It really frustrates me when people complain about action. I know that statement is so vague as to be meaningless, so please allow me to elaborate.

I’m seeing quite a few people post on Reddit about this new-ish movement of buying from the EU, which has actually also been catching some wind here on Lemmy on comms such as !buyeuropean@feddit.uk, namely on the Portuguese financial literacy subreddit. Now, whether or not that kind of thing has a place in a financial literacy sub is debatable, but that’s besides the point, as that’s not the chief complaint I see from commenters.

Instead, they complain that this idea of buying from EU is either useless, not enough, or virtue-signaling.

I find that very upsetting.

I’m not sure I’m totally on-board with the idea, but I do at least think it’s a good thing overall to support local or regional businesses, it’s good to support small businesses working on better, innovative, high-quality products and services, rather than the slop that the established giants take for granted consumers will eat up. It’s not even a point of morality, it’s actual practicality; you should aim to buy the best products, and capitalist monopolies are incompatible with quality service, so you shouldn’t support monopolies.

Also, do small acts not count anymore? That one really irks me. I saw someone complain that this was all ridiculous because why are we worried about this instead of being worried about the housing market? What? That is such a monstrously STUPID thing to say that I was genuinely taken aback upon reading it. First of all, who said they’re not also talking about those issues? But even if they weren’t, so what?! Do smaller issues not matter? Is there some sort of restriction on the significance of issues that get airtime in a public forum?! Ridiculous.

Of course, people that wage these complaints don’t talk about the “real issues” either, unless when they’re trying to tear down those bringing up the “meaningless issues.” Is this what they call reactionary politics? It’s disgusting.

The worst part, maybe, is that they call the movement reactionary hypocrisy! I mean, on a surface level, everything can be said to be a reaction to something else, I suppose. However, I think there’s a difference between being proactive and idle push-back. If the US starts on a rampage of poisonous international relations policy, then aren’t the people affected entitled to a reaction? Are people not entitled to decide where their money goes?! Are they not entitled to decide to financially benefit this or that nation, that or the other company, in whichever way?! How is that hypocrisy? It’s true the world is highly interconnected, it’s hard, if not nigh-impossible, to completely disconnect from the US, but how is it hypocrisy to clamor for that sort of decoupling, regardless of one continues to use this or that service? Things aren’t black or white, there’s plenty of grey, there’s levels to this, things don’t change overnight. This genuinely bothers me.

On my part, I think I’ll stick with my values of value-buying. Trying to get the most bang for my buck, the most quality. That will include a lot of European products, I think, but also American and other manufacturing, though it will mostly include second-hand and refurbished stuff.

Still, this rather intense hate I see some people react with is just… Beyond me. Whenever I see people react so strongly, I simply can’t help but think that I might be missing something. There might be some aspect of this that I’m so terribly unaware of that I say the stupidest things.

The more I think about it, however, the more I think that I’m right. We really do benefit from supporting small businesses, buying second-hand, decoupling from dominating monopolies, and so on.