approval voting is easy -- at the top of the ballot just say "check the box next to each name of the person who you approve of, and check as many as you like".
Jommi 6y ago
What you're missing here is that you not shopping anymore DOES have an affect. You're just missing the larger picture where they might be seeing a reduction in growth of shoppers and they might be considering doing things to combat that.
grecy 6y ago
> Voting with your dollars doesn't really work....I stopped shopping at Wal-Mart around 2007 There's a really interesting part in the documentary "Food Inc." Where they're talking about big industrial food processing places destroying quality, etc. At one point he interviews Walmart's head of milk ordering (whatever it's called).. and the person has some really interesting insight. Customers didn't want to buy milk from cows that had whatever hormone... and it became such a big deal that Walmart saw sales of that type of milk plummet, so they stopped buying and selling all milk with that hormone. They now don't stock or sell any. Period. So in fact, when people vote with their dollars companies as big as Walmart do actually notice, and they do make changes for the better.
RobKohr 6y ago
Voting with your dollars puts money in the hands of what you care about, and a decent amount of it. You aren't going to kill these aggregators, but you are supporting the alternative to them.

uoaei 6y ago

True. But change happens from the ground up, and as more people glom onto a more morals-based view on their spending habits, other efforts will become easier to organize and wrangle until sufficient pressure can be put from below to change the circumstances in real ways. This is mainly about changing culture, which informs laws when that culture becomes widespread. And it helps me sleep at night ;)

bhupy 6y ago

> Voting with your dollars doesn't really work. You are and ant and the people who feel like you are a small percentage. Couldn't you say the same thing about actual voting, though? In an election, what difference does your one vote make, in the grand scheme of things? Has there ever been an election where the margin was low enough that your one vote would have made a real difference?

djsumdog 6y ago
Oh absolutely! Especially in non-representational voting systems like in the US. Australia has order of preference (ranking) so you can't throw your vote away and NZ has MMP to evenly distribute half the party seats by % of the population that votes for them. American voting is pretty next to useless. I did a whole video on that: https://battlepenguin.com/politics/video/does-voting-make-a-difference/ https://battlepenguin.com/politics/video/does-voting-make-a-...
- uoaei 6y ago
  I like the ongoing debate between different voting schemes. I prefer approval voting over other things like RCV/IRV -- it reflects "average" percentages of approval directly and results in the least dissatisfaction, averaged across the population. No spoiler effects, which still exist in FPTP and RCV. The most interesting and IMO overlooked part is how easy it is to communicate to the voter how they should vote. Approval voting is easy -- at the top of the ballot just say "check the box next to each name of the person who you approve of, and check as many as you like".

Jommi 6y ago

What you're missing here is that you not shopping anymore DOES have an affect. You're just missing the larger picture where they might be seeing a reduction in growth of shoppers and they might be considering doing things to combat that.

grecy 6y ago

> Voting with your dollars doesn't really work....I stopped shopping at Wal-Mart around 2007 There's a really interesting part in the documentary "Food Inc." Where they're talking about big industrial food processing places destroying quality, etc. At one point he interviews Walmart's head of milk ordering (whatever it's called).. and the person has some really interesting insight. Customers didn't want to buy milk from cows that had whatever hormone... and it became such a big deal that Walmart saw sales of that type of milk plummet, so they stopped buying and selling all milk with that hormone. They now don't stock or sell any. Period. So in fact, when people vote with their dollars companies as big as Walmart do actually notice, and they do make changes for the better.

RobKohr 6y ago

Voting with your dollars puts money in the hands of what you care about, and a decent amount of it. You aren't going to kill these aggregators, but you are supporting the alternative to them.