Boycotting.
Years ago I boycotted South African produce in protest against Apartheid. Right now I boycott Nestle for various reasons.
Yesterday I saw This, Here. My instant, gut reaction (and it’s there, in the comments on Sparkle’s blog) was "Ah, another reason to boycott Amazon then." Then I gave up and went to bed. They also have This for sale. You might not want to follow the product links btw, they’re unpleasant, you probably don’t want your kids seeing them and it increases traffic to those products as well. But if you do, well, knowledge is power right?
But I have a book out now, I want it on Amazon, I don’t want to boycott them! Anyway, if I boycotted every company I disagree with on political or ethical grounds I’d run out of places to go shopping.
After sleeping on it I got thinking. Who did the South African boycott hurt? Really? The farmers, the workers, the people we were trying to help, or the land owners? Who got the rough end of that? Think about it, who gets hurt when things aren’t going great.
So will boycotting Nestle or Amazon or whoever really help anyone? Well, maybe if enough people did it all at once and they could se a real drop in sales. But I don’t see Nestle or Amazon suffering, not really. Going and doing all my Christmas shopping on Amazon isn’t the answer either. So what is?
I’m going for the proactive communication approach and will be emailing Amazon about this Linda thing, and the doll too, and the fact that my 7 yr old can find nasty porn DVD’s within a couple of mouse clicks on their site. Want to join in? Maybe overloading their email inbox might get their attention?
Oh, and maybe your workplace can ban *decorative* pen holders? make life uncomfortable for the people who buy this stuff.
You have a point here wrt the continuous boycotting of companies - it gets very tedious. Especially for folks who live on a tight budget. Personally I pick a few issues and tend to stick with them; Nestles ethics for example are deplorable. But yeah, I’m going to write to Amazon. I’ve just been to Portugal where I saw these ‘novelty pen holders’ and I said to the shop assistant “they’re Horrible” and she replied “I know” and pulled a face.
Comment by sparkle — December 3, 2007 @ 11:54 am
It’s tedious, has a negative impact on my life and my kids lives and I think actually hurts the wrong people.
There’s got to be another way.
Comment by ethicallyspeaking — December 3, 2007 @ 12:02 pm