<
https://doctorow.medium.com/amys-kitchen-a-case-study-in-the-problems-with-consumerism-1b086b62a53b>
"As theories of change go, consumerism has a lot going for it. “Voting with
your dollars” cuts out the middleman: rather than voting for a politician and
hoping that they do the right thing, you can just reward good companies
directly by buying their products (and punish bad companies by not buying their
products).
But voting with your dollars has some obvious deficits. The first one is that
you can’t shop your way out of monopoly capitalism. If you don’t like how
Walmart’s predatory pricing and fat tax breaks let it drive every business in
town out of business, you’re stuck. After all, every other business in town
went bust, and you still need
stuff.
The next one is that dollars are not evenly distributed. In a country where
most Americans can’t afford a $400 medical emergency, the flow of dollars to a
business is no marker of democratic legitimacy. A million normies can boycott a
business but if a billionaire shops there, their “votes” are washed away.
There’s another defect, though, that’s a little less obvious. When you stop
voting with your ballots and start voting with your dollars, then the companies
that get your dollars can capture your political representatives (this is even
easier if the company has a monopoly). Once the political system is on the
company’s side, you lose the ability to vote with your dollars, too."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
