The current hostile corporate takeover in the USA and the clear loss of political power of the common people, I started wondering what happened if people used consumption as their leverage. Since the system is designed for continuous growth, what would happen if a mass movement of people stopping buying new non-essential consumer goods?
It would send a much stronger message than angry public protests. Thoughts?
Edit 1: Received some fantastic responses one of these highlighted February 28th as the “National No Spend Day” that we can consider the rehearsal.
*Do not make any purchases Do not shop online, or in-store, No Amazon, No Walmart, No Best Buy, Nowhere!
Do not spend money on: Fast Food,Gas,Major Retailers Do not use Credit or Debit Cards for non essential spending
WHAT YOU CAN DO: Only buy essentials of absolutely necessary (Food, Medicine, Emergency Supplies) If you must spend, ONLY support small, local businesses.*
This movement is the definition of equitable, not spending means everybody can contribute within their means, and if you can’t afford to buy shit anyway, you’re already doing your part!
Anything that $peaks their language will work better than protests IMO
Hey hey! Ho ho!
I haven’t bought stuff in over a year. AI laptop let me check out completely and mostly offline all the time in general except for mobile like now
They’d buy more goods for a few weeks leading up to that month, then buy a bit less during, then buy more for two weeks after
Yup, delayed consumption would be the most likely outcome, but that’s not necessarily a problem if people can apply this pressure in a meme-like fashion. It’s sorta like the gamestop squeeze.
Also the immediate personal pain could be mitigated by buying used stuff.
Both. Definitely both. Every person has a unique capacity for resistance, so however you’re able is good and important. Talking about it, protesting, boycotting (even in tiny amounts) is something! Being nice to yourself and others in non-consumerist ways is also resistance; like hand-write a note instead of buying a card; your loved one will still appreciate it.
The point is to be a dandelion - they try to pave over us, and we pop back up through the cracks, even in our own little unassuming ways. We may be ants to them but insects outnumber vertebrate life forms by orders of magnitude.
Lots of metaphors as I get sidetracked but case in point: if you can do it, do it!
ETA: Decentralized forms of resistance may be our best bet. Big coordinated efforts are good. Making them play whack-a-mole is also good. If they don’t know where to look next even better.
Yes. Or if everyone paid the monthly bills late on purpose at the same time. They stay rich because money flows through us to them. Demonstrating the power to disrupt that flow is going to send a message. The challenge obviously is in building and organizing a mass movement capable of taking coherent and targeted actions like these. You need a lot of people participating to have an impact.
If you got a substantial amount of people to it, like 40-50% of the population it would probably collapse the economy via domino effect. So much is underpinned on people spending money on any given day
But, I don’t see it happening in reality, just getting 20% to actually do it would be a massive undertaking and 20% would probably be painful, but not cause a cool cascade of collapse
“Culture Is Not Consumption”
Write that on a tee shirt you already own.
As a European i’d suggest to not buy nothing, but only products made in Europe ;)
Don’t forget about America’s neighbours to the north and south too, eh!
We have no neighbors. Only an unruly 51st tundra state and a hoard of alien barbarians being held at bay by the
Night’s WatchICE
It certainly would, but I would be worried about the people at the bottoms whose salary depend on this. Rich people can afford not getting revenue for a month, but people with precarious work contracts often can’t.
What about mass boycott targeted at the companies undeniably supporting this government?This is where mutual aid comes in.
Share cash with people who need it. Pay their bills, pay their rent, pay their bail money, pay their medical expenses.
The capitalists will hurt people to try to get you to stop boycotting and striking.
We need society to go back to our earliest economy. The gift economy, just sharing things expecting nothing in return. I wonder what life would be like if that was our main economy.
