[kscherer]

Originally Posted by 709 No, but I know that it's not me paying for their exec's lunch or cab fare, and I'm good with that.

I guarantee you're paying the lunch and cab fare of far worse humans — one way or the other.

Anything you buy — anything! — is going to pay a rich executive somewhere, including the guy you might think you're avoiding. Everyone is owned by someone, and the local shops all source stuff that comes from giant corporations that likely employee people you may not like. This is why I don't bother with boycotting for political/social reasons. That's a game you cannot win without showing an element of hypocrisy. Even the chicken sandwich place you do like, or the hobby place you do like, gets their products from someone that you don't. It's a losing game that is served by emotional thinking, rather than logical thinking.

Food, shelter, clothing, fuel. Those things are all pretty much controlled by the same groups of shareholders, and all of those folks are people none of us serfs would like. Yet, we've reached a point in "civilization" where we either buy their crap or we starve. The privately-owned sandwich shop and hobby shop you speak of (and we know who they are) also employ tens of thousands of average folks like you and me that just want to take care of their families and otherwise be left alone, and whose politics and social causes are as widely diverse as the folks from Walmart or any other junk store. The owner's opinions about gay marriage or gun control or what color makes the best color are absolutely immaterial to me. I do not care! I try to remember that the jobs created by such hulks are far more important than making my point. If Right Wing Sandwiches R Us™ goes out of business tomorrow the left-wingers will celebrate in abundance even as thousands of people lose their jobs. If Left Wing Health Place goes out of business tomorrow the right-wingers will celebrate in abundance even as thousands of people lose their jobs.

I fall a bit further to the right than most of AN's users, but I don't let the far-left's politics determine where I get my groceries. I get my groceries where the things that I like are sold, and all of those stores lean very far to the left. However, their politics do not feed my family, my labor does. Like I said, I tune it out. There aren't any centrist-owned grocery chains. They're all owned by mega-rich shareholders who only care about the bottom line, and use political/social grand-standing to avoid being called naughty names by the noisy few.

There's a particular website I used to love that I no longer visit because its curator made a statement that I found incredibly offensive. But, that's a single human running his own website, and he serves up literally nothing that I need in order to live. In fact, his "product" is something that no human being on this planet needs in order to live. It isn't food, it isn't gas, it isn't clothing, it isn't a roof. It's just an opinion, and I don't "need" it — in fact, no one does. So I just shut that link off knowing full well that my single voice matters not to him a single bit. For me, it's personal. And, truth be told, if that website disappeared tomorrow not a single human being on planet Earth would go hungry because of it — except, maybe, him. But, I don't want him to go hungry, either, so I'm not up on my podium screaming about it — not that it would make a difference anyway.

And that's the biggest thing that concerns me about boycotts. You really have absolutely no idea how many people could be negatively affected should a mega-company shutter its doors because a bunch of noise-makers demanded it. Let's pretend for a moment that Walmart was forced to close all of its stores. That means that 2.3 million jobs would be lost! How many of you think for even once second that boycotters ever, ever consider that kind of impact?

I hate Walmart*, but

In 2006, American newspaper columnist George Will named Wal-Mart "the most prodigious job-creator in the history of the private sector in this galaxy" and that "[b]y lowering consumer prices, Wal-Mart costs about 50 retail jobs among competitors for every 100 jobs Wal-Mart creates". In terms of economic effects, Will states that "Wal-Mart and its effects save shoppers more than US$200 billion a year, dwarfing such government programs as food stamps (US$28.6 billion) and the earned income tax credit (US$34.6 billion)".

In other words, be careful what you ask for.

* Just using them as an example, not asking for a boycott.