You cannot vote with your wallet. Or rather, you can, but you will lose that vote. Wallet-votes always go to the people with the thickest wallets, and statistically, that is not you.
(...)
Make consumption choices that improve your life and the lives of people you love. Support your local bookstore, buy online from libro.fm and bookshop.org – not because this will break Amazon's monopoly power (for that we will need unionization, antitrust, and tax enforcement), but because when you shop at those stores, you make a difference to the lives of the people who operate those stores, who pay decent wages and don't maim their warehouse workers.
The point of the phrase "voting with your wallet" is the idea that BigCorp will notice, care, and change behavior as a result. The entire article is saying "they won't notice, care, or change...
The point of the phrase "voting with your wallet" is the idea that BigCorp will notice, care, and change behavior as a result.
The entire article is saying "they won't notice, care, or change because of you but you might want to do it anyway for your own mental health while you do other collective efforts to try to change things"
And yet, Target. Sure they’re still turning a profit, but it’s a smaller profit, and they have certainly noticed. Telling people it doesn’t matter is what makes it not matter. Much like actual...
And yet, Target. Sure they’re still turning a profit, but it’s a smaller profit, and they have certainly noticed.
Telling people it doesn’t matter is what makes it not matter. Much like actual voting. Do it anyway.
Not disagreeing with you (or agreeing with the article for that matter). I just thought I understood what the author was going for differently than the parent comment.
Not disagreeing with you (or agreeing with the article for that matter). I just thought I understood what the author was going for differently than the parent comment.
Not just for "mental health". While it doesn't really hurt BigCorp, it really helps the small businesses. I buy from small businesses, use open-source software, watch indie films, etc. first and...
Not just for "mental health". While it doesn't really hurt BigCorp, it really helps the small businesses.
I buy from small businesses, use open-source software, watch indie films, etc. first and foremost, because I like the product. Second, because I want to support the creator and encourage others, partly so they produce more, and partly so they are happier. I don't even think about the negligible impact me not using a bigger service has on their revenue; I don't care that those companies exist, I care that there aren't enough alternatives (...and downstream effects like environment pollution, but as Cory Doctorow says those requires collective action).
For example, Tildes. I doubt most users here are active to spite Reddit, people are active here because of Tildes's intrinsic value: at least I am because I like the community and sometimes find interesting links and discussions
Not a wise public admission, but I feel no ethical qualms not adding something at the bottom of my grocery cart to the till or downloading the discography of an artist who sold their back...
While it doesn't really hurt BigCorp
Not a wise public admission, but I feel no ethical qualms not adding something at the bottom of my grocery cart to the till or downloading the discography of an artist who sold their back catalogue to a label long ago.
Don't you hold some broad puritanical sense of right and wrong over my head, Big corp. I know who you are.
I wish there were more of this thinking in the world. We hold ourselves individually to a high moral standard while a corporation takes all it can with no regard for any morality but the virtue of...
I wish there were more of this thinking in the world. We hold ourselves individually to a high moral standard while a corporation takes all it can with no regard for any morality but the virtue of profit.
You robbed a guy on the street? That should be a crime. You robbed a corporation? You should get a medal and teach a class.
That's how I interpreted it as well. You can and absolutely should still vote with your wallet on an individual level, however you shouldn't expect the change to be nearly as impactful as striking...
That's how I interpreted it as well. You can and absolutely should still vote with your wallet on an individual level, however you shouldn't expect the change to be nearly as impactful as striking or protesting
I think people have the misconception that "voting with your wallet" means "companies will do things I want them to do", which is not true of voting with your wallet or voting in general. That...
I think people have the misconception that "voting with your wallet" means "companies will do things I want them to do", which is not true of voting with your wallet or voting in general. That would be a dictatorship, for one, if everyone bended to your will alone.
