Just some additional advertising for todays boycott.
this post was submitted on 28 Feb 2025
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Honest question, what is an accessible first step for a population that has basically never performed any collective action that isn't performative?
Is standing outside a local government building holding a sign to protest federal policy affecting change?
In my view, at least this one day action has a marginal economic impact. Holding a sign on your lunch break so you can post some pictures to Instagram is way more performative.
How about pooling money together and starting a competing co-op?
I agree! So let's all stop spending today to get people on board and save a few bucks, then use that momentum to pool that money the next day.
People seem to dislike this protest because inaction is seen as ineffective and opposed to active protest. Its "too easy", which puts a bad taste in their mouth.
But on the other hand:
If anything, I see putting the economic brakes on as allowing for more leverage and room to organize. If work is slow maybe you have more time to attend that protest; maybe you're not in a rush to get back to the shop if it's closed early.
But it doesn't have marginal impact. It has zero impact. Whether you spend money on Thursday or Friday, the bottom line is the same. We are starting from the false premise that this has any impact, when the smallest amount of critical thought renders that false immediately.
Yes, get the hell out and stand in front of government offices with signs. Make noise. Be seen. Do anything other than pretending keeping your items in your shopping cart for one additional day has any impact.
That's completely backwards. It costs elected officials and our corporate overlords LITERALLY nothing to ignore your protest. It's bad PR at best. Even then, manipulating news coverage, headlines and soundbites is second nature to these people.
How long would an economic strike have to be for it to have an impact you won't handwave away? There could be prepped food on shelves today that gets thrown out tomorrow. Do it over a weekend and no tickets get sold to a show. Do it for a week and logistics starts getting fucked up.
Standing around and making noise without any other change to your lifestyle or attempting to organize your efforts is completely hollow. Not to mention, infinitely less accessible to people who can't afford the time or don't have the physical ability to attend.
Yes, change the entire nature and scope of the protest and it might be impactful, I agree with you.
....do you think people are still primarily buying event tickets from in-person box offices same day?
The point is that it has an impact that you're arbitrarily ignoring. If you scale your sign holding and chanting up to 3 million people in a state capital then it might be impactful as well.
The key here is which of these is a more accessible and reasonable thing to ask people to do as a first action? Is it easier to organize 3 protests of 50,000 people in a month or have 500,000 cut their spending in half for a month?
But this continues to ignore the entire crux of the argument - if you're supposed to give me $100 on Wednesday but don't give it to me until Thursday, by Friday I'm still holding $100. Period. End of discussion.
I don't know why we keep pretending there is more to this. There isn't.
Again, my argument isn't that scale and scope don't exist, it continues to be that any number times zero is still zero. Period. You are being led astray into feeling impactful so as to dissuade you from meaningful impact. This isn't harmless, and this isn't without intention.
When politicians see you gathered outside their offices, you're right, they can absolutely close the blinds and ignore you. But at least they understand you care enough to make a stand and they have to put in the intentional effort to ignore it. When the powers that be see shit like this first off they don't even have to ignore it because it's literally nothing and will resolve itself in the books literally in the same week. They don't see people who care enough to take a stand, they seem people who wanted to participate in a trend.
My brother in Christ it's the exact same thing with any protest that isn't en masse or an extended occupied disruption. My original question was "do you have any better ideas" and you clearly don't. Why take the time to shit on it?
Edit: also not having $100 for multiple days is an actual impact that you're ignoring. If you've got a bill due on one of those days you might be on trouble
Literally any action is better, and again, just because an idea has good intention doesn't make it beyond criticism. Acknowledging and discussing the reality isn't "shitting on" something, and the suggestion that it is is driving towards ignorance that benefits noone.
Furthermore, I don't need to know how to repair a roof to identify a leak. Instead of trying to fight my suggestion that this is meaningless, why don't you try instead to prove with any kind of verifiable reasoning or evidence that this protest will be impactful. Give me some kind of source that supports this idea that doesn't fall down to "I think" or "it might."
You guys are the ones making the claim here - that this protest is viable. Fucking back it up.
🚨THE
🚨PROTEST
🚨HAS
🚨AN
🚨IMPACT
I've walked you through it multiple times and you just choose to ignore it. If 300 million Americans did this for one day there would be an economic shockwave, businesses don't budget around NOT HAVING REVENUE. Even IF they make up the difference later.
Next time I'm a day late on rent, I'll just tell my landlord me having money tomorrow is just as good as today. I'm sure he'll accept that as payment.
So then is your argument it won't be widespread enough to have an impact? Because that's not the criticism you're offering, you're completely dismissing it.
🚨 BEING
🚨 LOUDER
🚨 AND
🚨 MORE
🚨 PASSIVE
🚨 AGGRESSIVE
🚨 DOESN'T
🚨 MAKE
🚨 YOUR
🚨 POINT
🚨 MORE
🚨 VALID
Show me the impact. Give me examples of comparable protests and show me the real world verifiable and measurable impact which they have resulted in.
My argument is that the scope and scale of this protest renders it moot. These are real factors.
And paying your monthly rent with established due dates is non-comparable to additional discretionary spending which is tracked in market quarters. Not to mention the fact that tons of us have had to give our landlords rent checks late tons of time before and the overall impact is the goddamn same.
So again, show me the relevant example of comparable impact and I'll concede. Otherwise, I'm going to keep rightly telling you that your performative protest is about your own feelings rather than any actual impact.
You're clearly upset because you THINK it won't have an impact and you WISH they were doing something else. Which is weird because this protest doesn't preclude them from doing anything?
Its not like I'm choosing to use a sick day today or next week to attend one protest or the other.
I'm sad I can't get you to understand how businesses run or basic economics. Even if you pretend no businesses are running on fumes and that missing a payment doesn't have an impact for anyone doesn't make it true.
Or what about this brain blast: not all demand is the same. If I skip lunch today I won't buy lunch twice tomorrow to make up for it... If everyone did that, all restaurants lose 3% of their monthly revenue automatically. Is that not an impact? Is there a magic percentage that it needs to meet to be "impactful"?
Did you ever consider what would happen if it wasn't just you but everyone in the city was late on rent? You're conflating an individual action's impact with collective impact. Your landlord can price in some percentage of missed payments the same way that a store can price in shoplifting. Being drastically off on that estimate is still a problem.
Again, if you're arguing the protest won't be widespread enough that's fine. You could even argue that small businesses will be unfairly targeted by this protest and I'm here for it. But ineffective is not the same as performative.
I continue to wait for examples from comparable scenarios that support the claim being made.
I just gave one, please continue to ignore it 👌
No, you didn't. You gave a hypothesis and then justified with assumptions, providing absolutely nothing concrete to support them beyond "trust me bro".
Give me any kind of data to support the claim.
Brother: restaurant no get money, money no come next day.
That's not making any assumption. This type of protest hasn't been tried in America at scale, how can I possibly present data. Who knows what the impact will be, why don't we find out before we lable it pointless?
Do you have any data showing that me standing in front of my city hall on Tuesday with a sign makes a difference? Because it's been tried quite a few times since Occupy and nothing has improved. Or is that also operating off of "trust me bro"?
This is coming from a person who wants to do both. Is your argument that we should do nothing?
I want you to know that I am treating your concerns seriously and have been writing a response, but it is already 5000 characters long and I need to eat dinner, so I hope you will allow me the courtesy of replying in time without assuming that I am either conceding or disregarding your comment.
Save yourself the trouble, this isn't going anywhere