Collective action is essentially impossible among consumers though. Boycotts essentially never work. Not only that, but who are you going to use instead of instacart: Amazon Fresh? Uber? Or will you drive yourself to the store and buy it from minimum wage employees who work unstable hours? Also, what do you think the working conditions were like for whoever picked that asparagus?
At least there are federal protections for employees. Companies that offset their operating costs onto an on-demand contract labor force are in a really exploitative gray area.
I disagree that collective action is impossible. Consumers become aware of problems, eg. high fructose corn syrup, and act accordingly, eg. buying less sugary junk. Cultural change is slow-moving but it starts with people giving a shit.
The corn syrup example doesn't really work here. People make decisions with their money, and those decisions are primarily based on self interest. Not becoming diabetic is very much in folks' self-interest. That underlies people not wanting foods with corn syrup. It has nothing to do with concerns about wasteful corn subsidies or deceptive food practices.
Moreso that participating in modern society is impossible without doing business with companies who have unsavory labor and environmental practices. I'm not commenting on morality.
Expecting some sort of change to come from spontaneous, collective consumer action is ridiculous. This is especially true when most consumers in America are not on financially stable ground themselves, and can't afford to spend more money or time to assuage their guilt.
That had more to do with fostering a workplace culture conducive to harassment and his opening of Uber to massive legal liability from Waymo. Uber's investors forced him out, not consumers. Investors have power because there are generally few of them and they have a great deal of skin in the game. Collective action is both easier and more incentivized in that case.
These things never start from the poorest doing these things though. They start with the middle and upper classes, because the do have the money, and companies chase that money.
Yes if everyone rolled over and did nothing, instcart would win.
What percentage of that richer demographic would have to switch to a competitor for it to start hurting? A demographic that includes journalists and 'influencers', that are willing and able to pay more, and are able to tell the world about it?
For the most part. It depends on your perception of a boycott. Very, very few boycotts are adopted by a significant fraction of the customer base. I've participated in plenty of boycotts. Only one of them resulted in a change in behavior. The rest were ignored by both the company and the majority of their customers.
For the most part, the value of a boycott is helping me sleep at night - not in actually solving the underlying problems.
None of them had any significant loss. United stock was up, just two days after the incident. Many people claimed to never do business again with these companies, yet there is no indication that any significant number actually did.
The consumer collective-action economic effects of that boycott changed nothing. What did change things was the government action it triggered:
> Pressure increased across the country. The related civil suit was heard in federal district court and, on June 4, 1956, the court ruled in Browder v. Gayle (1956) that Alabama's racial segregation laws for buses were unconstitutional. As the state appealed the decision, the boycott continued. The case moved on to the United States Supreme Court. On November 13, 1956, the Supreme Court upheld the district court's ruling, ruling that segregation on public buses and transportation was against the law.
also keep in mind that the segregation rules were unpopular with the bus companies themselves (think about the infra you need to enforce segregation), as soon as the court ruled against the local laws, the montgomery bus company was rushing to flip over to desegregated.
"Essentially" is the operative word here. The Montgomery bus boycott was a small, geographically limited boycott at just the right time for an issue that was incredibly important personally to the boycotters. The boycotters were directly being very negatively affected by the bus segregation, thus they had much more of a personal stake than an upper-middle class individual who feels a pang of guilt after taking an Uber.
Go ahead, try to organize a boycott. I'll support it. I guarantee you it won't go anywhere, though.
Given the option between letting the trolley run over five people or taking action so the trolley only runs over three people, you chose letting the trolley kill five people.
>Collective action is essentially impossible among consumers though.
It's not possible with an attitude like that. There is no government action that is forcing you to buy from Instacart.
>Boycotts essentially never work.
Tell that to Birmingham, Alabama.
>Not only that, but who are you going to use instead of instacart: Amazon Fresh? Uber? Or will you drive yourself to the store and buy it from minimum wage employees who work unstable hours?
Whataboutism and false dichotomy. There are many places that sell groceries that pay their workers more than minimum wage. Do a little research and give them your business. Or start your own grocery story if there's really a demand for something like this.
>Also, what do you think the working conditions were like for whoever picked that asparagus?
We can be concerned about more than one thing at a time.
I'm grateful for your response. I especially appreciate the "We can be concerned about more than one thing at a time." That's useful language I can use in the future.
I'm wondering what could be possible if a group of people (say, some in prison?) started saying "We peacefully revoke consent to be governed this way and request immediate transformative justice in the form of a justice system that allows us to craft our own path to recover from the wounds inflicted upon us by ourselves, our family, and our society free from imprisonment."
The world is like a ride in an amusement park, and when you choose to go on it you think it's real because that's how powerful our minds are. The ride goes up and down, around and around, it has thrills and chills, and it's very brightly colored, and it's very loud, and it's fun for a while. Many people have been on the ride a long time, and they begin to wonder, "Hey, is this real, or is this just a ride?" And other people have remembered, and they come back to us and say, "Hey, don't worry; don't be afraid, ever, because this is just a ride." And we … kill those people. "Shut him up! I've got a lot invested in this ride, shut him up! Look at my furrows of worry, look at my big bank account, and my family. This has to be real." It's just a ride. But we always kill the good guys who try and tell us that, you ever notice that? And let the demons run amok … But it doesn't matter, because it's just a ride. And we can change it any time we want. It's only a choice. No effort, no work, no job, no savings of money. Just a simple choice, right now, between fear and love. The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your doors, buy guns, close yourself off. The eyes of love instead see all of us as one. Here's what we can do to change the world, right now, to a better ride. Take all that money we spend on weapons and defenses each year and instead spend it feeding and clothing and educating the poor of the world, which it would pay for many times over, not one human being excluded, and we could explore space, together, both inner and outer, forever, in peace.
I choose to collaboratively, peacefully, and fluidly coevolve with all life by mindfully embodying science and art, in love to identify ways to sustainably contribute to all life's needs.
Would you be willing to give me feedback on how I might evolve it further?
You’re being down voted for saying, especially, “we can choose to live differently, to be kind to each other”.
You do have to be careful with that sort of language, we have a bit of a history of nailing people to trees or shooting them for suggesting such things.
> Or will you drive yourself to the store and buy it from minimum wage employees who work unstable hours?
No, I will get on a bus operated by union-organized employees and travel to a grocery store where employees are also covered by a union and inside the city limits of a city with a reasonable minimum wage and scheduling rules inside a state with mandated paid sick leave. While there, I will likely pay a bit more than if outside those borders but the people involved in the process will be getting treated minimally well.
People crap on what cities like Seattle and states like Washington are trying to do as “socialist” or “a nanny state,” but workers are humans who deserve to be treated well and “the market” seems terrible at that if left to its own devices.
Washington has no state income tax, which is why their attempts to fund basically any program always seem so out there. If they just taxed like normal states did, they wouldn't look either goofy or regressive every time they tried to raise money.