There's plenty of examples of "voting with your wallet" changing things. But they're not always in the direction you want. Often it's not in the direction you want. That's not necessarily because of "thicker wallets", which is an easy boogie-man explanation - it's simply because it is in fact possible for you to be in the minority position.
Your vote counts, but only a tiny amount. It’s mostly other people’s votes that count. It all adds up, so you should still vote, but don’t expect much, and if you get it wrong, it’s unlikely to...
Your vote counts, but only a tiny amount. It’s mostly other people’s votes that count. It all adds up, so you should still vote, but don’t expect much, and if you get it wrong, it’s unlikely to matter.
Influencing other people’s votes is potentially far more important than your own vote, because you could affect many votes. (At least, for some people. Many of us have little influence.) Posting on social media in the usual way is unlikely to have this effect, though, because most people who post a lot are more rude than persuasive, and they’re mostly preaching to the choir.
It seems like spending money is mostly similar: it matters, but very little by itself. Your effect on a global corporation’s quarterly revenue is less than a rounding error. You aren’t even going to keep a local restaurant in business all by yourself. And it’s also true that there are other people who can spend far more than you. It still adds up, though, so it matters a little how you spend.
How you treat other people will matter to the specific people you interact with more than it will matter to the business they work for.
"Vote with your wallet" is just a tautology wrapped in advice. You're always voting with your wallet. If it seems like your vote doesn't matter, it just means that your vote isn't winning because...
"Vote with your wallet" is just a tautology wrapped in advice. You're always voting with your wallet. If it seems like your vote doesn't matter, it just means that your vote isn't winning because most other people are voting another way.
The post feels kinda haphazard to me. To boil it down: "Your consumer decisions don't matter, but here are a variety of examples of ways they actually do matter." Why can't buying choices be...
The post feels kinda haphazard to me. To boil it down: "Your consumer decisions don't matter, but here are a variety of examples of ways they actually do matter."
Make individual choices that make your life better. Take collective action to make society better.
Why can't buying choices be collective? If a bunch of people hear that X company does Y evil thing and some percentage of them decide not to give X money anymore, isn't that collective action based on shared values? Or, less abstract, the post mentions boycotts as being effective collective action but somehow magically categorizes that as something other than wallet voting.
It sounds like the real, though less clickbaity, point of the post is actually: don't shame people for their buying choices. I can agree with that.
Wallet voting (let's think of a better term) is hugely valuable in a capitalist economy. Sure, your personal buying choice isn't going to move the needle, any more than your vote in a national election will, but it borders on asinine to suggest that means it doesn't matter at all.
Similar to voting, your choice not to spend money on a national brand won't hurt them, but your choice to vote with that money on a local company absolutely will help them. And if other people decide to make the same choice, even the national brand will eventually see it in their metrics.
I don't think it makes sense to try to convince people that an objectively valuable way they can express their values and impact society doesn't matter. Or at least, if you're going to make that case, make it compelling.
I think it is fair to think that a single vote doesnt actually make a difference when the sum of your spent energy towards the goal is to have cast that vote in the first place. The idea, atleast...
I think it is fair to think that a single vote doesnt actually make a difference when the sum of your spent energy towards the goal is to have cast that vote in the first place. The idea, atleast as i understand it is that you shouldnt draw the line of personal engagement with an issue at the non-purchase of a thing, you should take that wallet vote and turn it into some kind of advocacy on whatever scale seems reasonable to you.
At the same time, he says that you shouldnt burn yourself out by exclusively looking for ways to avoid companies because similarly to how avoiding a single purchase doesnt hurt the big company, making it does little to help either. So you shouldnt make blanket decisions and approach individual purchases without the context/importance around it. You'll get tired of constantly avoiding ways to wallet vote for companies you dont like and the whole weight of the issue shouldnt be entirely on your shoulders at all times of the day.
Generally I agree with you, we shouldn't burn ourselves out taking on too much responsibility for large scale issues. But it's not binary, the ultimate conclusion isn't: If the original post was...
