These "one day no purchase" things don't work. It takes sustained effort to "vote with your wallet".
this post was submitted on 17 Feb 2025
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Resist: It's Time
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We are still in this together, but "this" is going to be real different in the very near future. This demands a different kind of "we."
The French Resistance during Nazi occupation played important roles delivering downed Allied airmen back to safety, supplying military intelligence, and acts of sabotage.
The Underground Railroad is estimated to have brought 100,000 freedom seekers to safety between 1810 and 1850.
It's time.
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People are organizing
I'm specifically talking about the one day economic blackout.
These have been done dozens of times over dozens of issues and have had zero impact ever. A one-day blackout won't do shit except give the Ralph Wiggums of the world that "I'm helping!" feeling. If you want them to feel it it has to be longer-term. A week. A month. A year. And that's sadly, something that people in a consumerist culture lack the stamina to do.
Also if you just move your purchases to the day before or the day after all you're doing is very slightly messing up their forecasting. They're still getting your money, just earlier or later than that had expected.
This is the precise problem with these kinds of empty actions. Back in the '70s and early '80s, when this was still new, companies would panic over this kind of action. Then they noticed it didn't even register as a blip on the stats. A mild anomaly, maybe, if it was held on the last day of a month, but completely buried in annual statistics.
If you want them to actually take notice, you're going to need to have more than a day. And that means going without. Which most people are unwilling and/or unable to do.
A consumerist culture is unsustainable with extreme wealth inequality
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lol a general strike. pure fantasy. You're gonna need about 5000% more class consciousness in the US before you can even think about it.
Yeah, why try doing anything, right? Action only counts when everybody does it! You, puny little human, are worthless. Your ideas not worth repeating. Don't ever try and organise anything. It's not worth it. \s
Stop being a pawn for the rich.
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Do it anyway.
Luigi may have found something they understand a tad better than dollars.
How are there so many people in the US with guns shooting at each other and poorer people, but not the rich? It's like they literally live in "Don't Look Up".
I've said this before, as a Canadian I am dumbfounded that no one has picked up a gun or even just walked up and punched someone in the face. It actually makes me fear a lot less the looming trade and water wars with America. Y'all are fucking pussies and just lay down at the first sign of confrontation.
They say a good guy with a gun can defeat a bad guy with a gun, but there are mass shootings all the time, and the good guy. never seems to show up.
And when they do the cops shoot them because there's a dude running around with a gun during a mass shooting.
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All hail hero Luigi!
Biggest retail month is December. You want to piss off the corporations? Cancel the presents part of Christmas. Tell your kids its because of Trump. You're gonna raise them right, you're gonna hurt the corporations, your pockets will be heavier, you will feel bliss because you've let go of the materialistic mindset. Not gonna happen but its sweet to dream.
Theres a saying that goes: the best time to do that thing is yesterday, the second best is now.
No no, we did it. But only kinda. We do one big gift and that's it. Last year it was recycled laptops for the kids. Cost me $125 and it's been their best Christmas.
This is a great idea. But only used stuff from the community with cash.
That helps the community and your kids will get an awesome Christmas.
My wife is a hard one to budge, but I’m gonna talk to her about it.
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Even here there are so many replies that are "it won't matter, it doesn't hurt them enough". Cmon y'all, nothing will take them down in a single day. But when something out of the ordinary happens, like even a few percent drop for no apparent reason on one day, it's a small shock that makes predicting the future a bit trickier. Its also a signal that, hey guess what, the crowd of regular people CAN be organized about something without a rich person telling them what to do. Maybe we just need a critical mass to send small shocks through things. Call it an organized piece of performance art. Or testing the resiliency of financial networks. Just one time deals of "on this day everyone who can afford an Amazon basics robe should wait for my signal to either buy or not buy". Then you will have Amazon either scrambling to fulfill a huge order of robes, way more than baseline, or perhaps preparing for it only for it to turn out I flipped a tails that day and nobody is buying one and now they have a big stock of robes they won't be able to offload. They'll hate it purely because they can't plan for it with much certainty.
It ought to be stop buying things you don't absolutely need starting on the 28th.
Dude......I've been doing that since.......always. Hell, I don't even buy the things I DO need!!!
I’m already checking out of buying things. Yeah I get what I need but I’m cutting all bunch of non essentials
The idea is to buy the essentials on other days if possible too. It won't have a major impact for the corporations in the long term, but if it works it might force at least some minor conceptions to appease the more scaridy shareholders (let's not delude ourselves that management boards care about customers or a single bad revenue day).
The cynic in me thinks this can easily backfire if Amazon and Walmart decide to announce black friday level discounts on that day .
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Honestly this is kind of a great plan. General strike is hard for people to swallow. But a general boycott??? Super easy. People can go to work, do whatever but buy 0 consumer goods. Extremely basic food, maybe even from local farmers. And completely ignore the mega corps. A motived effort could last for months and halt the economy
I buy my groceries every two weeks when I get paid. I don't get paid that week. I won't be buying anything anyways. And even if I did participate, I'd just buy stuff the next day and it would balance out. I'm not sure how this actually does anything. In the grand scheme of averages, this seems like barely a blip tbh.
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Hmm the 28th isn't super convenient though. I think I'll do it on the 29th.
Jokes on them, I am so broke these days I am barely buying shit anyway.
Saying it will work or not work are both equally stupid unless you provide some evidence for it.
Here's why it might work:
Modern economies are extremely fragile. The only reason amazon is able to provide same day delivery is because they can predict with reasonable certainty, what the demand will be.
Youtube or any big social media works by predicting what the usage will be.
We are just used to seeing how magically all the technologies work but at their roots, its all about predicting the future trends.
So if there is enough mass behind this movement to cause disruptions, it will hurt them. Even if it creates some noise, this will force them to increase fault tolerance.
So the real question everyone should be asking is this:
Will the inconvenience caused by not buying on 28th more than the potential for some damage?
Woudn't it be better to target more focused for a longer duration? Don't buy anything from Amazon for 3 months.
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But what's the objective here? Not buying stuff and boycotting for one day usually means you'll buy more in preparation before the boycott, or buy more after the boycott to make up for the deficit.
Just stop buying from large corporations, only buy from your local neighborhood super, etc, and do it ALWAYS.
If I'm very generous and say that 50% of the population will not buy anything on that day, sales would be down by 50% for a single day, something that will barely register, if at all
If those same people just stop buying from home Depot, stop buying Tesla, stop buying at Walmart, etc. that will be noticed. Probably a law will be enacted requiring people to buy at Walmart for patriotism or something stupid like that, but at least it'll be noticed
I will go into my local wal-mart and say the word union so it gets shut down.
Will this have a huge impact? Almost certainly not. But Stephen King is always on the people's side. This isn't the first political post he's ever made.
Yeah, I agree. The only thing that matters is when things have huge impact. Change happens immediately and never in small increments. It's worthless to make people aware of how they can be part of the solution. That's just messing with hope.
Edit: Really should've added the /s
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What you all need to do is a no rent month atleast twice a year
Do you one better: eating lunch at the restaurant run by immigrants.
What is Feb 28th? The end of black history month?
Look like some sort of boycott/economic blackout event.
I've gotta spread the word, gotta hit em where it hurts.
Too broke to boycott. So I boycott everything, every day. Is it working yet?
Its not about the individual. Its about the collective effort