The current hostile corporate takeover in the USA and the clear loss of political power of the common people, I started wondering what happened if people used consumption as their leverage. Since the system is designed for continuous growth, what would happen if a mass movement of people stopping buying new non-essential consumer goods?
It would send a much stronger message than angry public protests. Thoughts?
Edit 1: Received some fantastic responses one of these highlighted February 28th as the “National No Spend Day” that we can consider the rehearsal.
*Do not make any purchases Do not shop online, or in-store, No Amazon, No Walmart, No Best Buy, Nowhere!
Do not spend money on: Fast Food,Gas,Major Retailers Do not use Credit or Debit Cards for non essential spending
WHAT YOU CAN DO: Only buy essentials of absolutely necessary (Food, Medicine, Emergency Supplies) If you must spend, ONLY support small, local businesses.*
This movement is the definition of equitable, not spending means everybody can contribute within their means, and if you can’t afford to buy shit anyway, you’re already doing your part!
The main problem with these things is people buying stuff before, so they can boycott the next day. Makes absolutely no difference.
Obviously, what you’re describing is different.
agree. the main idea is to shift away from buying new to buying used, bartering, using cash. there’s such abundance of used goods in the US people actually wouldn’t have to compromise their lifestyles and this could continue on for months and months and months.
Im already trying my best to move off any services tied to any oligarch at Trumps inauguration.
I just bought a kindle but planning on donating it and moving to Kobo.
Side hobby to learn to pirate safely. Im now using any alternate website to Amazon.
We have the power of voice with our wallets.
Just use the kindle without amazon stuff, maybe install KOReader, you can get your books from somewhere else.
I would but just knowing its a kindle disgusts me. Already bought a kobo.
I think ill donate my kindle instead.
Are you already familiar with https://fmhy.pages.dev/ ?
Oh no, what’s this?
The Day the World Stops Shoppong examined this and found that it doesn’t take a whole lot of concerted action to tank the consumption economy.
Buy nothing days are good but less good if you return to regular habits and redouble your consumption after the boycott is over.
Well, it would really suck for the millions who are in customer service/retail. You’ve essentially made them homeless and struggling even more than they were before.
I wish anyone who has idealistic thoughts of protesting like this, would think things thoroughly. Seems like protesting in general, it’s just about do action now, thinking almost never.
Someone has to think things through, that’s for sure.
If y’all aren’t already aware the first test date for Consumer Power is on Feb 28th. Don’t buy ANYTHING on that date. Yeah, it’s brief, it will probably be a blip, but this is like a test of the emergency broadcast system. If we can get say 2% of people to do that, then watch closely for reactions, it will help us spread the word for the 2nd test. Then the 3rd. It’s only through this grassroots organization that we can accomplish anything.
I had a friend tell me that they’d already seen organizations trying to make it their idea and honestly, I’m not at all concerned about who is putting their brand on it. The POINT here is that we need to start exercising our muscles to make this a real tool for change. Stop focusing on that message and start embracing the larger goal here. Spread the word. RESIST.
Thanks edited my OP to advertise this. i like passive resistance, it takes much fewer resources, non-violent etc.
I already have. Long before the threat of tariffs. I shop thrift stores, yard sales, and social media markets. I go to electronics recyclers and find perfectly good laptops that just need an OS installed.
I’ve had the same phone since 2017, and the same car for 10+ years, neither of which were new when I got them.
I’ve already planned with my wider family that for the next 4 years we aren’t doing jack shit for holidays. No black friday (tbh we never did anyway), no cyber Monday. No gifts for Christmas.
I’ve been doing homemade gifts or local market goods for xmas the past couple xmas
I haven’t celebrated xmas for several years now and it’s seriously been so liberating.
I already barely buy shit. I’ve always said “if the economy hinged on my purchasing habit, the country would go bankrupt”. People in general should start living within their means without any protest. It’s good for everyone and also will make corporations slow down on killing this planet.
Fix things. I don’t know what they did to my father but the man starts getting twitchy and starts scratching at his face if he hasn’t ordered anything from Amazon in the last few minutes. I have to STOP HIM to give me a chance to repair things.
I already barely buy shit. I’ve always said “if the economy hinged on my purchasing habit, the country would go bankrupt”.
well, you’re already part of the movement:)
“Culture Is Not Consumption”
Write that on a tee shirt you already own.
Anything that $peaks their language will work better than protests IMO
Hey hey! Ho ho!
If even a relatively small number — say 10-20% — just refused to buy anything other than the bare essentials (like food, energy, utils) until action was taken, you’d probably see more action than if those people got out in the streets and protested.