Generally I agree with you, we shouldn't burn ourselves out taking on too much responsibility for large scale issues.
But it's not binary, the ultimate conclusion isn't:
You cannot vote with your wallet
If the original post was more measured and honest, less engagement bait, and it talked about putting down some of the weight we pick up on while still being conscious of our impact, then I'd completely agree.
As it is I think we should be paying more attention to what we financially support, rather than less.
I agree with your last statement but i also dont see how the article doesnt say That is exactly what i got from the article so i dont really know where to go from here. The premise: The argument...
I agree with your last statement but i also dont see how the article doesnt say
it talked about putting down some of the weight we pick up on while still being conscious of our impact...
That is exactly what i got from the article so i dont really know where to go from here.
The premise:
You cannot vote with your wallet. Or rather, you can, but you will lose that vote. Wallet-votes always go to the people with the thickest wallets, and statistically, that is not you.
The argument about the futility of fighting the system from within the system's confines:
"The market" exists to do "price discovery" and you've just discovered the price of your labor (less than you need to survive) and the cost of your home (more than you can afford). You voted with your wallet, and you lost. As Thatcher was fond of saying, "there is no alternative."
The argument that perhaps to achieve the end goal you need to shed the need to make it about yourself:
Rather than demanding this kind of change, we're supposed to vote with our wallets, making a fetish out of our personal consumption choices and scolding others as "lazy" or "cheap" if they don't quit Facebook or stop shopping at Walmart. This isn't just ineffective, it's counterproductive. Refusing to form solidaristic bonds with people suffering in the same way as you because they buy things you disapprove of means that you can't attain the solidarity needed to make the real change you're seeking.
Raise people up, rather than put others down:
And also! Make consumption choices that improve your life and the lives of people you love.
Do it sustainably:
Do all this stuff – to the extent you can. Support your local bookstore, but don't forego buying and reading books you love because the store is a two hour drive and you only get there once a month.
BONUS Buy my book:
last blog post before my Kickstarter to pre-sell the audiobook, ebook and hardcover of my next book, Enshittification, winds down.
I dunno, i guess we just read it differently. I could have done without the book sale but i do get it... kind of.
Your reading is fair, it's not much different from my own. To simply the difference as much as possible it comes down to the opening: To me that's an extraordinary claim requiring extraordinary...
Your reading is fair, it's not much different from my own. To simply the difference as much as possible it comes down to the opening:
You cannot vote with your wallet. Or rather, you can, but you will lose that vote. Wallet-votes always go to the people with the thickest wallets, and statistically, that is not you.
To me that's an extraordinary claim requiring extraordinary evidence. I don't think it gets paid off in the post. People's collective buying decisions are part of the core of capitalism. Bigger wallets have vastly more influence but I don't think any economist has made a serious case that the collective buying power of small wallets isn't a powerful economic force
And without paying off that opening, and instead seemingly countering it, the whole thing feels... I'm not sure if it's baity like I said before, or manipulative, or maybe just not thought out all the way.
Whereas I think the conversation about economic power is something we should be leaning into at this point in history, with our options to make an impact shrinking.
If you choose to boycott a product, make it count. Take a picture of what you bought instead, redact vital information, and send it to the company you are boycotting letting them that was a sale...
If you choose to boycott a product, make it count.
Take a picture of what you bought instead, redact vital information, and send it to the company you are boycotting letting them that was a sale they could have had if not for their policies.
Part of the article is basically that individual action is ineffective. I mean yes on an absolute scale when adding up that single action but that is also true of all the individual actions that...
Part of the article is basically that individual action is ineffective. I mean yes on an absolute scale when adding up that single action but that is also true of all the individual actions that contributed to the society today.
I choose to think of it as what trajectory are my choices towards. It is not perfect but not participating in various social media, trying to vote and research who I vote for, trying to at least research my major purchases as practical, trying to avoid harmful trends or the omnipresent ads and other actions are as much as I can do.
