Realistically, how feasible is it to 100% boycott a massive corporation (such as Amazon) for an extended period of time?
Realistically, how feasible is it to 100% boycott a massive corporation (such as Amazon) for an extended period of time?
The key is 100% boycotting all services provided by a company. Wikipedia's list of Amazon product/services as reference (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Amazon_products_and_services).
Incidentally, I know entire neighborhoods that don't have other grocery stores besides Target/Whole Foods, not to mention that AWS is the cloud computing industry standard... As a personal example, my vet-prescribed cat foods are manufactured by Purina, a subsidary of Nestlé (needless to say, a separate but also extremely evil large corporation)
The most plausible way is a short-term boycott for like 2 weeks at the end of their fiscal reporting period. You want the rebound not to be reflected in the quarterly report so it fucks with the share prices.
I've spent years now trying not to consume products from companies I consider immoral. There are a lot of them and, realistically, you won't make a big dent or bring the company down. The average person is, by definition, average, so a boycott based on people doing the good thing at the expense of some personal discomfort will always fail.
But that doesn't mean it's pointless. Companies like Amazon are almost impossible to compete with because of their size. The most important impact you can have as a consumer is not that the lack of your personal revenue is going to keep the likes of Jeff Bezos up at night. It's that you're providing revenue and a user base to alternative businesses that are struggling to exist in a world where most people just use Amazon.
You can make a real difference this way! Focus on growing competitors rather than hoping the bad company will go away because of your abstention. Kind of like using Lemmy instead of Reddit.
Even if all end users boycott Amazon, they'll still make billions from AWS.
Being poor and living on the edge paycheck to paycheck taught me that there are a whole lot of things you can live without that you didn't think you could.
You can literally cut all subscriptions out of your life and eat nothing but groceries you buy cheap at a food co-op and you'd be surprised how ok you are.
There's a LOT of fat you can cut out of your life. And it makes things simpler and simple is peaceful.
Its only vialble if there's a organized critical mass of people doing it.
Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Alternatively, the best action is the one that gets done.
Cannot agree more. I have done a lot to transition all my purchasing power to Canadian companies but I haven't gotten there 100%. Every bit matters, every lost sale will add up.
All efforts, great and small.
When a "good" solution ultimately defangs or sedates workers with otherwise radical potential, then no, a "good" solution is inadequate and should be thrown out. Why is everyone bleating this empty aphorism all around lemmy? The simple fact is that the only way we are going to steer ourselves out of this devolution into fascism is with a hail mary: some sort of labor movement, a geopolitical shock, a massive strike, etc... And this (almost religious) faith in "good solutions" or half measures is not worth anything. It's copium. It's toxic positivity in the form of blind, religious hope.
What this expression refers to is a pervasive false equivalence: the idea that anything that isn't perfect isn't worth bothering with, or that doing something small somehow hampers a greater task (even if when it actually contributes to that greater task). It is a statement against apathy and binary thinking.
This comes up in politics and activism all the fucking time. Like "Why should I care about car emissions when freight ships produce more emissions than all the cars in the world?" The answer is simple: because you can. Do what you can, even if it's small. That doesn't mean forgetting about the big polluters.
some sort of labor movement, a geopolitical shock, a massive strike, etc
If anybody is avoiding Amazon as an alternative to those things, then I agree that they need a kick in the pants. But I doubt there's anyone out there thinking to themselves "I don't need to take part in the revolution because I bought my cat food at CVS instead of Amazon".
It's not. Not spending money is not a very effective direct action. Like companies can't just borrow money or be bailed out until people get tired.
Considering how much of the Internet is now backed by AWS... yeah good luck with a full, 100% boycott, unless you're willing to install a plug-in to let you know which parts of the web are on AWS and specifically avoid them.
That being said, a 100% boycott is borderline puritanical. It's very easy to order nothing from Amazon, and if enough of us do it will make a noticeable dent in their profits.
A direct boycott of Amazon and its subsidiaries? Super easy, barely an inconvenience.
But boycotting services that happen to use Amazon? Impossible!
Any business may use products ordered from there. Your local toll gate may use AWS. Unless you are a major client nobody is going to let you audit their supply contracts.
Yeah, AWS is ginormous and largely invisible. You can usually figure out when something's in AWS if you can traceroute it, and sometimes by IP, but that requires knowing the IP of the server in question AND having the know-how to use and understand those tools' output.
Uhmmm, I haven’t used Amazon for anything in at least four years, pretty sure it’s really easy
Have you confirmed that no website you provide ad revenue or membership fees to used AWS? If you haven't checked, then you probably have supported Amazon. Amazon makes most of their money through AWS.
