This is why I fail to see the value in boycotts at this point. Anything that I boycott will be cancelled out probably 10 fold by people happy to buy from that place still or just required.

Like I'm not willing to pay certain prices for things like I fly less because the experience is worse than it should be, by a lot and I can't handle paying 10x more for the business class option. So I'm just stuck doing it. And there are plenty of people who are happy to do it still.

So you end up left with a rock and a hard place. Do I not travel? Do I not go buy that thing? Do I not do these things that would possibly add happiness to my life to fight price gouging? Especially when you know that for every 1 of you there are 6 other people happy to pay the price or buy the thing.

It feels like a lot of these big companies are just too big to fail at this point and abuse us for it.

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projektfu 18 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The average "boycott" is not even organized, has no particular goal, and is just meant to make the boycotter feel morally superior. I bet Starbucks execs giggle every time they hear about the next boycott. The people calling for the boycott probably haven't been in a Starbucks in 15 years, and they don't have any intention of becoming regular customers if they do.

Thinking of boycotts that have worked in the past, they generally had specific demands and a plan to resume normal consumption when those demands were met. The Gallo wine boycott in the 70s was successful. The workers had a clear case, simple demands, a desire to negotiate, and a call to boycott one specific winery until they came to the table. When they did, the boycott was lifted and the majority of boycotters went back to consuming the wine.

On the other hand, if I decided to boycott Gallo wine, they wouldn't notice, because I don't think I've bought a bottle of Gallo in my life, and I haven't given a good reason to do it for other people to join me.

	▲	projektfu 16 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Just a note that my "Starbucks boycott" thing refers to the people over the years who have boycotted Starbucks for random greivances, not the organized union boycott, that might have some success.

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etchalon 20 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I changed my own internal concept of a boycott.

I used to think, "I'll stop shopping here! They'll change their policies!", and yeah, nope, what happens is the company just leans into the customers that remained. So my "boycott" didn't do anything but deprive me of something I wanted.

However, I decided that, at least for a certain set of things, my desire for the thing can be outweighed by my desire not to contribute to something.

So boycott's aren't about me changing a company's policies, they're about me allocating my resources towards the things I want to see in the world.

	▲	pavel_lishin 19 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Yep. Me not buying from Amazon isn't going to make a dent in their bottom line, but it'll make a significant dent in my happiness.
	▲	tehjoker 19 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Boycotts don’t work unless they are organized and articulate a concrete demand. I respect boycotts that have an organization behind them and a clear end goal, even if that goal may be far off. When organizers ask for a boycott that may take years, their goal should be worthy to justify the consumer pain. BDS is a good example, it will take a while but stopping the apartheid Israeli regime is good. https://bdsmovement.net/ A less intensive campaign is the Starbucks Union’s no contract no coffee pledge, which presumably will last only weeks to months. https://www.nocontractnocoffee.org/

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19 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[deleted]

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Analemma_ 20 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

To a first approximation, boycotts never work. The concept exists as an opiate and sop make you think you have power as a consumer and that regulations are unnecessary, but it's a mirage.

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raw_anon_1111 19 hours ago | parent [-]

Tesla sales tell a different story. The people who were all for Tesla are fleeing and when he had his brief moment of MAGA alignment, it didn’t help because most of them didn’t have the money and/or desire to buy an EV.

Tesla is having sells issues world wide due to a large part because of Musk.

Another recent example how fast Disney turned around and bought Kimmel back after people started cancelling Disney+ subscriptions left and right.

Disney had to ignore pressure from Trump and the FCC. It definitely wasn’t a principled stand - they were one of the ones who bribed Trump personally.

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projektfu 19 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Tesla is suffering not so much a boycott as a brand failure. The car is sold as a status symbol among a certain group, and they tanked that status. It wasn't a boycott so much as an own goal.

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raw_anon_1111 18 hours ago | parent [-]

People are explicitly not buying Tesla because of Musk and his politics. What do you call that if not a boycott?

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bigyabai 17 hours ago | parent [-]

There is no $25,000 Tesla - most of those the conscientious objectors weren't even in Tesla's target audience anyways. The "gotcha" of all luxury tech is that it's only a branding distinction.

Which puts Tesla in a similar spot to the Apple situation, where the majority of customers are the least-likely to demand value, quality or moral consistency from their OEM. Your CEO can embarrass himself in interviews, ship nonsense thousand-dollar novelty products and kiss ass to authoritarians, but people who consistently buy a certain product won't abandon their brand loyalty. In fact, both Apple and Tesla seem to benefit from the influx of liberal and conservative customers who feel "represented" by superficial gestures like interviews, novelty products and asskissing.

It feels safe to assume that both Apple and Tesla will persist long into the future, eager to amend their horrible misgivings coerced under authoritarianism.

	▲	raw_anon_1111 15 hours ago \| parent [-]
		People in California were definitely Teslas target audience. The difference is there are plenty of cars that are just as good as Teslas. What are people in the US going to do that don’t want iPhones? Buy crappy ad infested Android devices? Google is one of the companies that bribed Trump to leave him alone to “settle a lawsuits

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watwut an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It was not brief moment. It was him becoming increasingly open about his far right sympathies that existed for a long time.

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Analemma_ 18 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I would certainly love to see Tesla implode and I'm crossing my fingers that it happens, but I think it's too early to tell whether the outrage about Musk will amount to anything. Their sales were down in Q1 and Q2 this year but recovered in Q3. That could be a dead cat bounce because the EV tax credits were expiring, or it could be at the outrage did all the damage it was going to do and is over now. We won't know which for a little while.

	▲	raw_anon_1111 17 hours ago \| parent [-]
		There is absolutely no reason to buy a Tesla over basically every other EV in 2025 unless full self driving ever becomes more reliable. I’ve driven 4-5 different EVs over the past couple of years [1] including Tesla’s. They aren’t any better and in fact the infotainment system is worse than even low end cars with CarPlay support. Sales are tanking worse overseas and being taken over by cheaper cars based on Chinese tech. It’s very much a dead cat bounce.