If most people acted not even altruistically but simply with enlightened self intetest, we would live in a different society.
Burning out on trying to do too much is counterproductive but it is always possible to minimize ones own actions that don't seem like having a great effect generally.
...isn't this voting with your wallet?
The point of the phrase "voting with your wallet" is the idea that BigCorp will notice, care, and change behavior as a result.
The entire article is saying "they won't notice, care, or change because of you but you might want to do it anyway for your own mental health while you do other collective efforts to try to change things"
And yet, Target. Sure they’re still turning a profit, but it’s a smaller profit, and they have certainly noticed.
Telling people it doesn’t matter is what makes it not matter. Much like actual voting. Do it anyway.
Not disagreeing with you (or agreeing with the article for that matter). I just thought I understood what the author was going for differently than the parent comment.
I understood that, but I see how my post doesn't read that way.
Not just for "mental health". While it doesn't really hurt BigCorp, it really helps the small businesses.
I buy from small businesses, use open-source software, watch indie films, etc. first and foremost, because I like the product. Second, because I want to support the creator and encourage others, partly so they produce more, and partly so they are happier. I don't even think about the negligible impact me not using a bigger service has on their revenue; I don't care that those companies exist, I care that there aren't enough alternatives (...and downstream effects like environment pollution, but as Cory Doctorow says those requires collective action).
For example, Tildes. I doubt most users here are active to spite Reddit, people are active here because of Tildes's intrinsic value: at least I am because I like the community and sometimes find interesting links and discussions
Not a wise public admission, but I feel no ethical qualms not adding something at the bottom of my grocery cart to the till or downloading the discography of an artist who sold their back catalogue to a label long ago.
Don't you hold some broad puritanical sense of right and wrong over my head, Big corp. I know who you are.
I wish there were more of this thinking in the world. We hold ourselves individually to a high moral standard while a corporation takes all it can with no regard for any morality but the virtue of profit.
You robbed a guy on the street? That should be a crime. You robbed a corporation? You should get a medal and teach a class.
That's how I interpreted it as well. You can and absolutely should still vote with your wallet on an individual level, however you shouldn't expect the change to be nearly as impactful as striking or protesting
I think people have the misconception that "voting with your wallet" means "companies will do things I want them to do", which is not true of voting with your wallet or voting in general. That would be a dictatorship, for one, if everyone bended to your will alone.
There's plenty of examples of "voting with your wallet" changing things. But they're not always in the direction you want. Often it's not in the direction you want. That's not necessarily because of "thicker wallets", which is an easy boogie-man explanation - it's simply because it is in fact possible for you to be in the minority position.
Your vote counts, but only a tiny amount. It’s mostly other people’s votes that count. It all adds up, so you should still vote, but don’t expect much, and if you get it wrong, it’s unlikely to matter.
Influencing other people’s votes is potentially far more important than your own vote, because you could affect many votes. (At least, for some people. Many of us have little influence.) Posting on social media in the usual way is unlikely to have this effect, though, because most people who post a lot are more rude than persuasive, and they’re mostly preaching to the choir.
It seems like spending money is mostly similar: it matters, but very little by itself. Your effect on a global corporation’s quarterly revenue is less than a rounding error. You aren’t even going to keep a local restaurant in business all by yourself. And it’s also true that there are other people who can spend far more than you. It still adds up, though, so it matters a little how you spend.
How you treat other people will matter to the specific people you interact with more than it will matter to the business they work for.
"Vote with your wallet" is just a tautology wrapped in advice. You're always voting with your wallet. If it seems like your vote doesn't matter, it just means that your vote isn't winning because most other people are voting another way.
The post feels kinda haphazard to me. To boil it down: "Your consumer decisions don't matter, but here are a variety of examples of ways they actually do matter."
