Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is

Dec 19, 2005 07:43

Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is ( Read more... )

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karcy December 19 2005, 04:08:53 UTC
The problem with this sort of argument is that it works along the line of ‘yes, it’s a difficult thing to do, but if everyone does it then it’s going to make a change’. The thing is that in order to make a noticeable change in the market there needs to be a huge movement of people away from huge stores like Target, and that huge movement of people simply isn’t going to happen by appealing to consciences.

Most people will not do that. It’s not because they do not see the connection between the wallets and the effects of it, it’s just that they simply do not bother; it takes too much of a hassle to follow one’s consciences especially when it is much more convenient to simply shut one eye and convince one’s conscience away. After all, outraged consciences can be stirred and pacified by arguments, and it is easier to argue something away in one’s head than to start a lifelong boycott of a major chain store.

What you want is mass movement sufficient to cause a stagger in the market and deliver change. In order to do that you need to create a movement that can easily attract the masses towards you just as easily as huge chain stores can bring the masses towards them. I can’t think of anything that works, although I suppose the best one could do is to create a massive and gradual PR smear campaign that questions the accountability and transparency of the practices in a large brand-name company. However, I don’t think that this can be done with something as lame and tiny an issue as the banning of Salvation Army bell-ringers. And even if such a smear campaign were successful, it would only be a small glitch in these companies, to be sorted by and settled by their PR reps, only to surface on some occasions in a PR textbook.

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