Ask Lemmy

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.

The small would die, the big would survive

I'm sure this will be an unpopular opinion, but any publicly traded company no longer needs to post a profit. Boomers are retiring and 401ks ensure that these companies will make money purely from "value potential". Maybe in 20 or so years as the demographics change this will be different, but this is how I see it going down today.

If all of America collectively decided not to purchase from publicly traded companies, and instead only bought from small local companies for just one month. I doubt it would even register on a YTD stock price chart. It would need to be a true philosophical change in how we consume products, and it would have to last for longer than a month to be effective. On top of that, only privileged households will realistically be able to "choose" not to buy consumer goods.

I think we should all buy less and be more mindful of where our money goes. I think we should buy locally and promote businesses that you agree with on levels beyond the value of the good or services they offer as often as possible. However, I don't think we can effectively protest this way unless it was a true lifestyle change for a large portion of the country.

We could even make an app that shows stephen miller, steve bannon, or one of the dogeshits talk whenever people got tempted to buy shit.

"Culture Is Not Consumption"

Write that on a tee shirt you already own.

it would be soooo badass let's do it just real quick

Donald Trump has broken the Constitutional binding of Checks and Balances, upon which all law in the United States is governed. Ask yourself what that means to business contracts which depend on those laws to be guaranteed, and what the loss of faith in the underlying system means to all commerce in this country and between this country and foreign individuals, corporations, and nation states.

Anycahoots, that's my long way of answering, What would happen if Americans stopped buying new consumer goods for a month? with: you are going to find out

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.

You see this (or used to, anyway) from time to time with gas strikes.

If it's just a month of "don't buy," it wouldn't do much in the long run. All that does is time-shift demand to when the strike is over. If the company can anticipate well enough, they'd raise prices when the demand comes back and come out ahead in the long run.

You have to use/consume less, and for an extended time period, not just change when that purchase happens.

But yes, with that caveat, use less, and choose the lesser evil when you do need to buy something. The individual effect is small, but small things add up.

Yes. Or if everyone paid the monthly bills late on purpose at the same time. They stay rich because money flows through us to them. Demonstrating the power to disrupt that flow is going to send a message. The challenge obviously is in building and organizing a mass movement capable of taking coherent and targeted actions like these. You need a lot of people participating to have an impact.

They'd buy more goods for a few weeks leading up to that month, then buy a bit less during, then buy more for two weeks after

As a European i'd suggest to not buy nothing, but only products made in Europe ;)

All the old consumer goods would fall apart because they're built to fail and non-repairable, so you'd need to buy new ones anyways.

Take that, Communists!

/s

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.

Both. Definitely both. Every person has a unique capacity for resistance, so however you’re able is good and important. Talking about it, protesting, boycotting (even in tiny amounts) is something! Being nice to yourself and others in non-consumerist ways is also resistance; like hand-write a note instead of buying a card; your loved one will still appreciate it.

The point is to be a dandelion - they try to pave over us, and we pop back up through the cracks, even in our own little unassuming ways. We may be ants to them but insects outnumber vertebrate life forms by orders of magnitude.

Lots of metaphors as I get sidetracked but case in point: if you can do it, do it!

ETA: Decentralized forms of resistance may be our best bet. Big coordinated efforts are good. Making them play whack-a-mole is also good. If they don’t know where to look next even better.

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

It certainly would, but I would be worried about the people at the bottoms whose salary depend on this. Rich people can afford not getting revenue for a month, but people with precarious work contracts often can't.
What about mass boycott targeted at the companies undeniably supporting this government?
It could impact bottom people less.

I haven't bought stuff in over a year. AI laptop let me check out completely and mostly offline all the time in general except for mobile like now

Anything that $peaks their language will work better than protests IMO