• thedeadwalking4242@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    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

    • fishos@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      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.

        • fishos@lemmy.world
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          7 days ago

          My point is that I literally will be putting in zero effort and buying on my normal days because that’s all I can afford to do. You’re asking people to make a choice and for some of us there is no real choice. When I buy groceries is determined by my payday WAY THE HELL MORE than any ideology.

          • Nougat@fedia.ioM
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            7 days ago

            Not every action is appropriate for every person. This doesn’t mean that actions that aren’t appropriate for you shouldn’t be taken by anyone.

      • Bob Robertson IX@lemmy.world
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        7 days ago

        You’re exactly right. A one day boycott doesn’t work. For it to work your need to have a day when you don’t consume anything. But even then, that isn’t feasible.

        Cancel your subscriptions, and don’t start them up again.

        Divest your 401k from US money markets.

        Get involved in your local government and start focusing on ways that your community can provide local services.

        If you know where a morally corrupt CEO is going to be staying, let your local Luigi know.

        These aren’t easy things, but they can be effective.

    • AdolfSchmitler@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      This is a lot more feasible. People can lose a lot striking from work but striking from consumption is much more manageable. Where the way to participate is NOT to do something, whole lot easier too.

  • Phoenixz@lemmy.ca
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    7 days ago

    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

  • ToiletFlushShowerScream@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    I would like to see a cancel Amazon day too. We did it in November and have been saving one to two hundred dollars a month just spending a hour downtown buying our necessities. Plus we aren’t indirectly financing Trump’s election campaign anymore.

      • 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.

        • then_three_more@lemmy.world
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          7 days ago

          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.

      • spacesatan@leminal.space
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        8 days ago

        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.

        • atro_city@fedia.io
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          7 days ago

          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.

          • tamal3@lemmy.world
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            7 days ago

            Thanks friend! I share that link everywhere I go.

            The number of people needed is huge, but it’s more like ~3% of the population. Strike cards and a critical mass of participants are key for us working people.

        • astronaut_sloth
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          7 days ago

          A general strike would be amazing, but it’s not realistic. Even just having say 25% of workers out for a few days puts strain on the system. Same with limiting spending. If even 25% of the country spends only on essentials, then that’ll translate to a couple percentage points of loss to major corporations (not all of course, but some major ones).

          It’s not about a silver bullet, it’s about inflicting enough paper cuts that it starts to hurt. No one thing will be 100% effective.

      • TachyonTele@lemm.ee
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        7 days ago

        Things like that graphic are good. It needs to be yelled from every corner though to be effective. Advertise it.

  • PieMePlenty@lemmy.world
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    8 days ago

    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.

    • SynopsisTantilize@lemm.ee
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      7 days ago

      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.

      • theangryseal@lemmy.world
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        7 days ago

        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.

        • SynopsisTantilize@lemm.ee
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          7 days ago

          I have a stack of laptops with 1165g7 processors in them. The Intel XE graphics they have onboard and 65watt package makes them easy replacements for their switches.

          The 125 was new mice, skins, and a screen replacement.

          And I slowly was grooming them into playing on steam when ever we could, little did they know they were building their steam libraries while farting around for Christmas :)

  • maccam912@programming.dev
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    7 days ago

    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.

    • jmcs@discuss.tchncs.de
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      8 days ago

      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 .