Regardless, good on you for not buying from Amazon directly. I too haven't purchased from them for years
There is never a perfect solution. Just boycotting them in any way you reasonably can will go a long way.
Yeah, I don't struggle with boycotting Amazon. The only times I've really used Amazon in the past have been for PC parts, audio headphones, and a random thing or two. I do my absolute best not to buy needless things as it is, and I know that there are plenty of other websites to use if I really need to get something online. (I knew this was gonna come in handy one day ha.) Here's a website called amazonalts.org. It's curated websites/online stores for the ethical consumer in mind. The categories are Food, Home, Clothes, Beauty, Books, Electronics, and Miscellaneous.
Right? Like it didn’t even take the whole Orange galah thing to bring it about. You make your workers piss in bottles to meet KPIs then I have 0 interest in buying your shit.
Amazon doesn't make anything. There's very little on Amazon that can't be purchased somewhere else.
Boycott is the wrong word.
Permanently change your spending habits. A temporary change a company can ignore, but permanent change in spending will affect them.
You can’t avoid everything 100% of the time but simply closing your Amazon account and not ordering their trash EVER AGAIN will make a difference.
Every one of us needs to change permanently to not empower this oligarchs any more.
That is a good idea. I'll close my account as well.
100% is unattainable, but tbh even 10% would hurt them
It's more realistic when the boycotters have a specific demand, e.g. getting the company to divest from Israel.
Then the boycott just has to do them more damage than quitting Israel would.
From the DSA instagram 6 days ago:
Why didn't the "economic blackout" change anything?
Stocks rose Friday instead of falling, and there was no sign that the "economic boycott" that spread across social media had any impact whatsoever, other than maybe being a promotional tool for smaller businesses.
Why didn't it work and what would work instead?
We don't have power as "consumers".
Working people are always going to need to buy things. And even if a large portion of workers stopped buying everyday goods from Target or Starbucks, we'd still need to pay rent, pay the mortgage, pay utilities, and ultimately depend on a larger supply chain. You can't "opt-out" of capitalism.
Boycotts that work are focused on a clear target and have with a specific demand, and are built on long-term, deep organizing. But even then, as a tactic, a boycott isn't going to be what brings the economy to a halt to stop the Trump agenda.
We have power as workers.
In January 2019, a 35 day shutdown of the federal government came to an end after the flight attendants union announced their intention to strike. Such a strike would have grounded a large percentage of air travel, which even if just for a short period of time would have had a devastating impact on the US economy.
If we want to hit the ruling class where it hurts we need to organize as workers, not as consumers. Our power is in collectively withholding our labor, not withholding our dollars (which we only have in the first place by selling our labor).
Strikes are organized, not mobilized.
Strikes don't happen because someone made an Instagram post calling for it and then everyone thought it was a good idea.
Strikes are the result of long-term organizing that builds tightly structured organization through a series of escalating actions that show the level of support for the union, which if successful leave workers confident and the boss afraid.
A strike can't work if only a minority of workers walk out either. Strikes require a supermajority of workers to be effective.
So what can you do?
Join an organization like DSA that is working to build the kind working class power necessary not just to beat back Trump's attacks but to win a better world.
Join the labor movement. Organize at work, in your union if you have one, and get trained on the secrets of successful organizing through organizations like Labor Notes. Looking for a new job? Consider taking a job in a "strategic sector" like healthcare, education, or logistics.
Stop scrolling and start talking to your coworkers, your neighbors, friends, and family. The revolution will not be posted. Revolutions are made through organizing.
We don't have power as "consumers".
If even 10% of consumers "bought" like I do the economy would suffer greatly. Almost everything I acquire was trash, recycled, repurposed, used, etc. I could show someone around my house and property for 2 solid hours showing off all the deals I got or created.
Just in the last week I've found in my hood:
- Nice dryer - repaired and selling now
- 3 vacuum cleaners, 2 of which are also carpet cleaners and are brand new, cleaning for sale
- Leaky, portable ice maker, probably just needs unclogged
- 3 kid's scooters, fixing up the best for my daughter
- 1 girl's bike, fixing for my daughter
- More that I'm forgetting. Had to stop and get this stuff fixed and/or sold.
I was building stuff yesterday with culled lumber from the hardware store, $50 for $1,400 worth. When I got home I helped my wife with a sweet curio cabinet she got for $35. LOL, it's huge!
tl;dr: I find it weird that people just go out and buy stuff new when there's so much free/cheap/used goods to be had.
I'm sorry, but it's likely literally impossible for this to be the leading paradigm for 10% of people. Maybe 10% would work but I think it'd already be problematic.
You have to remember that the only reason you got these things was because other people didn't need them anymore. Why didn't they need it anymore? Because they bought new stuff.
