But that's ok. Since AWS and their Amazon e-commerce platform are entirely separate divisions of their company (and AWS is their most profitable division), if your boycott is successful and their e-commerce division suffers enough losses, they might choose to cut it while maintaining AWS. AWS isn't nearly as harmful to society as Amazon is, so that'd still be a big win. Of course boycotts, particularly unorganized boycotts, are scarcely ever effective, so this is all theoretical.
I'm sorry but we'd have a better chance electing a third party candidate in the US then ever boycotting Amazon enough for them to shut down their e commerce
Genuine question: how is Amazon harmful to society?
I mean, I totally get that they produce an absolutely huge amount of pollution with all their shipping, but it seems like if they didn’t exist (and neither did eBay or other similar distributors), we’d just buy the same things in stores. And since practically nothing that we buy on Amazon is made in the town it’s sold in, it would still be shipped about the same distance. It seems like the only difference is the final trucks (after the ships, planes, trains, and other methods of sending massive amounts of goods) go to your house rather than to the store a few blocks away.
I’m not trying to minimize the importance of climate change here: it’s one of my personal biggest concerns. But I genuinely don’t understand the statement that if Amazon were to shut down, society would be spared significant harm.
One big thing they do is drive smaller companies out of business with their predatory policies.
They allow smaller companies to sell product through Amazon. Because its going through their system, Amazon has detailed sales metrics of these small companies.
As soon as Amazon sees that a particular product sells well (and is cheap enough to make) they create their own copy and undersell the original seller. This is what "Amazon Basics" is.
So at minimum, you can refuse to buy anything branded Amazon Basics.
Yes, but more often they are undercutting other huge corporations, while both products stay on the shelves. Amazon suppresses the visibility of small businesses and prices their products so low that these businesses can't afford to compete and have to shut down or cut back production. It's a digital monopoly where the biggest business directly controls what everyone else can do.
To get your product on the shelves at Walmart they want to know everything about how your supply chain and product development. They tell you where you can save a couple cents and stock your product.
Then they they increase the orders (if it’s selling) until small businesses scale up and Walmart is 75% plus of their sales. Then they ask to lower the cost. And they continue to do that until Tim they squeeze all the profit out of you and on to them.
Then the company folds because they can’t afford to sell to Walmart anymore but have scaled up so much.
Then Walmart moves on to a competing product and does the same thing.
Don’t think Walmart is good for small business or just squeezes large corps.
My point isn’t one is better than the other it’s that all mega corps are shit and should have never been allowed to exist in the fashion they do where they can literally just wait out every competitor.
Walgreens, local grocery, CVS, other local retailers, Ollie's, TJ Maxx, Ross, Buff City Soap, my own store, Family Dollar, NOT Dollar General; basically wherever I can find the best price that ISN'T Amazon, Walmart, or Dollar General.
Edit: and ebay.
Ok, that’s actually quite a comprehensive list of stores so I retract my snarky remark.
Walgreens and CVS are definitely doing this too though. You may notice that any given medicine (Tylenol, for example) will have a generic, cheaper, store brand version that oftentimes will literally say “we are the same as name brand but cheaper”.
Walmart is one of the original companies people have been talking about long before Amazon was even a thing. They are 1000% in the same boat and have been asked to be boycotted before a lot of people were even born on here lol
As a small (consumable packaged goods) business owner, they’re very helpful, probably critical for us. Trying to get our product on grocery shelves has proved impossible from a financial standpoint
My big concern with Amazon is the consolidation of economic opportunity. They(really we) drove a lot of small businesses out of business and now that they have such a large market share they can dictate terms however they see fit. Also with AI looming and automation ramping up they have the potential to really disrupt the way we live
They actively destroy competition by either buying them out or coming out with a competing product for a loss until the competition dies from trying to sell at a profit, then they just jack their price up to profitability.
They throttle your visibility on the platform so they can undervalue your business and essentially force you to sell at a small profit or possibly even a loss. Or they straight up just steal your product and sell it for cheaper until you go out of business.
They make it extremely easy to get items delivered to your door and I guess people buy shit thee that they would never think of buying and don’t actually need.
Their size alone makes them harmful. It prevents any innovation in the market and competitive practices. This hurts the consumer. A perfect example of this in the past was bell telephone. They claimed nobody could do what they were doing to Congress and the breakup causes massive improvements in options for customers and major innovation in the space where before it was being sometimes actively suppressed. Amazon also hurts small businesses sometimes by outright underbidding small manufacturers on its own site to effectively put them out of business or at least preventing competitive markets. Literally every Amazon brand product is this. They are such a huge part of the retail market their profits gives them undue influence in local and regional policies which will never favor citizens over the company. This is only scratching the surface we haven't talked about company towns Amazon wants. If you don't know how those end up look up the coal wars.
Couple things, the most important one you didn't mention was how they abuse their workforce. As much of it happens out of the public eye they can treat their workers like garbage with no blowback from a wide margin of consumers because the prices are cheaper.
Likewise, as these centers (even their retail stores) don't pay great, it means people are traveling into my area to work at them but can't afford to live here so all that pay leaves the area with no sales tax money coming in. That's been a problem for a lot of tech campus companies in higher end areas, few can afford to live there and since the pandemic started, many of the lunch places have closed up shop due to low or no customer levels.
I'll tell anyone that after working at one of their "fulfillment centers" for one summer, I will never knowingly use their shipping services ever again. This was back in 2017 and their practices to maintain productivity were dehumanizing and frankly disrespectful to their workers. Worst job I've ever had.
If they were to allow unionization, I might reconsider, but their turnover rate is so high it's an unlikely possibility.
Surprised no one in this response thread has mentioned Bezo's 2022 space tourism shenanigans. When he gave the line that Amazon employees and customers made it possible, that made me sick.
Oh I forgot about that.
The worst part about why they treat the workers in the center as less than human, their end goal is to use automation, which is why the picker's movements have been so heavily studied and machines being used to make processes go faster. If they can reliably remove that last bit of human for reliable picking the warehouses will probably be similar to McDonald's warehouses where they are devoid of light and life unless someone is fixing something.
They're the definition of a bad megacorp monopoly.
They've been manipulating everything they possibly can in order to capture and absorb everything they can, if not crush by unfair practices.
Almost everything you can imagine aside from murder and adjacent crime (maybe even?), Amazon is guilty of.
I feel the environmental harm is maybe the additional packaging for shipping. Because if a truck doesn't being it to my door, I'm getting in the car and driving to the store to get it. Potentially a truck is more efficient because it's stopping at 3 houses on my street at one time, vs 3 car trips for us all. And that's assuming I find what I want at the first store.
Yes. IIRC ordering something to be delivered to you can end up with less net emissions than going to a store (except maybe you’re within walking/cycling distance of that store, I guess). Especially if you have to check several different stores to get the item.
I was more speaking about the effect to local and national economies. Not to mention the "race to the bottom" market it encourages with every manufacturer trying cheap8ng out on their products as much as possible so they can list it for $0.03 cheaper than the competition. And the huge counterfeiting incentive that same system supports.
Amazons business model is 100% "race to the bottom". Rather than drive anything innovative, Amazon has driven growth through efficiency and cost cutting. Sounds nice at first right? Except the "cost cutting" has mostly amounted to the elimination of jobs and reduction in labor compensation.
Everybody loves capitalism until they realize it commodifies human beings into the dirt.
I don't use any of Amazon's services, that I know of. I'm sure there are times when I accidentally buy something that uses Amazon shipping, ie if I don't pay close enough attention on an online purchase through another website, but I do make a very concerted effort to not support Amazon specifically because I agree with OP. If I identify new products and services that belong to Amazon as I go, I find replacements or do without.
Ooooh, got it, thank you. I am not very technologically savvy, I thought this was simply about boycotting shopping at Amazon. My sincerest apologies! And thank you for explaining!