I try to explain to people how incredible that would be. I don’t believe in pay it back or pay it forward. I believe in helping people because it’s what we should be doing, it’s the way society should function. I don’t expect anything in return, and I don’t want someone I help to pay it forward because I helped them, I want them to help others because it’s what everyone should be doing at all times, so much as they are able to. Building the new within the shell of the old and all that
The bit that these people don’t understand is pretty much everyone has done and taken part in the gift economy. But capitalism has brainwashed people to slave over pieces of paper. But if you’ve ever explained the rules to a board game, helped family members with tech support, helped a roommate learn how to cook a dish then people have partaken in the gift economy. I could list a thousand more examples. Even leaving internet comments is part of a gift economy if you leave a comment, you’re not expecting anything in return and many internet comments are helping people asking about stuff they need help for. The gift economy is so engrained in everyday life yet capitalism just how decades of propaganda.
People argue about human nature, wars, warlords, yada yada. But that is shit is so exceedingly rare to the literal hundreds of examples per day of people simply doing for others, even going out of their way, taking from themselves to do so, with absolutely no expectation of reward or thanks, simply because it brings us joy to be members of our community. Altruism is ingrained in us the way breathing is. It’s automatic. So much so, we don’t realize we’re doing it. It’s a detriment, in ways, if we were more aware of it, we might well be more able to recognize our natural ways, and be able to combat the bullshit propaganda. But as it stands, we don’t even realize we’re doing it.
:(
Not to be a dick, but I barely have enough money to cover myself and my wife. I don’t exactly have any extra money, and our budget is tighter than a tightrope wire, which I suppose is part of the point.
Maybe… You shouldn’t have to be on a shoestring budget? Maybe this economy should let you support yourself more comfortably.
And maybe you should be the recipient of mutual aid during a general strike if you need it.
Wow, I don’t even know where to begin here. Make more money, right? Work harder? Perhaps the system should provide more? That ain’t reality. Despite making pretty good money, everything is outrageously expensive. It’s comforting to live in should/could/would land, but one has to have their feet on the ground when providing for their family.
Make more money, right? Work harder?
That’s not even close to what they’re saying.
They’re saying that, given the amount of work you put in, you shouldn’t have to be living on such a tight budget. Not that you should just magically make more money.
Furthermore, they aren’t leaving anything in should/could/would land. They aren’t implying that you should be providing aid to those that need it, but that you should be receiving aid if you participated in this and fell on hard times because of it.
There’s nothing wrong with you, it’s the modern day slavery we all are suffering. You get paid barely enough to keep you alive, nothing more and they have you believing that you can someday be millionaire if you work harder. Those times are far away, you are nothing more than slave. We need to unite and stand up for our rights, it’s not left and right, it’s up and down.
Nah I know, the comment just pissed me off. I actually have my own company and do fairly well, but it’s still a fucking struggle and the wage slave bit certainly still applies.
it’s not left and right, it’s up and down.
Fucking thank you, I wish more people understood this. I’ll admit, I definitely have some conservative views in regards to finance and government spending, but damn I wish more people would realize that we everyday folk are not each other’s enemies (except for Nazis and fascist, they can fuck right off).
The definition of precariat.
Should turn Amazon prime week into boycott week. We just did a one week break from Amazon in our house and it was refreshing.
1 week? Are you talking about tv or buying stuff? I haven’t done anything with amazon in years.
…
If people stopped buying stuff, it wouldn’t translate to immediate loss of wages except for gig economy workers.
It’s not like production or stores would no to stop immediately counting on starting back up at the exact right moment.
You see this (or used to, anyway) from time to time with gas strikes.
If it’s just a month of “don’t buy,” it wouldn’t do much in the long run. All that does is time-shift demand to when the strike is over. If the company can anticipate well enough, they’d raise prices when the demand comes back and come out ahead in the long run.
You have to use/consume less, and for an extended time period, not just change when that purchase happens.
But yes, with that caveat, use less, and choose the lesser evil when you do need to buy something. The individual effect is small, but small things add up.
n the strike is over. If the company can anticipate well enough, they’d raise prices when the demand comes back and come out ahead in the long run.
