Boycotts of products / services?

[Dennis the 'Bloody Peasant']

Anyone actively participate in any boycotts of certain companies or their products?
Do you support the idea of boycotts or think that it's pointless and ineffective?
Do you think that if if we really took boycotts seriously and had nothing to do with any unethical company, our cupboards would be pretty bare (if this is true, what's the alternative to buying these products from these companies?)

..OK, that's enough to be getting on with.

[Princess Luna]

The only thing I boycott is Chick-Fill-A, but boycotts are completely ineffective unless you can get a large number of people to join you, for this reason I don't boycott things like Coke or Wal-mart, but I have never eaten at Chick-Fill-A and the nearest one to where I live is over 60 miles away so when ever I am in Oklahoma City and want chicken I just go to Churches.

[Quail]

I don't boycott anything because if I were to boycott everu unethical company I'd basically have to live on homegrown veg, make all my own fabric, sew all my own clothes and hide away from the rest of spciety. You can't "opt out" of capitalism. Capitalism is by mature unethical so the only way to undermine nasty companies is to fight for an end to capitalism. In some circumstances boycotting might work as a tactic in a large, broader campaign, but stuff like not buying coffee from Starbucks is hardly a threat to the company or capitalism.

I suppose as a vegan I boycott the meat, dairy, etc industries, but it's not really the same. It's not that I don't want those companies to have my money (although I dpn't) so much as I don't want to put into my body products which are cruel to produce. I wouldn't kill an animal myself so it's not the same as choosing to make my own hot chocolate as opposed to getting one from Starbucks.

[Niall]

yes, I boycott a shop in town because they wouldntlet me flcik through a magazine before I was deciding whether to buy it or not!!!!

[Dennis the 'Bloody Peasant']

yes, I boycott a shop in town because they wouldntlet me flcik through a magazine before I was deciding whether to buy it or not!!!!

What? You gotta try before you buy a little, jesus.

[Lobotomy]

boycotting is what liberals do to make themselves feel better/pretend like they have some amount of control over the system.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

No. I'm currently opposing a campaign (luckily defeated via referendum) at my university to mandate the students union to lobby the university to stop taking research money from a large arms dealer.

I have been arguing against the futility of such an utopian notion. Looks like it was defeated. I did feel uncomfortable that my fellow 'no' voters were most probably rabid right-wingers though, and probably the 'yes' voters were 'leftists'. Oh well. Their fault for taking the wrong line, they lost.

[Blake's Baby]

Well, I do boycott some things but have no illusions that this is anything other than a personal action to assuage my ('liberal') guilt - as Lobotomy says, it's about making myself feel better (I don't think it has any effect on 'the system' however).

Gillette - since 1986 (animal testing)
Barclays Bank - since 1987 (South Africa)
Nestle - since 1997 (baby-milk)
Dominoes Pizza - since around 2000 (anti-abortion activities, terrible working conditions)

As you can see it's terribly inconsistent. Why pick on Dominoes' working conditions and not Starbucks or WalMart or frankly almost any other company? Why Gillette for animal abuse and not UniLever? Why Barclays and not any other bank (eg the 'LLoyds and Midlands (now HSBC) Boycott' that was popular in the early 1990s)?

Mostly now it's just habit.

[PC LOAD LETTER]

I boycott Lamborghini because I can't afford one

[A Revolutionary Tool]

I personally boycott this one music store in town because the owner is a complete asshole. One time my sister and I go in there for some reason I forget and she decides she wants to buy me something that was $1.50. The owner, who was working the cash register, got all mad when she handed him her card as payment instead of cash. He was like "Are you kidding me? Using your card for a $1.50 purchase? You know this thing charges me 50 cents every time I use it, so I'll only be getting $1! Just take it for free!" To add on to that he has these Republican stickers and posters all over the walls and these Christian ones, so when another music store opened in town I vowed never to go back to that place to give that asshole money.

[Left Leanings]

I don't boycott anything because if I were to boycott everu unethical company I'd basically have to live on homegrown veg, make all my own fabric, sew all my own clothes and hide away from the rest of spciety. You can't "opt out" of capitalism. Capitalism is by mature unethical so the only way to undermine nasty companies is to fight for an end to capitalism. In some circumstances boycotting might work as a tactic in a large, broader campaign, but stuff like not buying coffee from Starbucks is hardly a threat to the company or capitalism.

I suppose as a vegan I boycott the meat, dairy, etc industries, but it's not really the same. It's not that I don't want those companies to have my money (although I dpn't) so much as I don't want to put into my body products which are cruel to produce. I wouldn't kill an animal myself so it's not the same as choosing to make my own hot chocolate as opposed to getting one from Starbucks.


boycotting is what liberals do to make themselves feel better/pretend like they have some amount of control over the system.

I take the same position, for the most part.

The only time I boycott is around the manners of the shopkeepers/staff. If I find them to be discourteous, then I tend to avoid shopping there if possible.

During the apartheid era in South Africa, there was a mounting campaign in the 1980s, to boycott SA produce. The leader of the Federation of Conservative Students, a real right-wing, moronic asshole, was known for organizing functions at which SA wine was served up. And he also used to attend protests with a placard reading "Smash The NHS!".

I steadfastly refused to buy SA produce, and if I was buying wine I defo made sure it wasn't from SA.

Then there is the supermarket Lidl, based in Sweden:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/workers-told-put-t170190/index.html?t=170190

The way women on their period are treated here, defo means I will not shop at one of their stores in the UK, again. They have to wear a red mark on their uniform, to justify going to the bathroom.