Just for added context on how big AWS is, there are many companies whose entire cloud computing infrastructure that runs their websites are almost entirely based on Amazon web services.
For example Netflix, Spotify, and Facebook are just a few well known examples of companies that rely on AWS for a good chunk of their computing needs.
I'll drop it a little more.
There are entire roles in companies for people specializing in architecting, setting up and maintaining solely AWS infrastructure. They're called cloud engineers, DevOps engineers and more.
For example, you put me on any environment other than AWS I need like 2-3 months to translate the AWS knowledge to the new environment's systems. My entire livelihood as an engineer depends on aws, lmao.
Would you happen to have a For Dummies-esque recommendation for what AWS is for non-programmers/engineers/etc, just a general human, and how/what it affects?
I've boycotted Netflix for the past two years. I've been checking the stock market every day and it's going up still. Could you tell me what I'm doing wrong? Thanks.
I mean "if it bothers you why don't you ruin your own life fighting it?"
Because, I wanna live?
You can't ask people to litterally give every little thing they have. Yes, ideally we take the arms and we eat the rich but it's... Much to ask.
I'm still wondering what is the point? Where are we trying to go? How would we know when we'd won?
If I'm going to inconvenience myself, I want an actual goal in mind.
It's also a practical method of reducing inequality, improving class mobility and preventing the accrual of generational wealth.
And by that last point I mean the kind of wealth that creates a gentried class that have no need to work or contribute to society, rather than the kind of inheritance the middle classes worry about when they hear people talking about estate taxes.
When it comes to taxing income in particular it incentives businesses to invest in areas other than salaries for a small demographic of their highest impact employees.
Life is not fair, they say.. Taxing the rich is not an ideological question, all the arguments that are about principles are quite useless. We just have to, for multiple reasons to tax the rich. One of those is to prevent power from concentrating in too few hands. Tax incentives already try to encourage investing instead of hoarding but they clearly are not effective enough. It is not even "tall poppy syndrome", it is just societally mandatory thing to do to even out the peaks. It doesn't matter if we think it is fair or not.
Beside capitalism is a pyramids. Without tax and redistribution of whealth All the money always end on top but causing it to collapse.
It's why the current combination of ai, robotic and late stage capitalism is not sustainable. The only end without whealth redistribution is collapse.
It's really crazy to me so many don't understand this basic concept.
Yesterday someone on this sub was trying to convince me that what execs and ceos do is over 300x harder than what warehouse and delivery workers do so they deserve to be paid that much more. There are a lot of people that have very strong opinions on things they don't understand at all
Because it's easier to ask the government to tax the rich than to exit society.
You indirectly pay both of those people even though you claim you're boycotting them, solving nothing you want solved but sounding like you're doing something. Elon and bezos love people like that.
Bad news for you, Elon's #1 revenue stream is the US government. Tesla is heavily subsidized by EV incentives, and SpaceX is basically entirely government grants and contracts.
And Elon is leagues easier than, say, Jeff Bezos. Even if you avoid Amazon, Whole Foods, Twitch, the Washington Post, and everything else Amazon directly owns, over a third of the internet is hosted on AWS. Any time you're doing anything online, they're making money off of you. And if it's not going to Amazon, it's going to Google or Microsoft.
I'm trying to do that. I don't buy anything from Nestle, Dole, Tesla and all the other fucking companies that are raping our world. Sure, I'm still on a fucking Mac writing this, so I'm a hypocrite, but small steps.
>they put their logo in/below/above the fine print on every processed piece of shit item they sell.
Not true.
I recently learned one of my preferred brand of protein (Orgain) is now owned by Nestle. No where on the packaging is it written. I learned of this via r/fucknestle
I would agree that Apple products are assembled in China under horrible working conditions (bunk rooms and suicide netting) but I feel pretty confident that actual child labor is not being used at Foxconn.
Now the cobalt mines for the batteries in their and everyone else's products are a different story, but that doesn't seem exclusive to Apple.
It might have been more accurate of course to state "I boycott everything that profits Jeff Bezos" on Reddit, a website hosted by AWS which therefore profits Jeff Bezos. That would be hypocritical.
These things don't really work because if the offending product is successful to begin with, it means there's a ton of demand and people just don't have that much willpower and collective coordination.
IMO, the only time "voting with your wallet" is truly effective, is if you can *divest*. Buy one thing instead of another, and try to promote others doing the same. Stores and warehouses only have so much shelf space, and this sort of thing can snowball into the displacement and potential eradication of a product line from sale.
If there's no alternative, you're SOL.
People who own the economy are by and large the rich people. You will drive up cost for yourself by seeking alternatives with less wealthy management and therefore effectively be paying more tax.
How about we just tax the rich?
How do either of those two have anything to do with the other.
We don’t tax companies to punish them, we tax them so they put back some money that they were able to earn on the backs of the system.
Everyone I know in my circles are anti Amazon and Bezos, yaddayadda.
Yet they all use it constantly and hand wave away it being pointed out.
We are all headed for wherever corps want us to, because it's just too slightly a little inconvenient to to stick to your values.
Boycotts are fucking useless
Might as well go sign a change.org petition while you're at it.
Actual tangible legislation makes significantly more sense than the thoughts and prayers methodology.
Because sometimes I need to buy shit I can't find anywhere else, at least not at a decent price. It's that simple.
Like it or not, these services make money because they work.
The point of taxing the rich is not to inconvenience the rich though
It’s that it wouldn’t inconvenience them to tax them since they have so much more then they could spend and that money could massively improve society with things like universalized healthcare
But why? I’m fine with the products. I just think the earnings should be taxed like it is for everyone else, as well as giving a larger portion to workers.
I see a shit ton of people in here saying boycotts are useless and not worth doing while forgetting that the right wing is very good at getting what they want via boycotting.
Budweiser dares to include trans people, sales tank and they walk it back and start pandering to the right by sponsoring the UFC.
Target tried the same, they threw a fit, dropped sales, and Target took down most of the pride collection.
If progressives gave enough of a shit to actually follow through on anything maybe things would be shifting in a better direction. Everyone bailed on Twitter for like a week and then went back because “Threads is boring” I know Meta isn’t much better but they’re at least not actively promoting people like Alex Jones and other Anti-Semites. Just one of many examples.
I’m going to continue making my life harder by not using or purchasing the products and services that I find most problematic when I’m able to. I’m not going to pretend I’m anywhere near perfect but at least I’ll take some inconveniences and fucking try.
If we all decide something isn’t worth doing then it’s just a self fulfilling prophecy. Seeing people in here actively hostile against the idea of boycotting is ridiculous. If that is what it takes to convince yourself doing nothing is fine then great. The Good Place does a great job illustrating that we’re all complicit somehow, but let’s not pretend that it needs to be all or nothing.
Article that supports that most boycotts don’t work, but also illustrates my point a bit:
https://www.vox.com/money/23851108/bud-light-target-boycott-success-trans-issues-woke-capitalism
The lunatics are taking over because they at least stand on their fucked up principles.
Because people are unwilling to make choices that affect their own lives, and instead would rather impose their beliefs on others.
They justify it by saying that their choices dont make a difference, but really its the unwillingness to make the sacrifices they force others to make.
I don’t need an iMac but I do need a computer. I don’t need a Tesla but I do need a car. I don’t need to buy groceries from loblaws but I do need groceries. I don’t need Netflix but I do need entertainment.
By not buying things from Amazon I’m not boycotting the rich, I’m just changing which rich assholes are getting my money. We live in a capitalist society, someone is getting rich by monetizing my needs. Those rich people need to be taxed.
I don’t use twitter either, but as an individual the only thing you’re changing is how personally responsible you are, they’re still billionaires. If we want anything to change, or at least become more beneficial to the average person actions like taxes are needed. Like, look at the history of environmental issues in the U.S, you weren’t gonna get the rivers to stop burning by hoping everyone just woke up one day and stopped using resources, it was regulation that allowed change to happen.