You have to use/consume less, and for an extended time period, not just change when that purchase happens.
But yes, with that caveat, use less, and choose the lesser evil when you do need to buy something. The individual effect is small, but small things add up.
The mitigation is to focus on used goods so it is much less painful. Unlike gas, people don’t need that new TV, or that next phone, gaming console, their Nth streaming sub and use alternative (wink) ways to consume entertainment media.
If even a relatively small number — say 10-20% — just refused to buy anything other than the bare essentials (like food, energy, utils) until action was taken, you’d probably see more action than if those people got out in the streets and protested.
That action would be increasing the price of bare essentials to compensate
So, some of this would occur but I can think of two reasons why it wouldn’t be a linear tradeoff. I dunno why but I decided to write a scroll about it, even tho nobody is gonna read it.
-
“Bare Essentials” are price competitive - Basic groceries like milk, eggs, dry goods, canned goods, etc., are produced by a large arrangement of producers, and also quasi-local (big ag owns all the farms, but certain farms produce for specific regions). This means that it’s hard to corner the market on these goods. Keep in mind brand-name foods collude to push against this price competition, but only to a certain extent because grocery store “value brands” can become irresistible if they’re half the price. The price of kraft mac and cheese is tethered to within a couple bucks of the value brand next to it on the shelf.
-
The “Not Bare Essentials” products (Entertainment [incl. Tourism, Dining], durable goods, luxury items and electronics) are produced by different corporations than the bare essentials groups. Megacorps like Amazon do have some stratification across the entire goods spectrum (mostly by reselling/market tolls) but they’re also exposed because the margins on the nonessentials are better because of issue #1. So a boycott of these groups would have a significant effect on all retail and retail-adjacent companies. That’s like 12 out of the top 20 companies in the US, roughly 3.2 trillion in revenue that could take a 20% hit to their balance sheet. That’s 2% of the US GDP out of those 20 companies alone, enough to flatten the GDP curve in a given year. That kind of effect would result in a panic among global decision-makers.
However, there are major issues with the ‘buy nothing boycott’ plan:
-
the idea of getting 10% of the people in the country to buy into the plan is pretty far-fetched. Buying things basically daily is a (bad) habit of nearly all Americans and breaking that cycle will not be easy. Not eating out, not taking vacations, not buying christmas or birthday gifts, and replacing these activities with zero or near-zero cost activities will come at an enormous social cost as compared to people not boycotting. This can be mitigated by trying to enact pacts with friends and family and entering into buy-nothing local groups, as well as focusing on a barter economy that sidesteps retail and services.
-
the concept of a sustained boycott will get harder and harder in the imagined scarcity, planned obsolesce environment we live in. Cars break down, clothes wear out, everything requires upkeep, etc. Obviously this can be deferred and stretched (I’m never selling my already 10 year old car, for example) but the boycott will fray. This can be counteracted by more people joining than those exiting, via media and grassroots efforts.
Overall: If 10-20% of Americans actually bought nothing (very unlikely) for a sustained (months, even more unlikely) period of time, the outlook of the GDP would be very noticeable. If that could be sustained (by more people joining than leaving) then you’d absolutely see major changes in policy. It would start with corporate layoffs, but then graduate to price cuts, sales of production facilities, drops of industrial output, and then finally decreased energy consumption and industrial inputs. That would be a national security emergency that would force bipartisan political change, because energy and industrial potential are the two primary metrics of nation-state success for both hard and soft power.
-
Donald Trump has broken the Constitutional binding of Checks and Balances, upon which all law in the United States is governed. Ask yourself what that means to business contracts which depend on those laws to be guaranteed, and what the loss of faith in the underlying system means to all commerce in this country and between this country and foreign individuals, corporations, and nation states.
