Voting with your wallet doesn't work usually, because your wallet isn't big enough.

Vote with your vote! Our system is dysfunctional in the united states, but if you look at the political unity behind something like blocking datacenter construction and how much of a headache it's causing for big tech, it's clear we still can have an effect. Most of the problem with big tech are solvable through existing anti-trust institutions IF we actually empower them. Things got bad because we stopped enforcing the rules; the rules used to work.

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lobofta 10 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Voting with your wallet is like voting with your vote. It both works, but to an extent that will never be noticeable by you. You vote more often with your money than with your vote though. Don't buy into the nirvana fallacy nor be fatalistic. Be a responsible consumer and inform others on why they should vote wisely too.

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zugi 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Voting with your wallet lets you send dozens of fine-grained messages a day. You support companies you want to support, and don't support those you don't want. Others will choose differently and that's fine for them. The mere existence of businesses you dislike is not a sign that this process has failed, you don't have the right to stop others from getting what they want to pay for.

Voting in federal elections in the US lets you send a message of less then one bit per year. It's a horribly ineffective method.

Apple exists because plenty of people vote for it with their wallets. I don't. But I don't mind that it exists.

I vote against Google when I can. I block ads and use Duck Duck Go as my default search engine. But the results are so poor compared to Google that I switch to use Google often. That's a sign to me that their product is worth my occasional, small "vote", and I'm okay with that.

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lapcat 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Voting with your wallet doesn't work usually, because your wallet isn't big enough.

> Vote with your vote!

My wallet is bigger than average. My vote is not.

Of course in neither case are they big enough to make much of a difference by themselves.

	▲	zaik an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		But what about relative power? US GDP / #votes in last presidential election = 208608 USD You must indeed have a big wallet if you perceive it to be more powerful than your vote. Only a small percentage of people spend that much in a year.
	▲	dymk 10 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		People with big enough wallets have a bigger vote than everyone else

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Noaidi 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

>Voting with your wallet doesn't work usually, because your wallet isn't big enough.

Our collective wallets are HUGE. You need to do more than just boycott, yoiu need to spread the word.

	▲	bigbadfeline 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> Our collective wallets are HUGE. "Collective" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Are the top 1% in that collective? The top 10%? I don't think so - with that in mind, do you still think our wallet is huge enough for the job? > You need to do more than just boycott, you need to spread the word. Spreading the word is now done with a huge wallet and access to politicians - whose word is being spread can tell you who's got these. Are there other ways? Yes - still peaceful but complex, laborious and thankless - boycott isn't integral to any of them though.