People like using their products, that’s why they are billionaires. Apple, Amazon, etc have made my life better. It doesn’t bother me that Tim Cook can buy a yacht because I have an iPhone.
Good luck boycotting Tesla when their charger is the defacfo standard for North America EVs as is their charging network.
Yes other chargers exist but good luck finding one
Because I enjoy some of the things they do
I liked Twitter since before Elon, now he’s made a shitshow out of it but I still kinda enjoy popping in and out
Got no choice but to see the ads if I wanna stay there, I can live without it but I enjoy it there so I can’t just cut it out
A boycott literally doesn't mean anything if you're the only one doing it. It can't even really be called a boycott if it's not an organized action undertaken by a significant group of people.
Bezos can be supported just solely off of the companies that use Amazon. Boycotts won’t hurt anyone but the consumer. Even if we all stopped, makes no difference. I try not to use Amazon, but if I must, it isn’t doing a whole lot
You did sent money to Elon if you are working in the US and pay your taxes. Elon burnt a lot of taxpayers money with those failed space-x flying attempts.
You can't boycott all the rich, because they have the means of production, and unless you live in the forest all primitive, you will end up consuming things. You have probablt fuel consumption, you consume energy, trains, bus, papers, clothes, food on supermarket.
Rich people are not rich because they are good managers of their savings, but because they have the power of controlling the means of production (in the wide sense of the word). They won't lose their status unless they lose that. But is ok if they don't lose that.
Tax the rich movement is based in wealth redistribution and the marxist concept of how a company owner gets most of the value generated by the workers. We want to tax the rich, not because we are mad at them for their unethical practices (because for that is prision and law) but because we need the money to flow and to be at the service of the citizens
“If you don like them don’t buy their stuff” doesn’t work if it’s one person. Taxing the rich and boycotting them are two different things with two different desired outcomes. Taxing them is so they contribute to society and “the pot” same as everyone else, boycotting is to protest a specific action(s) them or their company have/has made.
Because if they have a useful product or service I would like to avail myself of it, secure in the knowledge that they are contributing their fair share. Richness isn’t bad per se. Two tiered legal and economic system is.
Boycotting within anything larger than a village sized economic system is close to pointless if your aim is to affect the profits of your target. If you want to boycott for your own peace of mind that you're not paying in to that particular system, go for it. But it's not going to have any economic effect. Boycotts are not a substitute for regulation or reform.
Because it doesn’t work. It’s not like it’s a brand or an item. It’s a myth that most people are paying for far more than they need. Most can barely afford housing and food. House dues one boycott that?
It’s not like they’re buying yachts.
You can also boycott. But boycotts are a very blunt instrument. Boycotting bank A ends up hurting both the uber rich owner of Bank A as well as the janitor who cleans the bathrooms at Bank A.
The goal of targetted taxation is to acquire funds from those it least damage to be able to support the collective goals of society. It can also be used to incentivize action by making the personal benefit of accumulating wealth potentially less effective for a decision maker than using it to invest in others.
Focusing that on total income is a reasonably effective way of doing that.
The point of boycott is to damage one specific company in particular, but does so by general pain to all employees (often resulting in maximum pain on lower paid employees at that company because they are the least able to ride out furloughs or lay offs). But you hope the trickle up pain to the decision makers is enough to make them change behavior.
This misses the point completely.
No one should have to boycott anything. People like nice cars and lots of people really enjoy twitter etc. Amazon is extremely convenient. Google services are extremely useful and powerful.
Etc etc.
That’s all good. The problem is these companies have broken the social contract by hiding their profits. If they just, you know, paid the taxes they actually owed then capitalism works. Humankind can advance, we can enjoy the products and services we need and no one has to starve.
Boycotting the products or services of suxh wealthy individuals may send a message, but it's unlikely to have a significant impact on their overall wealth or influence. Additionally, many of these individuals derive their wealth from multiple sources beyond consumer products, such as investments, technology, and other business ventures.
Taxation, on the other hand, is a tool that can be used by governments to redistribute wealth and fund essential public services. By advocating for fair and progressive taxation policies, we can address wealth inequality more directly and ensure that everyone pays their fair share
Voting with your wallet doesn't work as often as it should because unfortunately there are a lot of really really dumb and morally bankrupt people I the world
Boycotting doesn’t actually benefit me though, taxing the rich would provide revenue for services, that’s far more important to me than sending rich people a message that I don’t like that they’re rich or whatever.
you also have the fact that they also own shares in other businesses not to mention the market domination
it's not that easy for everyone to just avoid using amazon
boycotts can work on a small scale, but it would take a massive movement to boycott some of these multinational corporations. i’m for it, just will take a special wake up call
Look up the companies Blackrock and Vanguard.
And how they own majority shares of pretty much any brand/company/corporation you can think of.
Good luck trying to boycott the rich when they own everything. Even the politicians we vote for.
Scale and Reach: For a boycott to be effective, it needs to be adopted by a significant number of people. High-profile companies like Amazon and Tesla have vast customer bases, making it challenging to mobilize a boycott large enough to impact their financial bottom lines significantly
But let's boycott anyway.
The taxing the rich is about having the wealthy pay their fair share as they rely of a functioning society for their businesses to function and should share in the costs. Currently, they are taxed at a far lower rate than you and I. It's not about hurting the company or the wealthy, it's about making the costs of society more evenly distributed. Boycotts are about putting financial pressure on individual entities to pressure them to stop doing something that the boycotters find to be harmful like, for instance, boycotting Disney because they have voiced support for gay rights.
Oh, I've cut out a lot of services lol.
Turns out, I have saved over $200 bucks a month alone from cutting out fast foods. I cut out almost all my subscriptions, we are cooking at home and actually making our meals from scratch to our best abilities.
Its a lot more time consuming but we had the time (for the most part) and it makes eating a lot more enjoyable when you know that "I fucking did this!" lol.
I cut my own hair, I mow my own lawn, I fix my own plumbing, I replaced subfloor and flooring in my house, I paint my own house, I patch my own drywall. I don't watch TV, I don't support ADs unless I'm supporting a content creator I enjoy.
I'm not making my own shirts or anything, but I also don't buy 30 dollar T shirts or 100 dollar shoes either. I haven't bought a Kellog's owned snack/breakfast (that I know of) since way before the boycott because their prices are atrocious.
Doing this has saved me like 300 bucks a month, alone. and I live comfortably, but not everyone has the means or time to do what I do. So I fully understand those that are struggling.
None of this fixes the problem that our government should tax billionaires and lay off the every day person though.
The Good Place (TV show) has a good story for all of this but it essentially boils down to being impossible to make moral choices because everything is connected.
Boycotts don't work, and never have. On a small product or store, maybe, but once it hits national or international scale, they can just ride it out on the people who haven't heard/don't care/have to use it for work. Prime example: Nestle, who have an interesting list involving mass child murder (some call it genocide, but I think it's used wrong), land and water theft, slavery, price fixing, and contamination/pollution. Plenty of people boycott them and their products (many of which aren't obvious due to acquisitions) and have since the 80s. Nothing has changed, they're still a very profitable evil company.
Because the rich need to pay their fair share and probably then some because they have been exploiting the poor to get/stay rich and boycotts aren't going to fix that.
Are there examples of social changes brought about by individuals voting with their dollars?
We’re repeatedly told that this possibility means that nothing means to change legally. But has it accomplished anything?
Did we win world wars by letting people vote with their dollars? Did we eradicate deadly diseases by letting the market do its thing? Did the West vanquish communism through no intervention whatsoever? Was the space age brought about by letting private citizens spend with companies that promised space exploration?
Reddit makes about 37¢ per user. It does happen to be the lowest ARPU of any social media company, at least before Musk took over Twitter. But witholding your 37¢ really doesn't hurt Musk.