Anycahoots, that’s my long way of answering, What would happen if Americans stopped buying new consumer goods for a month? with: you are going to find out
Ask yourself what that means to business contracts which depend on those laws to be guaranteed,
Agree. If they feel the rules of engagement can be changed unilaterally, we can show that this can go both ways.
Won’t happen but it’s a great idea. The environment loves recession. The only years in recent history when the climate indicators briefly stopped moving in the wrong direction were 2009 and 2020.
deleted by creator
yup. Im in a similar boat. could not reduce more. we really need a blender and I saw one for an estate sale next weekend. hoping they have some plates, bowls, and cups to. eff the corps.
Plates, cups and bowls can be bought second hand at charity/opp/goodwill shops in my experience. They also often have small appliances, sometimes new as people donate unwanted gifts. Pie makers are very common. Noone should buy new pie makes.
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
yeah its more avoiding corp as much as possible. The money saving is a side effect. So im preferring garage and estate sales and certain second hand shops. Old fashioned person to person local.
I already barely buy shit. I’ve always said “if the economy hinged on my purchasing habit, the country would go bankrupt”.
well, you’re already part of the movement:)
Fix things. I don’t know what they did to my father but the man starts getting twitchy and starts scratching at his face if he hasn’t ordered anything from Amazon in the last few minutes. I have to STOP HIM to give me a chance to repair things.
I’m sure this will be an unpopular opinion, but any publicly traded company no longer needs to post a profit. Boomers are retiring and 401ks ensure that these companies will make money purely from “value potential”. Maybe in 20 or so years as the demographics change this will be different, but this is how I see it going down today.
If all of America collectively decided not to purchase from publicly traded companies, and instead only bought from small local companies for just one month. I doubt it would even register on a YTD stock price chart. It would need to be a true philosophical change in how we consume products, and it would have to last for longer than a month to be effective. On top of that, only privileged households will realistically be able to “choose” not to buy consumer goods.
I think we should all buy less and be more mindful of where our money goes. I think we should buy locally and promote businesses that you agree with on levels beyond the value of the good or services they offer as often as possible. However, I don’t think we can effectively protest this way unless it was a true lifestyle change for a large portion of the country.
I agree. Inventory isn’t going to change much, just delay it a little, if that.
should all buy less and be more mindful of where our money goes. I think we should buy locally and promote businesses that you agree with on levels beyond the value of the good or services they offer as often as possible. However, I don’t think we can effectively protest this way unless it was a true lifestyle change for a large portion of the country.
I’d disagree, we saw it with COVID how vulnerable corporations are. They’ll always focus on stock buybacks and stuff like that over recession-proofing. Also, this is quite an equitable movement. Those who can’t afford new shit are already contributing to it.
Firstly, the covid pandemic was a multi year event. Secondly, publicly traded companies were enriched greatly from that time. Also it wasn’t conscious degrowth or a lack of ability, it was supply chain issues that caused products not to be available for purchase.
Firstly, the covid pandemic was a multi year event.
The initial shocks happened in the first 3 months.
Secondly, publicly traded companies were enriched greatly from that time. Also it wasn’t conscious degrowth or a lack of ability, it was supply chain issues that caused products not to be available for purchase.
Yup, that’s why the control here is in the consumers’ hand and again, it’s sort of like reducing your consumption so it starts hitting the metrics enough for corporations to realize the risks.
Boomers are retiring and 401ks ensure that these companies will make money purely from “value potential”.
Peter Zeihan expects the opposite as Boomers sell their stock to fund lifestyle.
Could be both. First up, then down.
Edit to fix name.
I haven’t read this take yet, and I’m not an economist.
My point is that right now, boomers are doing everything they can to invest, so its a self fulfilling prophecy of ETFs and investment funds. Where everyone is buying in because the stocks are preforming well and the stocks are performing well because everyone that plans to retire is buying in.
However once boomers start to either sell their assets or die off, there will be a sudden surplus of stock and other assets in a pretty small window. And i doubt it will be a boon for the economy or the stock market.
