Boycott Alternatives

Economic Actions For When You Can’t Protest or Boycott

A system that is broken in many ways causes multitudes of harm. However, the many ways in which it is broken is also an advantage—there are that many ways to attack the system.

We applaud total boycotts of monopolies and other extractive, parasitic corporations. However, we recognize that many people don’t have good options, and this is through no fault of their own. We did not create the deregulated business environment that allowed large “big box” stores and financial companies to destroy local business environments, nor did we create conditions that encouraged the growth of low-wage gig work or “side hustles” as a permanent way of life.

Please do not berate yourself for having limits. Every bit of profit we pull back from corporations adds up, and those entities will notice. Even if you can’t do everything, you can do *something*.

What you can do

• Buy less at a big box/monopoly
  • Is there something you can buy when you take a trip out of town?
  • Can you share a bulk order with a friend or neighbor?
  • Alternatively, see if there’s something you can use at a slower rate (e.g., soft drinks and ultra-processed foods)
• Pay in cash as often as you can
  • Financial companies are the only ones who benefit when the rest of us increase our debt. If they don’t make money from consumer interest, they make money from merchant fees—which merchants pass on to customers in higher costs.
  • Paying with cash deprives financial companies of transaction fees and lowers their profits
  • If you don’t have that much cash with you, consider tipping in cash when possible, especially drivers and delivery people. This gives service workers more control of what you tip.
• Use public and/or free resources when possible
  • We all have a right to information and even entertainment! However, we don’t have to give our money to streaming services and subscriptions that bait and switch us with their terms of service, sell our information to data brokers, exploit artists, and use their profits to influence policies in anti-democratic ways. (Looking at you, Amazon, Netflix, and Spotify.) Consider these alternatives.
    • Television: If you haven’t cut the cord, feel good about watching television, particularly your local public television affiliate. If you have cut the cord, check out PBS for information on their streaming services. Hoopla is available through numerous library systems and provides loans to ebooks, movies, television shows, and music. Consider using PeerTube as an alternative to YouTube.
    • Radio: While NPR has shortcomings, they are an adequate resource for news. If your area has a local public radio station, even better. Many radio stations are available for streaming as well, for no cost other than enduring ads.
    • Public Parks: Our government may be a disaster, but our country is still beautiful. Every state has public parks and other protected areas. Get to know those vital resources, weather allowing. Time in nature, particularly around trees and water, has been shown to have beneficial health effects—take advantage of them!
    • Libraries: Libraries are a fantastic hub of local information, including for some of the resources listed above, as well as spaces where in-person events are hosted. They are also, of course, a place where you can access books as well as music CDs and movie DVDs (and sometimes VHS). If you prefer to read ebooks over physical books, many libraries use Hoopla, mentioned above, as well as Libby. Your local library can help you sign up for those services.
      • Do you want to preserve these valuable resources? Use them! Funding for libraries is often determined by how frequently they’re used. Every request—even for electronic resources—demonstrates how much you need and value them.
    • Free Days at Museums: Many libraries also offer museum passes, either for free or a significant discount (restrictions may apply). Many museums also offer free days on their websites. Museums include visual art but also science and specialized topics, like Water, Textiles, Astronomy, Automobiles, etc.
• Don’t pay to socialize if you don’t need to
  • If you have a small home and/or fussy neighbors and a lot of friends, we get it, sometimes you just can’t fit everyone in for a movie night or dinner party. Consider meeting them outside in a library, park, museum, or other public gathering space. Try to stay out of malls, many of which were created to simulate the conditions of an ideal urban shopping environment (but without actual urban residents). Have a picnic, talk about what you’re reading and watching, do an impromptu reading, start a revolution!
  • If you do have enough room for your friends and loved ones in your home, invite them over! We endorse supporting beloved local businesses, especially those that pay their employees a living wage, but we don’t believe anyone should go broke doing so. People can be reluctant to invite others into their homes if it doesn’t look like it sprang from an Instagram account, but in our experience, people who like us are happy to spend time with us in our homes if we’ve cleaned up our dirty dishes and offered them food. And if they’re not...is that really someone you want to spend money on?
• Stop keeping up with the Joneses
• It’s been beaten into us that we need to strive for more impressive material conditions, whether that’s home décor, clothing and appearance, food, entertainment, or general lifestyle. God forbid we be judged for not epitomizing the latest trends, because then people might know we’re not cool!
• You may think it’s mean girls in middle school or office bullies that push those ideas, but really, it’s corporations that want to sell you things, and they’ve known for centuries that the best way to do that is to make you feel bad about yourself. They are just like finance companies in this respect—they are the only ones who benefit from you spending money on things you don’t need to meet certain standards. (We take that back—finance companies profit from it, too, since most of us can’t satisfy those standards without buying on credit, or with a card.)
• We promise you, every fashion or cosmetics company that pledges to contribute to a feminist or anti-racist charity is raking in far more in profits putting out marketing that normalizes our misogynist, racist, homophobic, aristocratizing culture. Hone your media criticism skills and examine what their advertising is really selling. Once you figure it out, you’ll be less likely to want to spend money to buy their ideas about how you should live.