We saw it over a several month period with Elon Musk and Tesla. We saw it again a few weeks ago with Disney, parent company of ABC, and Kimmel. Both cases showed a very effective way of punishing tyranny by hitting the offending parties in the pocket book.
Musk’s gutting of federal institutions infuriated the public, and his Tesla company suffered massive financial losses as a result. The assault on freedom of speech by Disney and ABC, were also met with harsh public sentiment and financial loss.
It took Musk’s retreat from DOGE to stop the bleeding of his company.
It took ABC’s rehiring of Kimmel to stop the heavy financial losses sustained by Disney.
It is clear that consumer power was at work. With Tesla, auto sales and stock prices dropped steeply until Musk left government and went back to running Tesla. With Disney, many customers canceled their subscriptions and/or sold their stocks. The pain of lost revenue is what changed the minds of the corporate heads. The loss for Disney was between $3.8 billion and $5 billion in one week. Imagine what a year’s boycott might have done.
While the public has little control to stop the hollowing out of the federal government, I would argue that it has in its consumerism the ability to bring great pressure, even damage, to a business entity. Businesses are vulnerable to consumer fury. We are all consumers, and without our spending, business does not survive, and the oligarchs cannot amass more wealth.
Boycotts have been an effective means of protest and of power all our lives. Even going back to colonial times, they have been used to fight unjust and tyrannical practices. We’ve seen an escalation of those tyrannical practices over the recent months and will see a lot more if we take a “wait and see attitude” and do not respond to injustice whenever we can.
I suggest boycotting any business or entity, and of any products or services of that company or corporation, that is involved in tyranny of any kind. I suggest a complete boycott. If tyranny and money are all they understand, let’s deprive them of money.
If boycotting is not enough, it may be necessary to escalate to a general strike and cripple targeted industries. With solidarity, consumers can have a say in shaping the world into a more fair place.
