A grassroots organization is encouraging U.S. residents not to spend any money Friday as an act of “economic resistance” to protest what the group’s founder sees as the malign influence of billionaires, big corporations and both major political parties on the lives of working Americans.
My own take is that if you have a boycott, to have political impact, it needs to have concrete goals and agreed-upon-in-advance, well-defined termination conditions.
Without that, you’re flailing around angrily. Doesn’t actually do anything, since it’s not as if any one party can do anything you want that has an effect in response.
I’d also add that the broader a boycott, the harder it is to do, and the more-diffuse the effect. If you don’t buy anything, you’re affecting all sorts of people. Many of those have no impact on your particular concerns.
If I were going to participate in a boycott:
It would not have termination condition defined by time, but in achieving political goals. Defining a termination in time specifically says “I’m not going to have an effect after this point”, and not having political goals says “nothing you do for me is going to affect what I do anyway”.
Those goals would be achievable, concrete, and announced in advance.
It would identify specific parties who have the authority to produce the change I want and target those.
It would be limited in scope to try to affect specifically the parties who I want to act differently. Anything else, and you’re expending will-to-act on impacting others and also antagonizing people whose actions you don’t care about.
There is value in just using something like this to break spending habits of the population.
A lot of people may find that a portion of their spending wasn’t that necessary after all, and will stop beyond the boycott. The businesses will need to improve services or lower prices to win customers back.
At least, that’s what I hope this achieves. The organizers might have varying goals.
Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. Every vote counts.