And you surely didn't get all these things from a single household. Many different households had to get new stuff so their old stuff became available. It's likely that more than 10 households are necessary to sustain 1 person that gets everything used, because not everyone buys new things all the time, and stuff often breaks instead of still being fine to use.
I personally would eyeball 1-5% of people could do this like you, but this is just a complete unsubstantiated feeling, a guess.
Good call. The greenest purchase you can make is fixing the thing you already own.
No modern boycotts have been shown to be effective.
The last genuinely effective "boycott" was the bds movement focused on SA, which created real pressure.
BDS movements have been effective because they go well above and beyond boycotts, and in some ways, its easier to target "all" of a national economy than it is to single out singular companies. That action also took place in a world of reduced globalization.
More broadly we should all be considering the relevance of individual versus collective action. There was a real propaganda effort to drive peoples thinking to be focused on individual action as a means for creating social change. Be the change, recycling, changing your habits, etc. It shifted the focus from the responsibility being on those creating the damage to consumers, and it had a range of outcomes.
One of the most important is that individual action, while basically meaningless, acts as an analgesic towards further action. Its a way to create a sense of relief that something has been "done" while nothing meaningful has changed. If this psychological pain reliever prevents the escalation to the use of force or more extreme actions, its done its job to protect the system. There are very good reasons why the system accepts individual actions, are supported almost exclusively over collective or more extreme behavior.
If one wanted to learn more about the propaganda efforts you mentioned, what would be some good resources for that?
A lot of the time, asking local businesses what they can do/order for you helps a lot. Just because they don't have it doesn't mean they can't get it. Some local grocers offer delivery services. If you have the time, seed money and patience, you can grow a lot of food in a small amount of space.
My cat has a special diet, too. I asked if I could use pet food from an independent brand - since it was a food allergy, just a matter of excluding chicken and grain - and the vet said it was fine.
AWS is harder to avoid, but if you have to use a service, there are other companies who will put the effort in to take part of the pie from amazon.
0% chance
Don't aim for 100%. Just 90% would be good. Make it a point when buying something to look for someone else first. Often there is a widget.com company that sells the same thing for a similar price but they have experts to write up the description and so help you choose which of the 100 different manufactures is really best for you. Every brand says they have the best, but often there are differences an expert would know about that you will never figure out on amazon.
Amazon reviews are terrible - sure what you choose worked for your purposes, but almost nobody buys all 100 (or even 10 of them) and compares, and thus you don't know if this works but should be a 3 star because of how much better something they didn't buy is.
I have a hard time believing Purina makes some kind of special pet food that nobody else makes. Ask your vet about alternatives.
My cats need prescription food and I buy Royal Canin.
I completely boycott Amazon, Google, Walmart, Target, Starbucks, Nestle, the list goes on. It takes a tiny bit of effort. Most people aren’t willing to do even that.
They don't. Let's just say that I chose the closest vet to where I live for convenience & I just needed someone to issue them travel certificates in a few months, but they are themselves a VC-owned nightmare... I'm moving out of the US in a few months and will likely change their diets anyways. I'm trying to find better alternatives as well
If you want to read the story of someone's experience trying to block all the big tech companies from their life back in 2019. Their first week was trying to block Amazon.
Edit: A big challenge would be if you wanted to avoid connecting to sites that run off of or have content served by AmazonWebServices. To do that for example, you'd have to click these archive links for Gizmodo instead of the direct links I did above.
If you strive for perfection you will always fall short. Just do what you can. I started actually going to stores instead of buying things online, but sometimes that is not feasible. If I absolutely have to buy something from Amazon, I canceled my Prime and just wait longer for my packages. As for the other services Amazon provides I have no idea. Look for alternatives as best you can.
The goal is more about giving as little money as possible to Amazon. You don't have to go cold turkey and cut it all out if it causes problems for you. Use this time to research alternatives for the future as you pivot away.
It's very effective when a lot of people agree and follow suit, these companies panic and now REALLY quickly when they no longer have a functioning business model. You have to have consumers willing to buy from you.
I cancelled my account. It was easy and I don't miss it. I had that account since 2009. I shop local or not at all (mostly). It feels good to just save money.
I've ordered from Amazon once. That's the only occasion I've ever used any of their services. I'm not intentionally avoiding them, I simply don't have the need for any of it. I've always just used ebay and Aliexpress instead.
Be careful about ebay, a lot of sellers just drop ship from Amazon
I don't really care. I have nothing against amazon.
The way I see it... whenever I do buy from Amazon, I say to myself that my money is going to the workers/drivers... and whenever the Magas pay for stuff, that goes straight to Bezos.
It's not as good as buying from somewhere else, but it helps.