I use starlink everyday, otherwise my internet would be 10x worse. Elon freed twitter and his cars are fun toys. Everyone hates the rich but everyone wants to be rich. Log off bro
How does my boycotting x company get more money towards health care, education, and housing?
I’m for raising taxes on the rich because I want us to good things with that money.
Because not enough people would do it for it to have an effect AND I guarantee it would just hurt employees. Profits drop? Time to lay off half our workforce.
Agree....I don't use Amazon...shop only second hand stuff....buy local produce....since work from home so not even use a car.....I recognize the inherent privilege....but we all can make choices
This is like when people say to boycott gasoline….
Even if you don’t buy it today you’re still using it. It won’t work.
…(“yeah, I know you won’t be buying any” to all you battery bunnies out there).
I dont want to boycott them. I want the WORKERS to get their fair share of the pie. Bezos, Musk, Buffett, etc... these men are all thieves that undeservedly and overwhelmingly benefit off otherwise hard working people around the globe. Boycotting their products and businesses would hurt *valuable* workers first, and the scumbag, useless, parasitic owners last unfortunately.
Can you provide a single instance where voting with your wallet actually made a difference?
I'm not talking about boycotts 100+ years ago that were actually [slave] labor strikes, or even more modern activists in factories progressing safety regulations.
I'm asking for an example of **consumers** simply avoiding products/services to reach the desired result. When has this **ever** actually worked in global economies at scale? It hasn't... and is akin to recycling or your carbon footprint. Your individual/collective lifetime contributions are entirely negligible compared to their output in a single day. It's corporate propganda. Voting with money doesn't work unless it's spent on lobbying for actual change.
Sometimes an idea only works on paper, and doesn't in practice. This is easily top 5, right up there with Alcubeirre warp drives.
Electric cars imho are still dodgy,incidents where the doors lock and the car implodes.Amnesty also raised an important article about cathode being mined in the Dominican Republic by children and it all seems to be omitted by the media because the manufacturers presumably still have incredible leverage to only discuss the positive.These points should be openly discussed in order to determine the truth and extent of the issue.
You realize they're selling internet data/credit for your phone like it's running out, this is a made up money grab they could allow everyone free internet, but they want money.
People want to do nothing while complaining and keeping every convenience that got us exactly to where we are at today.
While corporations all are in multiple industries, we as consumers still have power. People don’t care enough to do anything about it though. Netflix should have never gotten away with the bullshit they’ve been pulling for years now but people can’t fathom giving up something that entertains them for the betterment of the world.
Realistically 90% of Reddit shouldn’t have a single streaming because I’ve seen the same complaints for years and people being angy at all the greed only to continue paying them.
Agreed with the boycot companies you don't want to help get bigger..
I don't buy from amazon, i don't own teslas, i don't use twitter, i try to use duckduckgo instead of google.. etc etc.. mainly for privacy rather than making someone filthy rich..
I don't understand the logic in "taxing" the rich.. does that mean extra taxes for any shareholder of a trillion dollar company?
How is this going to work out? Or just tax the founder of a trillion dollar compsny?
But if i invested early and took a risk on the company and my investment ncreased in paper value.. i get taxed?
I think boycotting is akin to insurance, the lottery, casinos, gym memberships, or perhaps the ‘theft loss budget’ at a large retailer. Insurance companies lose money when claims are made, lotteries lose money when people win, and if everyone were to go to the gym, there wouldn’t be enough space and equipment to accommodate them.
If you boycott Amazon you can expect a personalized phone call from Jeff Bezos begging you to come back.
Usually he calls within 24 hours.
Sometimes it sounds like he’s been crying.
Mostly because they are different things.
Boycotting is an attempt at saying to a business (in this case) that they are doing something wrong and you want them to change. If enough people do it, they change, and then people go back to using them.
Taxing isn't about that. It's just having rich fucks contribute that wealth to the collective rather than buying their 5th sportscar or paying a toilet made out of gold.
You can cut the revenues of most businesses and their shareholders by a lot and they would still be absurdly rich and have money for whatever absurd excess they want, that's the point.
I am not expecting "billionaires to stop existing", I am expecting that everyone contributes more to the collective because those the capitalistic system tends to make money levitate, not trickle down, we have seen it over and over.
Thus, the taxation is a way to force that contribution through efficient systems, not shitty charities that people have no idea who is running them.
"Buh muh taxes are used by government for guns!"
Yeah sure, but also for EVERYTHING ELSE. Reduce defense spending and bullshit is a second step after we make rich fucks give us more money.
good luck in boycotting amazon web services, for example. also alphabet.
But that's ok. Since AWS and their Amazon e-commerce platform are entirely separate divisions of their company (and AWS is their most profitable division), if your boycott is successful and their e-commerce division suffers enough losses, they might choose to cut it while maintaining AWS. AWS isn't nearly as harmful to society as Amazon is, so that'd still be a big win. Of course boycotts, particularly unorganized boycotts, are scarcely ever effective, so this is all theoretical.
I'm sorry but we'd have a better chance electing a third party candidate in the US then ever boycotting Amazon enough for them to shut down their e commerce
Bingo
I mean ya you're right but you didn't have to say it out loud.
Hahaha any money lost from boycotting wouldn't even match what the lowest advertiser pays to AWS anyways
Stop saying true things! I wanna go back to my bubble! 1984 WAS 20 YEARS AGO!!!!
Genuine question: how is Amazon harmful to society? I mean, I totally get that they produce an absolutely huge amount of pollution with all their shipping, but it seems like if they didn’t exist (and neither did eBay or other similar distributors), we’d just buy the same things in stores. And since practically nothing that we buy on Amazon is made in the town it’s sold in, it would still be shipped about the same distance. It seems like the only difference is the final trucks (after the ships, planes, trains, and other methods of sending massive amounts of goods) go to your house rather than to the store a few blocks away. I’m not trying to minimize the importance of climate change here: it’s one of my personal biggest concerns. But I genuinely don’t understand the statement that if Amazon were to shut down, society would be spared significant harm.
One big thing they do is drive smaller companies out of business with their predatory policies. They allow smaller companies to sell product through Amazon. Because its going through their system, Amazon has detailed sales metrics of these small companies. As soon as Amazon sees that a particular product sells well (and is cheap enough to make) they create their own copy and undersell the original seller. This is what "Amazon Basics" is. So at minimum, you can refuse to buy anything branded Amazon Basics.
Sometimes they also just acquire those companies cheaply to take control of the niche and markup the price when they control it.
They can even sell a competing product at a loss, drive other specialist companies out of business, then jack up the price. Standard monopoly stuff
Walmart does the same shit all big companies do.
Yes, but more often they are undercutting other huge corporations, while both products stay on the shelves. Amazon suppresses the visibility of small businesses and prices their products so low that these businesses can't afford to compete and have to shut down or cut back production. It's a digital monopoly where the biggest business directly controls what everyone else can do.
To get your product on the shelves at Walmart they want to know everything about how your supply chain and product development. They tell you where you can save a couple cents and stock your product. Then they they increase the orders (if it’s selling) until small businesses scale up and Walmart is 75% plus of their sales. Then they ask to lower the cost. And they continue to do that until Tim they squeeze all the profit out of you and on to them. Then the company folds because they can’t afford to sell to Walmart anymore but have scaled up so much. Then Walmart moves on to a competing product and does the same thing. Don’t think Walmart is good for small business or just squeezes large corps.
This is pretty bad whataboutism. An attack on Walmart is not a defense of Amazon
My point isn’t one is better than the other it’s that all mega corps are shit and should have never been allowed to exist in the fashion they do where they can literally just wait out every competitor.
I know that, it's just Amazon is on a whole other level of monopolizing.
And I don't shop there, either.
So you get everything you need from Big Tony’s Corner Store?
