I run to work in order to stick it to the auto industry. Unfortunately, that isn’t possible for most people because the auto industry has had so much money and influence for so long that they’ve made it practically impossible for many people to get around without the auto industry.
That said, when we give a corporation or an industry money, they might use some of it to lobby in ways that harm us or the environment.
I think one of the biggest things a consumer can do is push back against the current throwaway culture. DRM, right to repair, planned obsolecense- a fridge or a car shouldn’t be something someone uses for 7 years and discards, but lots of corporations are trying to normalize that. LG, Dyson, fuck those guys, go buy a Speed Queen or a refurbed Kirby if you need a washer or a vacuum. Give Dyson enough and maybe in 50 years vacuums will be a subscription. If you buy a bag of lettuce from Dole they’ll take some of that cash and lobby to be able to irrigate with cowshit-tainted water, and if you get E. Coli and die, the current understanding is that it’s your fault for not rinsing hard enough. Fuck Dole, they don’t deserve any more money from us than what we need to give them, a farmer’s market is a more worthy source.
If consumers really got upset at some of the stuff some corporations were doing and made it a point of pride to give those corporations absolutely none of their business, it’d not be a lost cause. It’d add a sense of purpose and pride in the fight against destroying the environment, and probably lead to even more action. Gotta start somewhere
The problem is that almost everything is manufactured by a corporation now, and in urban areas buying handmade isn’t even an option. Try not trusting Fairphone at least a little bit when literally everyone else is even worse, and see how long you can live in a world where everything is an app. Smartphones have become the car of the internet, they remove the ability of a product or service to be accessible without a phone and some sort of service contract.
I run to work in order to stick it to the auto industry. Unfortunately, that isn’t possible for most people because the auto industry has had so much money and influence for so long that they’ve made it practically impossible for many people to get around without the auto industry.
That said, when we give a corporation or an industry money, they might use some of it to lobby in ways that harm us or the environment.
I think one of the biggest things a consumer can do is push back against the current throwaway culture. DRM, right to repair, planned obsolecense- a fridge or a car shouldn’t be something someone uses for 7 years and discards, but lots of corporations are trying to normalize that. LG, Dyson, fuck those guys, go buy a Speed Queen or a refurbed Kirby if you need a washer or a vacuum. Give Dyson enough and maybe in 50 years vacuums will be a subscription. If you buy a bag of lettuce from Dole they’ll take some of that cash and lobby to be able to irrigate with cowshit-tainted water, and if you get E. Coli and die, the current understanding is that it’s your fault for not rinsing hard enough. Fuck Dole, they don’t deserve any more money from us than what we need to give them, a farmer’s market is a more worthy source.
If consumers really got upset at some of the stuff some corporations were doing and made it a point of pride to give those corporations absolutely none of their business, it’d not be a lost cause. It’d add a sense of purpose and pride in the fight against destroying the environment, and probably lead to even more action. Gotta start somewhere
The problem is that almost everything is manufactured by a corporation now, and in urban areas buying handmade isn’t even an option. Try not trusting Fairphone at least a little bit when literally everyone else is even worse, and see how long you can live in a world where everything is an app. Smartphones have become the car of the internet, they remove the ability of a product or service to be accessible without a phone and some sort of service contract.