88
this post was submitted on 14 Mar 2026
88 points (97.8% liked)
Asklemmy
53620 readers
205 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 7 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I read that link and I'm not sure I understand Doctorow's reasoning on the subject. I typically find people that dismiss voting with their wallet fundamentally misunderstand microeconomics but either way, both points (yours and mine) are definitely not hills I'd die on.
I think the general point is that the financial hurt that I can put on a company is peanuts compared to someone with deep pockets (ie: shareholders & businesses). Even if I were to get all my friends, family and direct coworkers to alter a shopping behaviour, it's unlikely to result in any change.
On the other hand, if I were to take that same group and be able to pressure my political representatives to do something about it (as we frequently see in California), then something may change. Similarly, me quitting my job out of disgust with a non-recycling policy won't get any attention, but if I can get my union to take it up, then the company will listen.
TL;DR: a person can't make change, a group of people can.