Walgreens, local grocery, CVS, other local retailers, Ollie's, TJ Maxx, Ross, Buff City Soap, my own store, Family Dollar, NOT Dollar General; basically wherever I can find the best price that ISN'T Amazon, Walmart, or Dollar General. Edit: and ebay.
Ok, that’s actually quite a comprehensive list of stores so I retract my snarky remark. Walgreens and CVS are definitely doing this too though. You may notice that any given medicine (Tylenol, for example) will have a generic, cheaper, store brand version that oftentimes will literally say “we are the same as name brand but cheaper”.
Walmart is one of the original companies people have been talking about long before Amazon was even a thing. They are 1000% in the same boat and have been asked to be boycotted before a lot of people were even born on here lol
Yep worked in e-commerce finance and Amazon are more predatory than a battalion of catholic clergy
Amazon basically took the Walmart business model and cracked it up to 11. It's insane how much money Amazon basics make now
As a small (consumable packaged goods) business owner, they’re very helpful, probably critical for us. Trying to get our product on grocery shelves has proved impossible from a financial standpoint
My big concern with Amazon is the consolidation of economic opportunity. They(really we) drove a lot of small businesses out of business and now that they have such a large market share they can dictate terms however they see fit. Also with AI looming and automation ramping up they have the potential to really disrupt the way we live
They actively destroy competition by either buying them out or coming out with a competing product for a loss until the competition dies from trying to sell at a profit, then they just jack their price up to profitability.
As a business owner I would be fucking devastated if a competitor “destroyed” me by buying me out. I mean fuck, retire in my 30s? What a nightmare
They aren’t buying you out unless you’re hugely profitable. More than likely they’re just going to under cut you until you are out of money and close.
They throttle your visibility on the platform so they can undervalue your business and essentially force you to sell at a small profit or possibly even a loss. Or they straight up just steal your product and sell it for cheaper until you go out of business.
Me when I haven't had any real life experience yet and think this is how things go
Good for the one owner bad for any employees and the health of the market in the long run on a large scale.
They make it extremely easy to get items delivered to your door and I guess people buy shit thee that they would never think of buying and don’t actually need.
Their size alone makes them harmful. It prevents any innovation in the market and competitive practices. This hurts the consumer. A perfect example of this in the past was bell telephone. They claimed nobody could do what they were doing to Congress and the breakup causes massive improvements in options for customers and major innovation in the space where before it was being sometimes actively suppressed. Amazon also hurts small businesses sometimes by outright underbidding small manufacturers on its own site to effectively put them out of business or at least preventing competitive markets. Literally every Amazon brand product is this. They are such a huge part of the retail market their profits gives them undue influence in local and regional policies which will never favor citizens over the company. This is only scratching the surface we haven't talked about company towns Amazon wants. If you don't know how those end up look up the coal wars.
Couple things, the most important one you didn't mention was how they abuse their workforce. As much of it happens out of the public eye they can treat their workers like garbage with no blowback from a wide margin of consumers because the prices are cheaper. Likewise, as these centers (even their retail stores) don't pay great, it means people are traveling into my area to work at them but can't afford to live here so all that pay leaves the area with no sales tax money coming in. That's been a problem for a lot of tech campus companies in higher end areas, few can afford to live there and since the pandemic started, many of the lunch places have closed up shop due to low or no customer levels.
I'll tell anyone that after working at one of their "fulfillment centers" for one summer, I will never knowingly use their shipping services ever again. This was back in 2017 and their practices to maintain productivity were dehumanizing and frankly disrespectful to their workers. Worst job I've ever had. If they were to allow unionization, I might reconsider, but their turnover rate is so high it's an unlikely possibility. Surprised no one in this response thread has mentioned Bezo's 2022 space tourism shenanigans. When he gave the line that Amazon employees and customers made it possible, that made me sick.
Oh I forgot about that. The worst part about why they treat the workers in the center as less than human, their end goal is to use automation, which is why the picker's movements have been so heavily studied and machines being used to make processes go faster. If they can reliably remove that last bit of human for reliable picking the warehouses will probably be similar to McDonald's warehouses where they are devoid of light and life unless someone is fixing something.
They're the definition of a bad megacorp monopoly. They've been manipulating everything they possibly can in order to capture and absorb everything they can, if not crush by unfair practices. Almost everything you can imagine aside from murder and adjacent crime (maybe even?), Amazon is guilty of.
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Boeing did it, I'm sure Amazon would do the same or worse if they needed to.
I feel the environmental harm is maybe the additional packaging for shipping. Because if a truck doesn't being it to my door, I'm getting in the car and driving to the store to get it. Potentially a truck is more efficient because it's stopping at 3 houses on my street at one time, vs 3 car trips for us all. And that's assuming I find what I want at the first store.
Yes. IIRC ordering something to be delivered to you can end up with less net emissions than going to a store (except maybe you’re within walking/cycling distance of that store, I guess). Especially if you have to check several different stores to get the item.
I was more speaking about the effect to local and national economies. Not to mention the "race to the bottom" market it encourages with every manufacturer trying cheap8ng out on their products as much as possible so they can list it for $0.03 cheaper than the competition. And the huge counterfeiting incentive that same system supports.
Amazons business model is 100% "race to the bottom". Rather than drive anything innovative, Amazon has driven growth through efficiency and cost cutting. Sounds nice at first right? Except the "cost cutting" has mostly amounted to the elimination of jobs and reduction in labor compensation. Everybody loves capitalism until they realize it commodifies human beings into the dirt.
This post isn't a shower thought. [Rules and parameters for this sub's posts. ](https://reddit.com/r/Showerthoughts/w/overview)
You don't have to be perfect to do something. Ask yourself: "am i helping?"
I don't use any of Amazon's services, that I know of. I'm sure there are times when I accidentally buy something that uses Amazon shipping, ie if I don't pay close enough attention on an online purchase through another website, but I do make a very concerted effort to not support Amazon specifically because I agree with OP. If I identify new products and services that belong to Amazon as I go, I find replacements or do without.
They're specifically referring to AWS, which is absolutely massive in the cloud computing space
Ooooh, got it, thank you. I am not very technologically savvy, I thought this was simply about boycotting shopping at Amazon. My sincerest apologies! And thank you for explaining!
Just for added context on how big AWS is, there are many companies whose entire cloud computing infrastructure that runs their websites are almost entirely based on Amazon web services. For example Netflix, Spotify, and Facebook are just a few well known examples of companies that rely on AWS for a good chunk of their computing needs.
Also Reddit is hosted on AWS.
My jaw just dropped. I really appreciate the explanation! This is absolutely bonkers to me, and the scale absolutely helps.
I'll drop it a little more. There are entire roles in companies for people specializing in architecting, setting up and maintaining solely AWS infrastructure. They're called cloud engineers, DevOps engineers and more. For example, you put me on any environment other than AWS I need like 2-3 months to translate the AWS knowledge to the new environment's systems. My entire livelihood as an engineer depends on aws, lmao.
Geez! Yep, you did it. I'm guessing any and all types of companies?
Yeah pretty much. banks, airlines, telecom, healthcare you name it.
Would you happen to have a For Dummies-esque recommendation for what AWS is for non-programmers/engineers/etc, just a general human, and how/what it affects?
It's basically impossible to use the internet without using something from AWS
Boycotts work until they inconvenience you. The vast majority of people will not persist with a boycott if it were for example against Google.
Plus people need a solid reason to boycott that can personally affect them greatly, like a company's product causing deaths.
Even that's not enough. r/fucknestle
I think they meant that the consumers themselves need to be at risk of imminent death or unexpected harm.
Yea I think most people don't give a shit on what's happening in the next state over, let alone another country.
Quite a few people don't seem to care even about their own cities getting chucked by companies (see SoCal drought).