That action would be increasing the price of bare essentials to compensate
So, some of this would occur but I can think of two reasons why it wouldn’t be a linear tradeoff. I dunno why but I decided to write a scroll about it, even tho nobody is gonna read it.
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“Bare Essentials” are price competitive - Basic groceries like milk, eggs, dry goods, canned goods, etc., are produced by a large arrangement of producers, and also quasi-local (big ag owns all the farms, but certain farms produce for specific regions). This means that it’s hard to corner the market on these goods. Keep in mind brand-name foods collude to push against this price competition, but only to a certain extent because grocery store “value brands” can become irresistible if they’re half the price. The price of kraft mac and cheese is tethered to within a couple bucks of the value brand next to it on the shelf.
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The “Not Bare Essentials” products (Entertainment [incl. Tourism, Dining], durable goods, luxury items and electronics) are produced by different corporations than the bare essentials groups. Megacorps like Amazon do have some stratification across the entire goods spectrum (mostly by reselling/market tolls) but they’re also exposed because the margins on the nonessentials are better because of issue #1. So a boycott of these groups would have a significant effect on all retail and retail-adjacent companies. That’s like 12 out of the top 20 companies in the US, roughly 3.2 trillion in revenue that could take a 20% hit to their balance sheet. That’s 2% of the US GDP out of those 20 companies alone, enough to flatten the GDP curve in a given year. That kind of effect would result in a panic among global decision-makers.
However, there are major issues with the ‘buy nothing boycott’ plan:
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the idea of getting 10% of the people in the country to buy into the plan is pretty far-fetched. Buying things basically daily is a (bad) habit of nearly all Americans and breaking that cycle will not be easy. Not eating out, not taking vacations, not buying christmas or birthday gifts, and replacing these activities with zero or near-zero cost activities will come at an enormous social cost as compared to people not boycotting. This can be mitigated by trying to enact pacts with friends and family and entering into buy-nothing local groups, as well as focusing on a barter economy that sidesteps retail and services.
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the concept of a sustained boycott will get harder and harder in the imagined scarcity, planned obsolesce environment we live in. Cars break down, clothes wear out, everything requires upkeep, etc. Obviously this can be deferred and stretched (I’m never selling my already 10 year old car, for example) but the boycott will fray. This can be counteracted by more people joining than those exiting, via media and grassroots efforts.
Overall: If 10-20% of Americans actually bought nothing (very unlikely) for a sustained (months, even more unlikely) period of time, the outlook of the GDP would be very noticeable. If that could be sustained (by more people joining than leaving) then you’d absolutely see major changes in policy. It would start with corporate layoffs, but then graduate to price cuts, sales of production facilities, drops of industrial output, and then finally decreased energy consumption and industrial inputs. That would be a national security emergency that would force bipartisan political change, because energy and industrial potential are the two primary metrics of nation-state success for both hard and soft power.
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that would probably be impossible and wouldn’t have a lot of effect cuz demand is an elastic band or something
but a lot of the demand can be met by buying used stuff
Buying used stuff should be illegal! The government is losing out on taxes, and the producers don’t get the revenue. Are you not thinking about the shareholders?
Tap for spoiler
/s
You jest, but I’m pretty sure all the secondhand shops I go to collect and pay sales tax.
that’s what i like to do but that’s a long term cultural thing
If you got a substantial amount of people to it, like 40-50% of the population it would probably collapse the economy via domino effect. So much is underpinned on people spending money on any given day
But, I don’t see it happening in reality, just getting 20% to actually do it would be a massive undertaking and 20% would probably be painful, but not cause a cool cascade of collapse
Total collapse might not be required for real, tangible change. Collective action is a unifying force, and it would remind everyone top to bottom that the house of cards is in fact collapsible and not an inevitable behemoth under its own inertia.
You could argue that even with reforms the underpinning economic system remains as problematic as ever. But building that collective support, reminding poor voters that they’re not temporarily embarrassed billionaires, adds more opposition to it than support.
They’ll just buy the things they didn’t buy before hand, or afterwards, washing it all out in the average.
After a long enough period of striking it begins to have repercussions beyond the individual budget.
If the flow of money slowed to a crawl for an extended period, companies don’t have the funds to pay workers. Enough job loss leads to further reduced spending, thus impacting stock value, thus impacting employment, etc…
A month would have a noticeable impact, but a full fiscal quarter would be the first cliff where the big corporations would really sweat. But generally I agree, an economic strike with an end date is like an overnight hunger strike
Won’t happen but it’s a great idea. The environment loves recession. The only years in recent history when the climate indicators briefly stopped moving in the wrong direction were 2009 and 2020.
OH THANK GOD they finally stopped exploiting me. Let me just catch my breath here and oh GOD OH FU–
