I’m planning on participating, but it’s not going to work. And it won’t work because it’s not popular, and it’s not popular because it won’t work.
Spreading defeatist comments and pessimism, saying that this won’t accomplish anything anyway and undermining the power of the collective is exactly what killed this movement in Croatia.
The movement started with a general spending boycott on fridays (so no money transactions - no stores, bars, gas stations, bank transactions etc), and a week long boycott of three supermarket chains that had the most egregious prices compared to other countries (those chains operate all over Europe, and their prices in other countries are far cheaper for the exact same products - despite lower operational costs in Croatia). After that, we switched to boycotting one chain every week.
The boycott was very effective. On the first friday of the boycott, the state financial department reported a 43% decrease in sales volume in the country. Just think about that for a second. And no - there has not been an increase in spending in the days before or after the boycott. In fact, they were still lower compared to the weeks before and the sales volume decreased in the following week by about 10%.
But like I said, unfortunately it died out over the next 4-5 weeks, with each boycott achieving lower decreases. And it died out exactly because of trolls that spread this defeatist attitude thinking they’re so smart for seeing the “real” picture. Laughable.
Of course, the astroturfing has been insane, they really went berserk after the first friday. There’s been an insane amount of bots posting comments that this doesn’t work, that we should be protesting the government instead (as if holding signs in front of government buildings hurts them more than 50% less money flowing into the state piggy bank), that this hurts the citizens more than the conglomerates, that this will cause them to increase the prices to cover the losses etc etc. Just ridiculous claims all over social media.
And yeah, people got deflated and the movement died out.Thanks idiots.
People will stock up the day before and binge the day after. It’s not effective or realistic. This is slacktivism. It’s not pessimism to tell you that it’s a dumb plan.
Like I already said, no, they do not. The sales volume was lower on the days before and after too. The boycott actually changed consumer habits for a while there - people were buying only what they needed and refrained from all other spending.
I mean if you refrain from going to a cafe bar on friday, it’s not like you are going to make up for it on saturday. Same goes for all “luxury” items basically.
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?
One day at a time. Isn’t that what the 12 Step groups say? People in this thread saying this won’t do anything. You have to start somewhere. Don’t be defeatist. Get involved. Unless you are just trolling to keep people from doing anything.
🤡
Doomer do-nothings are so incredibly frustrating. I get the frustration, but spreading apathy is not useful. Authoritarianism flourishes when apathy takes root among the populace.
Real doing something is a long term boycott. Not a one day thing. Real doing something is labor organization, unions allow collaboration at a higher level, and allow you to strike back at the throat.
Even protesting at a leftist capital is doing more than a single day’s blackout.
Go exercise your second amendment by a conservative senator’s house if you really want to do something (and I don’t mean that as a shoot them euphemism. Make them uncomfortable.)
The organization that organized the economic blackout has longer-term boycotts planned in the coming weeks. This is just the opening salvo. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
You’re not getting “good”. A one day pause is not an effective strategy in any sense. It’s slacktivism. It’ll placate people who would have otherwise taken actual action.
You say placate, I say practice. People who have never protested a day in their lives aren’t going to start out with a multi-month blackout. They need to get used to protesting by starting small.
That is literally not how it works with people. They will feel like they did their job and move on. They will do this instead of actually helping. There isn’t any escalation. There’s a week (not long enough) hit on specific companies and other “days”.
I guess we’ll both stay tuned and see whose prognosticating is right here.
you are doing nothing.
this is not resistance, it’s embarrassing. you all deserve what you get.There really is this need to feel like people are doing something even if they’re doing nothing.
Single day boycotts are completely ineffectual for a variety of reasons, reason #1 being the vast majority are either unaware or apathetic, #2 being even those who participate aren’t skipping particpation entirely, they just shift their economic participation to the day before or the day after.
So the end result is a zero sum game, but when you tell people that, they respond with “At least I’m trying!” 🤷♂️
Low effort virtue signalling
Americans have not had to protest like this in many many decades. That is it’s been “good enough” for a large part of the population to not really do anything, so there is no system that people can tap into like in France. So thinking that you are going to get a million+ people to go into the streets and shut everything down for a few weeks isn’t realistic.
American protest opposition also has a great response to these gatherings by getting them to turn into riots so there is justification for military style responses. Which makes people on the fence hesitant. Getting people to dip their toe in the lake of resistance is the best way forward. It’s slow, it looks silly and limiting but if it works it emboldens more people to do more.
“That is it’s been “good enough” for a large part of the population”
There’s the selfish ‘as long as it’s not me attitude’.You also think it was ‘good enough’ and didn’t need to protest is even more telling and comfirms my view.
You were OK with having no healthcare, mass incarceration and de facto slavery in that system.
Authoritarian police with an unrivaled murder rate, mass drug abuse and homelessness.
ANY of those things would be reason for a population to revolt and resist.
The US simply doesn’t know better and think this is normal and mistakenly believe other countries are worse off.
Imagine being so pacified that they take all this.
And yes, real resistance is hard and difficult.
They are not going to give you anything by asking nicely.
The US population is like an abused housewife that stays with her bully would rather not make waves in the hope it will get better and doesn’t get another beating. If she doesn’t resist and leave she doesn’t deserve saving.Yes, Americans have been pacified - though I think most western countries’ populations are to some extent. And because of that pacification they are not going to jump up and do the really difficult stuff of resistance until it starts effecting them more - this I agree with. But your argument or your complaint sounds like if Americans don’t jump from pacification to doing the hard stuff nothing else matters. It’s all or nothing in your mind.
But that isn’t how it works, small protests and boycotts on large scales do have some impact. They also demonstrate to Americans that resistance does work and possible get them to do more. If there is small successes then larger, more difficult resistance has the chance to grow and be sustained.
should these protest happen sooner and more often, sure but they didn’t and that is arguments for history - So maybe this administration will actually prompt more people to start doing more uncomfortable actions to change the country for the better?
“But that isn’t how it works”
Right, the entirety of history is wrong.
From the stormers of the Bastille to Che.
Finally this guy here can tell you what is needed.Babysteps! I mean where’s the urgency? Not like some regime dudes throwing sieg heils and introducing fascism at rapid speed can go irreversably wrong right?
If only occupied Europe would’ve stopped eating bratwurst and apple strudel in the 40’s, all that unpleasantness wouldn’t have needed to happen.
And besides there are plenty of things you can try before you show no mercy and have a mass singing of cumbaya.
I’m ending this hopeless convo here and leave you to it.
I’ll be sure to watch how it ends, got the nachos, dip and everything.So what are you doing?
Are you organizing people to go out and protest or are you just being a keyboard warrior? You know that phrase put up or shut up? Why are you not out pulling people in to a long protest? If you are why are you not taking this time to get more people in your protest? If you are not then you are no better than all these people that you’re bitching about.
You’re right this is a conversation that is going no where you’re just here to bitch and really not do anything. Later.
For real. Most Americans have probably never even participated in a “buy nothing” day, much less a pocket book protest against a government.
I don’t see what’s wrong with starting with one day, letting people get used to the concept, then dialing up the frequency once word of mouth has spread.
pacified slave mentality.
i despise you all and will enjoy seeing this accomplish nothing.
i have no respect for slaves without will, you don’t deserve savingGood, I’m hard, keep going
oh you’re getting kinky now?
You’re not supposed to enjoy this!
That’s a caning!
