Strikes do a lot more damage to companies. I think a lot of people mix the two ideas up.
The last most successful boycotts were mostly ones you never heard of, and at least one you rather not hear of. We managed to get tuna companies to pretend to harm fewer dolphins in 1988. Before that is was things like the 1965 Delano Grape Strike and the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott. The most recent boycott that actually got a company to change its marketing and outreach was the Bud Lite/Dylan Mulvaney boycott by the anti-trans right.
If you think you can get enough people as worked up about an issue as the chuds were about a single commercial featuring someone they were scared of, then by all means let’s fire up all the engines and get boycotting. Otherwise, I would encourage people who work at these tech companies to start talking about unions and making change from the inside. But none of that does as much damage to a company as getting politicians installed who are already taking bribes from other companies. Yes this is a dark perspective, you’re welcome to disagree but in my nearly five decades on Earth this is just what I’ve seen over and over.
I don’t want to take away from the general thrust of your point, I just don’t think we have actually seen boycotts that people were actually fired up en masse to enforce.
I think up until right this very moment the general center of mass of society has been largely ok with most of what capitalism is, I think that is going to continue to drastically change, and we will see a lot more wildcat boycotts of companies that significantly hurt them.
That being said I agree that overly focusing on that as a strategy isn’t necessarily wise, but boycotts are definitely a weapon that can absolutely blow up the bridges of corporate 'Murica.
Strikes do a lot more damage to companies. I think a lot of people mix the two ideas up.
The last most successful boycotts were mostly ones you never heard of, and at least one you rather not hear of. We managed to get tuna companies to pretend to harm fewer dolphins in 1988. Before that is was things like the 1965 Delano Grape Strike and the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott. The most recent boycott that actually got a company to change its marketing and outreach was the Bud Lite/Dylan Mulvaney boycott by the anti-trans right.
If you think you can get enough people as worked up about an issue as the chuds were about a single commercial featuring someone they were scared of, then by all means let’s fire up all the engines and get boycotting. Otherwise, I would encourage people who work at these tech companies to start talking about unions and making change from the inside. But none of that does as much damage to a company as getting politicians installed who are already taking bribes from other companies. Yes this is a dark perspective, you’re welcome to disagree but in my nearly five decades on Earth this is just what I’ve seen over and over.
I don’t want to take away from the general thrust of your point, I just don’t think we have actually seen boycotts that people were actually fired up en masse to enforce.
I think up until right this very moment the general center of mass of society has been largely ok with most of what capitalism is, I think that is going to continue to drastically change, and we will see a lot more wildcat boycotts of companies that significantly hurt them.
That being said I agree that overly focusing on that as a strategy isn’t necessarily wise, but boycotts are definitely a weapon that can absolutely blow up the bridges of corporate 'Murica.