The current hostile corporate takeover in the USA and the clear loss of political power of the common people, I started wondering what happened if people used consumption as their leverage. Since the system is designed for continuous growth, what would happen if a mass movement of people stopping buying new non-essential consumer goods?
It would send a much stronger message than angry public protests. Thoughts?
Edit 1: Received some fantastic responses one of these highlighted February 28th as the “National No Spend Day” that we can consider the rehearsal.
*Do not make any purchases Do not shop online, or in-store, No Amazon, No Walmart, No Best Buy, Nowhere!
Do not spend money on: Fast Food,Gas,Major Retailers Do not use Credit or Debit Cards for non essential spending
WHAT YOU CAN DO: Only buy essentials of absolutely necessary (Food, Medicine, Emergency Supplies) If you must spend, ONLY support small, local businesses.*
This movement is the definition of equitable, not spending means everybody can contribute within their means, and if you can’t afford to buy shit anyway, you’re already doing your part!
Anything that $peaks their language will work better than protests IMO
I’ve already planned with my wider family that for the next 4 years we aren’t doing jack shit for holidays. No black friday (tbh we never did anyway), no cyber Monday. No gifts for Christmas.
If even a relatively small number — say 10-20% — just refused to buy anything other than the bare essentials (like food, energy, utils) until action was taken, you’d probably see more action than if those people got out in the streets and protested.
If you got a substantial amount of people to it, like 40-50% of the population it would probably collapse the economy via domino effect. So much is underpinned on people spending money on any given day
But, I don’t see it happening in reality, just getting 20% to actually do it would be a massive undertaking and 20% would probably be painful, but not cause a cool cascade of collapse
Total collapse might not be required for real, tangible change. Collective action is a unifying force, and it would remind everyone top to bottom that the house of cards is in fact collapsible and not an inevitable behemoth under its own inertia.
You could argue that even with reforms the underpinning economic system remains as problematic as ever. But building that collective support, reminding poor voters that they’re not temporarily embarrassed billionaires, adds more opposition to it than support.
Won’t happen but it’s a great idea. The environment loves recession. The only years in recent history when the climate indicators briefly stopped moving in the wrong direction were 2009 and 2020.
OH THANK GOD they finally stopped exploiting me. Let me just catch my breath here and oh GOD OH FU–
You see this (or used to, anyway) from time to time with gas strikes.
If it’s just a month of “don’t buy,” it wouldn’t do much in the long run. All that does is time-shift demand to when the strike is over. If the company can anticipate well enough, they’d raise prices when the demand comes back and come out ahead in the long run.
You have to use/consume less, and for an extended time period, not just change when that purchase happens.
But yes, with that caveat, use less, and choose the lesser evil when you do need to buy something. The individual effect is small, but small things add up.
n the strike is over. If the company can anticipate well enough, they’d raise prices when the demand comes back and come out ahead in the long run.
You have to use/consume less, and for an extended time period, not just change when that purchase happens.
But yes, with that caveat, use less, and choose the lesser evil when you do need to buy something. The individual effect is small, but small things add up.
The mitigation is to focus on used goods so it is much less painful. Unlike gas, people don’t need that new TV, or that next phone, gaming console, their Nth streaming sub and use alternative (wink) ways to consume entertainment media.
Both. Definitely both. Every person has a unique capacity for resistance, so however you’re able is good and important. Talking about it, protesting, boycotting (even in tiny amounts) is something! Being nice to yourself and others in non-consumerist ways is also resistance; like hand-write a note instead of buying a card; your loved one will still appreciate it.
The point is to be a dandelion - they try to pave over us, and we pop back up through the cracks, even in our own little unassuming ways. We may be ants to them but insects outnumber vertebrate life forms by orders of magnitude.
Lots of metaphors as I get sidetracked but case in point: if you can do it, do it!
ETA: Decentralized forms of resistance may be our best bet. Big coordinated efforts are good. Making them play whack-a-mole is also good. If they don’t know where to look next even better.
As a European i’d suggest to not buy nothing, but only products made in Europe ;)
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They’ll just buy the things they didn’t buy before hand, or afterwards, washing it all out in the average.
After a long enough period of striking it begins to have repercussions beyond the individual budget.
If the flow of money slowed to a crawl for an extended period, companies don’t have the funds to pay workers. Enough job loss leads to further reduced spending, thus impacting stock value, thus impacting employment, etc…
A month would have a noticeable impact, but a full fiscal quarter would be the first cliff where the big corporations would really sweat. But generally I agree, an economic strike with an end date is like an overnight hunger strike
Yes. Or if everyone paid the monthly bills late on purpose at the same time. They stay rich because money flows through us to them. Demonstrating the power to disrupt that flow is going to send a message. The challenge obviously is in building and organizing a mass movement capable of taking coherent and targeted actions like these. You need a lot of people participating to have an impact.
I haven’t bought stuff in over a year. AI laptop let me check out completely and mostly offline all the time in general except for mobile like now
it would be soooo badass let’s do it just real quick
We could even make an app that shows stephen miller, steve bannon, or one of the dogeshits talk whenever people got tempted to buy shit.
