Talk of a "Feb 28 Economic Blackout" is spreading on social media. What is it?
Talk of a "Feb 28 Economic Blackout" is spreading on social media. What is it?
A grassroots effort is asking American consumers to refrain from making purchases at major retailers for one day in February.
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I never understood these "don't buy stuff on day X" things. Ok, then you will buy on the next day. It doesn't make a difference. What am I missing?
It does make a huge difference. Their analytics gets effed, some people rethink their choices where they buy, or not even buy at all. Just don’t think negatively, there is positive outcomes. Share those comments instead and then we can lead a bigger educational conversations about everything else.
It does make a difference.
Companies have overhead. Labor costs, heat, etc. they use expectations for the business they will do on any given day to determine how many resources to invest into that day.
If everyone buys nothing on February 28th, and then buys everything they would have bought on the 28th on the 1st, not only do the companies get overwhelmed by having twice as much business on the 1st. All of the overhead for the 28th is still spent.
Not only that, this is just the beginning. The Amazon blackout is March 7th through the 14th.
It's a threat. Nobody likes the idea of crippling the economy with an unending general strike. But the people who watch the daily numbers use them to predict future behavior. A big blackout in the second month makes them think really hard about what is coming 6 months down the road. If the blackout is small, they know they don't have anything to worry about. If it shifts 50% of sales to another day, they know they're having a conversation with a giant that can move their numbers a lot.
The idea is for it to be material enough that it shows up in reports about earnibgs for the day.
And also to get people accustomed to the idea of participating in mass actions. You don't go from barely having protests to a multi week general strike in one go. You do things like this, first.