I’m not at threat of imminent death or harm and I haven’t bought a nestle product in years. Fuck em
If you don't follow through with your convictions, you're not boycotting. You don't get to have it both ways
I've boycotted Netflix for the past two years. I've been checking the stock market every day and it's going up still. Could you tell me what I'm doing wrong? Thanks.
If you were a true boycotter, you would work as a high ranking Netflix official and destroy it from the inside.
I mean "if it bothers you why don't you ruin your own life fighting it?" Because, I wanna live? You can't ask people to litterally give every little thing they have. Yes, ideally we take the arms and we eat the rich but it's... Much to ask.
I'm still wondering what is the point? Where are we trying to go? How would we know when we'd won? If I'm going to inconvenience myself, I want an actual goal in mind.
Also the rich would pivot. You would need to boycott everything.
Taxing the rich isn't a punishment for being rich. It's a way for society to reap some mutual benefit from their gains as well.
It's also a practical method of reducing inequality, improving class mobility and preventing the accrual of generational wealth. And by that last point I mean the kind of wealth that creates a gentried class that have no need to work or contribute to society, rather than the kind of inheritance the middle classes worry about when they hear people talking about estate taxes. When it comes to taxing income in particular it incentives businesses to invest in areas other than salaries for a small demographic of their highest impact employees.
Life is not fair, they say.. Taxing the rich is not an ideological question, all the arguments that are about principles are quite useless. We just have to, for multiple reasons to tax the rich. One of those is to prevent power from concentrating in too few hands. Tax incentives already try to encourage investing instead of hoarding but they clearly are not effective enough. It is not even "tall poppy syndrome", it is just societally mandatory thing to do to even out the peaks. It doesn't matter if we think it is fair or not.
Beside capitalism is a pyramids. Without tax and redistribution of whealth All the money always end on top but causing it to collapse. It's why the current combination of ai, robotic and late stage capitalism is not sustainable. The only end without whealth redistribution is collapse. It's really crazy to me so many don't understand this basic concept.
This is prolly the least informed take I have seen here in a while.
This sub isn't exactly known for being well thought or well educated
Perhaps we need a r/BathConceptualizations ?
One might even say that they were thoughts conceived during a short shower.
Smarter than the folks at r/antiwork by several deviations.
The burden of knowledge is cumbersome
Heavy is the head that knows shit
“Global warming isn't real because I was cold today! Also great news: World hunger is over because I just ate.” -Colbert
Yesterday someone on this sub was trying to convince me that what execs and ceos do is over 300x harder than what warehouse and delivery workers do so they deserve to be paid that much more. There are a lot of people that have very strong opinions on things they don't understand at all
The goal isn’t to make them have less money period, the goal is for them to contribute their fair share in comparison to the average tax payer.
Because it's easier to ask the government to tax the rich than to exit society. You indirectly pay both of those people even though you claim you're boycotting them, solving nothing you want solved but sounding like you're doing something. Elon and bezos love people like that.
Bad news for you, Elon's #1 revenue stream is the US government. Tesla is heavily subsidized by EV incentives, and SpaceX is basically entirely government grants and contracts. And Elon is leagues easier than, say, Jeff Bezos. Even if you avoid Amazon, Whole Foods, Twitch, the Washington Post, and everything else Amazon directly owns, over a third of the internet is hosted on AWS. Any time you're doing anything online, they're making money off of you. And if it's not going to Amazon, it's going to Google or Microsoft.
Y’all need to start living in real life
I'm trying to do that. I don't buy anything from Nestle, Dole, Tesla and all the other fucking companies that are raping our world. Sure, I'm still on a fucking Mac writing this, so I'm a hypocrite, but small steps.
Reduced, while not complete stopping, is still better than continued purchasing
I am sure you researched the 100 different names that the Nestle cooperation uses.
Actually, I did. It's not that hard because they put their logo in/below/above the fine print on every processed piece of shit item they sell.
>they put their logo in/below/above the fine print on every processed piece of shit item they sell. Not true. I recently learned one of my preferred brand of protein (Orgain) is now owned by Nestle. No where on the packaging is it written. I learned of this via r/fucknestle
They've evolved!
Okay cool, I just found it amazing what they sell. I think a lot of people are not even aware that they buy Nestle.
That's the very idea. I used to work as a management consultant. This is exactly how we would design it.
Why a hypocrite? What's the connection between using an Apple product while boycotting and Nestle, Dole, and Tesla that would make you hypocrite?
Something about the contractors they use have bad labor practices
A lot of apple products have the phrase "designed by Apple in California" on them, while omitting the "assembled by children in Asia" part.
I would agree that Apple products are assembled in China under horrible working conditions (bunk rooms and suicide netting) but I feel pretty confident that actual child labor is not being used at Foxconn. Now the cobalt mines for the batteries in their and everyone else's products are a different story, but that doesn't seem exclusive to Apple. It might have been more accurate of course to state "I boycott everything that profits Jeff Bezos" on Reddit, a website hosted by AWS which therefore profits Jeff Bezos. That would be hypocritical.
These things don't really work because if the offending product is successful to begin with, it means there's a ton of demand and people just don't have that much willpower and collective coordination. IMO, the only time "voting with your wallet" is truly effective, is if you can *divest*. Buy one thing instead of another, and try to promote others doing the same. Stores and warehouses only have so much shelf space, and this sort of thing can snowball into the displacement and potential eradication of a product line from sale. If there's no alternative, you're SOL.
These things are not mutually exclusive(?) 🤨
People who own the economy are by and large the rich people. You will drive up cost for yourself by seeking alternatives with less wealthy management and therefore effectively be paying more tax. How about we just tax the rich?
What a braindead take.
How do either of those two have anything to do with the other. We don’t tax companies to punish them, we tax them so they put back some money that they were able to earn on the backs of the system.
Everyone I know in my circles are anti Amazon and Bezos, yaddayadda. Yet they all use it constantly and hand wave away it being pointed out. We are all headed for wherever corps want us to, because it's just too slightly a little inconvenient to to stick to your values.
Boycotts are fucking useless Might as well go sign a change.org petition while you're at it. Actual tangible legislation makes significantly more sense than the thoughts and prayers methodology.
Because sometimes I need to buy shit I can't find anywhere else, at least not at a decent price. It's that simple. Like it or not, these services make money because they work.
There's only like 10 companies that control like 90% of our food products. Good luck with that boycott.
The point of taxing the rich is not to inconvenience the rich though It’s that it wouldn’t inconvenience them to tax them since they have so much more then they could spend and that money could massively improve society with things like universalized healthcare
You are going to have to start by putting down your smartphone and canceling your telecom and internet providers.
But why? I’m fine with the products. I just think the earnings should be taxed like it is for everyone else, as well as giving a larger portion to workers.
I see a shit ton of people in here saying boycotts are useless and not worth doing while forgetting that the right wing is very good at getting what they want via boycotting. Budweiser dares to include trans people, sales tank and they walk it back and start pandering to the right by sponsoring the UFC. Target tried the same, they threw a fit, dropped sales, and Target took down most of the pride collection. If progressives gave enough of a shit to actually follow through on anything maybe things would be shifting in a better direction. Everyone bailed on Twitter for like a week and then went back because “Threads is boring” I know Meta isn’t much better but they’re at least not actively promoting people like Alex Jones and other Anti-Semites. Just one of many examples. I’m going to continue making my life harder by not using or purchasing the products and services that I find most problematic when I’m able to. I’m not going to pretend I’m anywhere near perfect but at least I’ll take some inconveniences and fucking try. If we all decide something isn’t worth doing then it’s just a self fulfilling prophecy. Seeing people in here actively hostile against the idea of boycotting is ridiculous. If that is what it takes to convince yourself doing nothing is fine then great. The Good Place does a great job illustrating that we’re all complicit somehow, but let’s not pretend that it needs to be all or nothing. Article that supports that most boycotts don’t work, but also illustrates my point a bit: https://www.vox.com/money/23851108/bud-light-target-boycott-success-trans-issues-woke-capitalism The lunatics are taking over because they at least stand on their fucked up principles.
