In light of recent issues and living conditions in general, I’ve seen a lot of people on social media calling for two or three day general strikes and boycotts. I don’t think I’m alone in calling these largely ineffective. I think these are the right idea but executed poorly.
For a boycott to be effective there must be sustained pressure overtime, like the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Sustained pressure is difficult because it causes inconvenience that is often worse than the problems leading to the boycott.
Historically communities deal with this challenge by creating systems of support. For instance, during the Montgomery Bus Boycott organizers arranged rides to and from work for the boycotters. This works well on a small level but is much more challenging on a national scale.
I spend some time thinking about how to create to a national boycott without systems of support that wouldn’t cause excessive inconvenience. It seems the best way to meet this aim is to create a system where we can collectively choose one company at a time to boycott permanently with the intention of creating as much damage to their stock price and market capitalization, potentially leading to bankruptcy.
The success of a system like this would be completely reliant on a few factors. Firstly and most importantly, this system would rely on wide spread public support. Secondly, we would need to take measures to avoid creating monopolies. Lastly, this system needs to be decentralized and able to continue without leadership.
The need for public support is both obvious and a little more nuance. Of course in a boycott customers of a targeted company must stop engaging with the company at all levels. Five or ten percent of a companies customers will likely not be enough to cause damage in most cases.
The need for wide spread support speaks to the need of a democratized system. There should be a way people can anonymously vote for the company they want to boycott. This gives the people a collective voice in a new way. Also, if you have taken the time to vote you are more likely to refrain from engaging with the chosen company.
Because this boycott will have no marketing budget it’s success will also rely on creators on all of the social media sites publicizing, educating, and encouraging their followers to take part. It is unlikely a boycott of this nature will go viral on its own. It is smarter to collaborate with likeminded creators before hand in order to roll out a large announcement from as many different people as possible. Companies can be hard to boycott because they often on other companies we don’t associate with the parent brand. For instance Instagram and WhatsApp are owned by Facebook. We would rely on people on social media to educate us on instances like this. It would also be an opportunity for them to make their case on why we should or shouldn’t vote to boycott a particular company.
Lastly, if a boycott is successful it will lead to layoffs. It should be our responsibility to make this transition as easy as possible for these workers. This could mean hiring them at your business, sharing their stories on your social media, or contributing funds to help them while they are without a job. Our intent is not to hurt these workers and we should act accordingly.
If a boycott is successful enough to bankrupt or significantly shrink the size of a company we run the risk of creating monopolies. This will consolidate power into the hands of fewer people creating unforeseen problems. For this reason we should always target the biggest one or two companies in an industry. In order to keep the system leader less and decentralized there must be a way to automate that principal.
Finally the need for decentralization is paramount. While there’s nothing illegal and organizing a boycott it has has the potential to create enemies. A system that is completely automated and leaderless cannot be cut off at the head. Secondly no one person is able to properly gauge public opinion as well as the public itself. Lastly, power corrupts. I don’t want to create a system that can be taken advantage of by an individual or a small group of people.
I am not a technology expert and I don’t know if a system like this could be build or how to do it. It seems like block chain technology could be effective here. There would have to be protections in place to keep spam bots from voting thousands of times and a way to ensure an anonymity. In short o don’t have the skills to actually make this a reality.
I’m posting this here because I want to see if has support. If the good people in Anti-Work aren’t on board the general public won’t be either. It may be the case that Americans aren’t ready for this kind of action or it is a bad idea all together. Please share your thoughts and input. Thanks for reading.