Why can't buying choices be collective? If a bunch of people hear that X company does Y evil thing and some percentage of them decide not to give X money anymore, isn't that collective action based on shared values? Or, less abstract, the post mentions boycotts as being effective collective action but somehow magically categorizes that as something other than wallet voting.
It sounds like the real, though less clickbaity, point of the post is actually: don't shame people for their buying choices. I can agree with that.
Wallet voting (let's think of a better term) is hugely valuable in a capitalist economy. Sure, your personal buying choice isn't going to move the needle, any more than your vote in a national election will, but it borders on asinine to suggest that means it doesn't matter at all.
Similar to voting, your choice not to spend money on a national brand won't hurt them, but your choice to vote with that money on a local company absolutely will help them. And if other people decide to make the same choice, even the national brand will eventually see it in their metrics.
I don't think it makes sense to try to convince people that an objectively valuable way they can express their values and impact society doesn't matter. Or at least, if you're going to make that case, make it compelling.
I think it is fair to think that a single vote doesnt actually make a difference when the sum of your spent energy towards the goal is to have cast that vote in the first place. The idea, atleast as i understand it is that you shouldnt draw the line of personal engagement with an issue at the non-purchase of a thing, you should take that wallet vote and turn it into some kind of advocacy on whatever scale seems reasonable to you.
At the same time, he says that you shouldnt burn yourself out by exclusively looking for ways to avoid companies because similarly to how avoiding a single purchase doesnt hurt the big company, making it does little to help either. So you shouldnt make blanket decisions and approach individual purchases without the context/importance around it. You'll get tired of constantly avoiding ways to wallet vote for companies you dont like and the whole weight of the issue shouldnt be entirely on your shoulders at all times of the day.
Do good, but realize that youre only human.
Generally I agree with you, we shouldn't burn ourselves out taking on too much responsibility for large scale issues.
But it's not binary, the ultimate conclusion isn't:
If the original post was more measured and honest, less engagement bait, and it talked about putting down some of the weight we pick up on while still being conscious of our impact, then I'd completely agree.
As it is I think we should be paying more attention to what we financially support, rather than less.
I agree with your last statement but i also dont see how the article doesnt say
That is exactly what i got from the article so i dont really know where to go from here.
The premise:
The argument about the futility of fighting the system from within the system's confines:
The argument that perhaps to achieve the end goal you need to shed the need to make it about yourself:
Raise people up, rather than put others down:
Do it sustainably:
BONUS Buy my book:
I dunno, i guess we just read it differently. I could have done without the book sale but i do get it... kind of.
Your reading is fair, it's not much different from my own. To simply the difference as much as possible it comes down to the opening:
To me that's an extraordinary claim requiring extraordinary evidence. I don't think it gets paid off in the post. People's collective buying decisions are part of the core of capitalism. Bigger wallets have vastly more influence but I don't think any economist has made a serious case that the collective buying power of small wallets isn't a powerful economic force
And without paying off that opening, and instead seemingly countering it, the whole thing feels... I'm not sure if it's baity like I said before, or manipulative, or maybe just not thought out all the way.
Whereas I think the conversation about economic power is something we should be leaning into at this point in history, with our options to make an impact shrinking.
If you choose to boycott a product, make it count.
Take a picture of what you bought instead, redact vital information, and send it to the company you are boycotting letting them that was a sale they could have had if not for their policies.
Part of the article is basically that individual action is ineffective. I mean yes on an absolute scale when adding up that single action but that is also true of all the individual actions that contributed to the society today.
I choose to think of it as what trajectory are my choices towards. It is not perfect but not participating in various social media, trying to vote and research who I vote for, trying to at least research my major purchases as practical, trying to avoid harmful trends or the omnipresent ads and other actions are as much as I can do.
If most people acted not even altruistically but simply with enlightened self intetest, we would live in a different society.
Burning out on trying to do too much is counterproductive but it is always possible to minimize ones own actions that don't seem like having a great effect generally.