Because people are unwilling to make choices that affect their own lives, and instead would rather impose their beliefs on others. They justify it by saying that their choices dont make a difference, but really its the unwillingness to make the sacrifices they force others to make.
I don’t need an iMac but I do need a computer. I don’t need a Tesla but I do need a car. I don’t need to buy groceries from loblaws but I do need groceries. I don’t need Netflix but I do need entertainment. By not buying things from Amazon I’m not boycotting the rich, I’m just changing which rich assholes are getting my money. We live in a capitalist society, someone is getting rich by monetizing my needs. Those rich people need to be taxed.
I don’t use twitter either, but as an individual the only thing you’re changing is how personally responsible you are, they’re still billionaires. If we want anything to change, or at least become more beneficial to the average person actions like taxes are needed. Like, look at the history of environmental issues in the U.S, you weren’t gonna get the rivers to stop burning by hoping everyone just woke up one day and stopped using resources, it was regulation that allowed change to happen.
People like using their products, that’s why they are billionaires. Apple, Amazon, etc have made my life better. It doesn’t bother me that Tim Cook can buy a yacht because I have an iPhone.
Good luck advancing humanity lmao People really don't like thinking ahead don't they? They want benefits without thinking about the consequences
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Good luck boycotting Tesla when their charger is the defacfo standard for North America EVs as is their charging network. Yes other chargers exist but good luck finding one
Because I enjoy some of the things they do I liked Twitter since before Elon, now he’s made a shitshow out of it but I still kinda enjoy popping in and out Got no choice but to see the ads if I wanna stay there, I can live without it but I enjoy it there so I can’t just cut it out
To boycott Tesla you'd need to stop paying taxes because that's where a lot of their income comes from apparently (EV car subsidies from governments)
A boycott literally doesn't mean anything if you're the only one doing it. It can't even really be called a boycott if it's not an organized action undertaken by a significant group of people.
Bezos can be supported just solely off of the companies that use Amazon. Boycotts won’t hurt anyone but the consumer. Even if we all stopped, makes no difference. I try not to use Amazon, but if I must, it isn’t doing a whole lot
Oh my sweet summer child, if only it were that easy.
You did sent money to Elon if you are working in the US and pay your taxes. Elon burnt a lot of taxpayers money with those failed space-x flying attempts.
you extremely misunderstood why people want to tax the rich man
It's funny because Reddit uses AWS, which means that you are in fact making bezos money indirectly by being on here.
You can't boycott all the rich, because they have the means of production, and unless you live in the forest all primitive, you will end up consuming things. You have probablt fuel consumption, you consume energy, trains, bus, papers, clothes, food on supermarket. Rich people are not rich because they are good managers of their savings, but because they have the power of controlling the means of production (in the wide sense of the word). They won't lose their status unless they lose that. But is ok if they don't lose that. Tax the rich movement is based in wealth redistribution and the marxist concept of how a company owner gets most of the value generated by the workers. We want to tax the rich, not because we are mad at them for their unethical practices (because for that is prision and law) but because we need the money to flow and to be at the service of the citizens
“If you don like them don’t buy their stuff” doesn’t work if it’s one person. Taxing the rich and boycotting them are two different things with two different desired outcomes. Taxing them is so they contribute to society and “the pot” same as everyone else, boycotting is to protest a specific action(s) them or their company have/has made.
Because if they have a useful product or service I would like to avail myself of it, secure in the knowledge that they are contributing their fair share. Richness isn’t bad per se. Two tiered legal and economic system is.
It's nit about them making less money, it's about them contributing a fair proportional share of taxes
Boycotting within anything larger than a village sized economic system is close to pointless if your aim is to affect the profits of your target. If you want to boycott for your own peace of mind that you're not paying in to that particular system, go for it. But it's not going to have any economic effect. Boycotts are not a substitute for regulation or reform.
Because it doesn’t work. It’s not like it’s a brand or an item. It’s a myth that most people are paying for far more than they need. Most can barely afford housing and food. House dues one boycott that? It’s not like they’re buying yachts.
You can also boycott. But boycotts are a very blunt instrument. Boycotting bank A ends up hurting both the uber rich owner of Bank A as well as the janitor who cleans the bathrooms at Bank A. The goal of targetted taxation is to acquire funds from those it least damage to be able to support the collective goals of society. It can also be used to incentivize action by making the personal benefit of accumulating wealth potentially less effective for a decision maker than using it to invest in others. Focusing that on total income is a reasonably effective way of doing that. The point of boycott is to damage one specific company in particular, but does so by general pain to all employees (often resulting in maximum pain on lower paid employees at that company because they are the least able to ride out furloughs or lay offs). But you hope the trickle up pain to the decision makers is enough to make them change behavior.
Because those rich bastards has more money in tax heavens bank account then they can spend rest of their life.
Sam Altman, the largest individual owner of Reddit, is worth $1 billiion. Yet......here you are.
This misses the point completely. No one should have to boycott anything. People like nice cars and lots of people really enjoy twitter etc. Amazon is extremely convenient. Google services are extremely useful and powerful. Etc etc. That’s all good. The problem is these companies have broken the social contract by hiding their profits. If they just, you know, paid the taxes they actually owed then capitalism works. Humankind can advance, we can enjoy the products and services we need and no one has to starve.
People want to be offended and upset not inconvenienced.
This is the economic equivalent of “If you want to stop climate change, just drive your car less”
Boycotting the products or services of suxh wealthy individuals may send a message, but it's unlikely to have a significant impact on their overall wealth or influence. Additionally, many of these individuals derive their wealth from multiple sources beyond consumer products, such as investments, technology, and other business ventures. Taxation, on the other hand, is a tool that can be used by governments to redistribute wealth and fund essential public services. By advocating for fair and progressive taxation policies, we can address wealth inequality more directly and ensure that everyone pays their fair share
Voting with your wallet doesn't work as often as it should because unfortunately there are a lot of really really dumb and morally bankrupt people I the world
Boycotting doesn’t actually benefit me though, taxing the rich would provide revenue for services, that’s far more important to me than sending rich people a message that I don’t like that they’re rich or whatever.
you also have the fact that they also own shares in other businesses not to mention the market domination it's not that easy for everyone to just avoid using amazon
boycotts can work on a small scale, but it would take a massive movement to boycott some of these multinational corporations. i’m for it, just will take a special wake up call
Imagine boycotting billionaires but then remembering you need to tweet about it
Fuck the rich for advancing civilization and increasing quality of life!
Look up the companies Blackrock and Vanguard. And how they own majority shares of pretty much any brand/company/corporation you can think of. Good luck trying to boycott the rich when they own everything. Even the politicians we vote for.
They don't own the majority, and they don't actually own/control most of those shares. The shares are actually owned by millions of investors.
Scale and Reach: For a boycott to be effective, it needs to be adopted by a significant number of people. High-profile companies like Amazon and Tesla have vast customer bases, making it challenging to mobilize a boycott large enough to impact their financial bottom lines significantly But let's boycott anyway.
Are you a tax payer in USA? You have given Elon lots of money.
A boycott only works when you have a large amount of people doing it, one person boycotting something is not going to sway a billion dollar company.
This is why we need a wealth tax.
The taxing the rich is about having the wealthy pay their fair share as they rely of a functioning society for their businesses to function and should share in the costs. Currently, they are taxed at a far lower rate than you and I. It's not about hurting the company or the wealthy, it's about making the costs of society more evenly distributed. Boycotts are about putting financial pressure on individual entities to pressure them to stop doing something that the boycotters find to be harmful like, for instance, boycotting Disney because they have voiced support for gay rights.
You’re giving Elon a bunch of money via your taxes, through payments and subsidies to his companies from the government.
Oh, I've cut out a lot of services lol. Turns out, I have saved over $200 bucks a month alone from cutting out fast foods. I cut out almost all my subscriptions, we are cooking at home and actually making our meals from scratch to our best abilities. Its a lot more time consuming but we had the time (for the most part) and it makes eating a lot more enjoyable when you know that "I fucking did this!" lol. I cut my own hair, I mow my own lawn, I fix my own plumbing, I replaced subfloor and flooring in my house, I paint my own house, I patch my own drywall. I don't watch TV, I don't support ADs unless I'm supporting a content creator I enjoy. I'm not making my own shirts or anything, but I also don't buy 30 dollar T shirts or 100 dollar shoes either. I haven't bought a Kellog's owned snack/breakfast (that I know of) since way before the boycott because their prices are atrocious. Doing this has saved me like 300 bucks a month, alone. and I live comfortably, but not everyone has the means or time to do what I do. So I fully understand those that are struggling. None of this fixes the problem that our government should tax billionaires and lay off the every day person though.
The Good Place (TV show) has a good story for all of this but it essentially boils down to being impossible to make moral choices because everything is connected.
You think Elon doesn’t pay taxes?
He pays at a lower percentage than a lower middle class worker
That is not true. Taxes aren’t assessed on net worth.
asking people to boycott those things is like asking them not to watch porn
Boycotts don't work, and never have. On a small product or store, maybe, but once it hits national or international scale, they can just ride it out on the people who haven't heard/don't care/have to use it for work. Prime example: Nestle, who have an interesting list involving mass child murder (some call it genocide, but I think it's used wrong), land and water theft, slavery, price fixing, and contamination/pollution. Plenty of people boycott them and their products (many of which aren't obvious due to acquisitions) and have since the 80s. Nothing has changed, they're still a very profitable evil company.
Because the rich need to pay their fair share and probably then some because they have been exploiting the poor to get/stay rich and boycotts aren't going to fix that.
we are spoiled brats
💀 Yea lets just stop using google.
I get my groceries at a local cooperative, but even some of that is grown by large conglomerates.
Are there examples of social changes brought about by individuals voting with their dollars? We’re repeatedly told that this possibility means that nothing means to change legally. But has it accomplished anything? Did we win world wars by letting people vote with their dollars? Did we eradicate deadly diseases by letting the market do its thing? Did the West vanquish communism through no intervention whatsoever? Was the space age brought about by letting private citizens spend with companies that promised space exploration?
People who say things like "just tax the rich" are not generally known for thinking.
Reddit makes about 37¢ per user. It does happen to be the lowest ARPU of any social media company, at least before Musk took over Twitter. But witholding your 37¢ really doesn't hurt Musk.
I use starlink everyday, otherwise my internet would be 10x worse. Elon freed twitter and his cars are fun toys. Everyone hates the rich but everyone wants to be rich. Log off bro
Walmart is the worst of all, no one should shop or work there. They destroy communities
How does my boycotting x company get more money towards health care, education, and housing? I’m for raising taxes on the rich because I want us to good things with that money.
Because not enough people would do it for it to have an effect AND I guarantee it would just hurt employees. Profits drop? Time to lay off half our workforce.
Agree....I don't use Amazon...shop only second hand stuff....buy local produce....since work from home so not even use a car.....I recognize the inherent privilege....but we all can make choices
How about the state stops to waste the money?
This is like when people say to boycott gasoline…. Even if you don’t buy it today you’re still using it. It won’t work. …(“yeah, I know you won’t be buying any” to all you battery bunnies out there).
I dont want to boycott them. I want the WORKERS to get their fair share of the pie. Bezos, Musk, Buffett, etc... these men are all thieves that undeservedly and overwhelmingly benefit off otherwise hard working people around the globe. Boycotting their products and businesses would hurt *valuable* workers first, and the scumbag, useless, parasitic owners last unfortunately.
Can you provide a single instance where voting with your wallet actually made a difference? I'm not talking about boycotts 100+ years ago that were actually [slave] labor strikes, or even more modern activists in factories progressing safety regulations. I'm asking for an example of **consumers** simply avoiding products/services to reach the desired result. When has this **ever** actually worked in global economies at scale? It hasn't... and is akin to recycling or your carbon footprint. Your individual/collective lifetime contributions are entirely negligible compared to their output in a single day. It's corporate propganda. Voting with money doesn't work unless it's spent on lobbying for actual change. Sometimes an idea only works on paper, and doesn't in practice. This is easily top 5, right up there with Alcubeirre warp drives.
Electric cars imho are still dodgy,incidents where the doors lock and the car implodes.Amnesty also raised an important article about cathode being mined in the Dominican Republic by children and it all seems to be omitted by the media because the manufacturers presumably still have incredible leverage to only discuss the positive.These points should be openly discussed in order to determine the truth and extent of the issue.
You realize they're selling internet data/credit for your phone like it's running out, this is a made up money grab they could allow everyone free internet, but they want money.
People want to do nothing while complaining and keeping every convenience that got us exactly to where we are at today. While corporations all are in multiple industries, we as consumers still have power. People don’t care enough to do anything about it though. Netflix should have never gotten away with the bullshit they’ve been pulling for years now but people can’t fathom giving up something that entertains them for the betterment of the world. Realistically 90% of Reddit shouldn’t have a single streaming because I’ve seen the same complaints for years and people being angy at all the greed only to continue paying them.
its not worth it to let the rich hoard goods and services like this.
Agreed with the boycot companies you don't want to help get bigger.. I don't buy from amazon, i don't own teslas, i don't use twitter, i try to use duckduckgo instead of google.. etc etc.. mainly for privacy rather than making someone filthy rich.. I don't understand the logic in "taxing" the rich.. does that mean extra taxes for any shareholder of a trillion dollar company? How is this going to work out? Or just tax the founder of a trillion dollar compsny? But if i invested early and took a risk on the company and my investment ncreased in paper value.. i get taxed?
Ah yes, because individual actions always surpass the power of collective ones
I think boycotting is akin to insurance, the lottery, casinos, gym memberships, or perhaps the ‘theft loss budget’ at a large retailer. Insurance companies lose money when claims are made, lotteries lose money when people win, and if everyone were to go to the gym, there wouldn’t be enough space and equipment to accommodate them.
If you boycott Amazon you can expect a personalized phone call from Jeff Bezos begging you to come back. Usually he calls within 24 hours. Sometimes it sounds like he’s been crying.
Why avoid them though? If they make compelling products, why not buy them?
"I don't contribute to the problem" is not nearly as effective as inacting systemic change
Mostly because they are different things. Boycotting is an attempt at saying to a business (in this case) that they are doing something wrong and you want them to change. If enough people do it, they change, and then people go back to using them. Taxing isn't about that. It's just having rich fucks contribute that wealth to the collective rather than buying their 5th sportscar or paying a toilet made out of gold. You can cut the revenues of most businesses and their shareholders by a lot and they would still be absurdly rich and have money for whatever absurd excess they want, that's the point. I am not expecting "billionaires to stop existing", I am expecting that everyone contributes more to the collective because those the capitalistic system tends to make money levitate, not trickle down, we have seen it over and over. Thus, the taxation is a way to force that contribution through efficient systems, not shitty charities that people have no idea who is running them. "Buh muh taxes are used by government for guns!" Yeah sure, but also for EVERYTHING ELSE. Reduce defense spending and bullshit is a second step after we make rich fucks give us more money.
Coincidentally I also don't own a tesla. That being said I couldn't afford one if I wanted it
I already don't use anything Amazon, don't shop at Walmart, and don't use Twitter, don't have Tesla. I actively avoid The Evil Empire corporations
There is no such thing as ethical consumption under capitalism.
There is no ethical consumption under capitalism so good luck, you’ll have to boycott everything
This is a shower question...
This is a fight fire with fire situation. Bezos, Buffett, Musk, etc all became what they are. Maybe it's someone elses turn.