Hey friends! It’s been a while. As I type on March 5th, 2025, it sure feels like the world is spinning out of control right now. I don’t have the right words for what we are living through. I have, however, been thinking about the economic blackout last Friday, so that’s what I wrote about.
I am not on social media much these days. When I logged in last week, it felt like everyone was posting about an “economic blackout” or “day of economic resistance”. The parameters weren’t exactly clear: are people supposed to not spend any money for 24 hours? But shopping at small local businesses is ok? People shouldn’t spend money, but if they did, cash is preferred over credit cards (presumably to stick it to the big credit card companies…?)
I wasn’t super skeptical at first: people in my little sustainability circle are fairly anti-consumerism and post constantly about spending less/buying local. And don’t get me wrong – boycotts have a long and rich history, with successful examples scattered across time and geography. Yet, it repeatedly shows that success, whether measured by changes in policy or simply public opinion, depends on strategic organizing, clear demands, and public awareness. I browsed a couple of news articles about the event and walked away with only a vague sense of what the day was trying to achieve: something about “sending a message” and demonstrating “people have the power”? (Demonstrating to whom? The power to do what? Reduce corporate profits? Tank the stock market?)
What was even more concerning than the movement’s lack of goals was the man behind the event (yes, it was a single person): John Schwarz, a 57-year-old musician and meditation teacher also known as “J”, who founded an organization called The People’s Union just weeks before the anticipated boycott and is raising money through a GoFundMe for god knows what. (Virginia Sole-Smith’s newsletter was the first place where I learned about the dubious origin of the boycott, and everyone should go read her very excellent essay. The media has uncovered more details about Schwarz since then, including the NYTimes, which reported that Schwarz was a former registered sex offender who served time for “disseminating voyeuristic material.”)
Armed with all this knowledge heading into Friday, I was already feeling ambiguous about participating. I mean, I lose nothing by participating, but man – I’m just being honest here: I really needed to buy eggs and milk that day. We were out, and my partner was going out of town that weekend. Any parent knows that grocery shopping with a 3-year-old is not a leisurely experience, so I really wanted to get it done before Saturday when my child wakes up and demands 3 hard boiled eggs for breakfast. I was going to buy groceries no matter what; the only difference is whether the grocery store gets my money on Friday or Saturday.
So there I said it – I forfeited the opportunity to send a powerful message to the corporate gods because I really, really needed eggs. But also, can we all agree on the absurdity of that statement?! What did people seriously think they can accomplish with a single day of goalless boycott? (Turns out, not much, as Amazon sales data show.) And more importantly, the event raised more profound questions for me: does “voting with your dollar” meaningfully achieve anything? And why do we loathe big businesses so much?
Big ≠ bad
In my home country (China), “big business” is not a bad word. People typically equate products made by large companies with being reputable, reliable, and high-quality (particularly large companies from “abroad”, which in part reflects China’s historic focus on low-tech, low-cost, and often low-quality manufacturing.) There have been many thoughtful think pieces written on the topic of “why small isn’t better”, such as Chris Newman’s essay on small farms and Matt Yglesias’ essay on small businesses more generally. In Yglesias’ essay, he pointed out that 1) big employers tend to offer better wages and benefits, 2) big corporations are generally more productive and more invested in making small efficiency gains (e.g., UPS designing their delivery routes to minimize left turns, which saves them a lot of gas), and 3) big businesses are less exempt from government regulations compared to small businesses.
I agree with all these points and find them entirely applicable to the industry that I am most familiar with: health care. People have a lot of nostalgia for the family physician and neighborhood doctor’s office, but consolidation of health care providers is not necessarily a bad thing in and of itself – it’s only bad when superimposed onto our system of care that allows uncontrolled price growth. I want people to have access to large, integrated health care systems that excel at treating complex clinical problems and coordinating care! I want large pharmaceutical companies with the resources to develop safe and cutting-edge therapies for patients!
In the same vein, I want manufacturers pumping out lots of modular homes so everyone can afford a place to live! I want electric vehicles and solar panels flying out of factories as fast and as affordably as possible to help us transition away from fossil fuels! When faced with something as extreme and existential as the climate crisis – which requires transformational changes to the way we eat, travel, manufacture things, and produce energy – do we genuinely think giving the proverbial middle finger to big businesses is the answer?
But what about big businesses that are bad actors? One may ask. I get this question, and it’s so easy to find examples of so many terrible things large companies do! Home Depot is anti-union. Walmart and Amazon fuel the dupe economy. Microsoft funded climate deniers and helped get them elected in 2020. Google apparently no longer cares about not being evil as it abandons its ban on AI being used to develop weapons and surveillance tools. Apple is against right to repair and forces us into endless cycles of tech upgrade through planned obsolescence. McDonald’s, Kroger, and Coca-Cola and hundreds of food companies use forced prison labor. Dozens of major companies, including Tesla, Netflix, and Ford, paid more money to their top executives than they have for federal taxes for years and years…the list goes on…look long enough, and you’ll find something wrong with just about every company. Meanwhile, how can I boycott them all when my work-issued computer runs on Microsoft, the data I work with live on Amazon Web Services, my utility company burns fossil fuels, and even my daycare requires me to use an app to check in/out my child so I can’t even get rid of my smartphone! Even when I’m not spending money or doing anything, simply existing means my pension fund (which I have very little control over) is still funding fossil fuel companies! My point is: unless you live off-grid in a house built with wood you harvested powered by solar panels made by yourself eating food from your garden, you. cannot. opt. out.
Vote with your vote
In my opinion, every bad thing a business is allowed to do reflects a policy failure. Don’t like how big credit card companies rip off businesses with high fees? Cap interchange fees! (It’s been done in the EU!) Want to ensure a livable wage and fair working conditions for workers ? The answer is higher minimal wages, strong labor protections, and laws to support unions and collective bargaining. Hate how much influence corporate executives and businesses have on our politics and policies? That falls in the department of campaign finance reform. Mad about how heartbreakingly unaffordable health care is in this country? The government needs to regulate prices. Want to lessen the grip Google has on so many aspects of our lives? We need antitrust enforcement! You get the idea: name a systemic problem, and I will point you to a slew of policy solutions.
But, but, but, I can already hear you say, just look at the current administration that’s only been in office for 40 days and *gestures wildly at everything*. Yes, yes yes, I hear you. But this is the way I look at it: every extra minute you spend driving to a slightly more “ethical” store, researching for a morally superior product, and scrutinizing every shopping decision is a minute that is not spent on calling your representatives, organizing, building a community, volunteering for a campaign, and doing everything else that’s needed to fix the damn system. We are all going to die, people! Every minute is precious!
“But I just want to exist and live my life without feeling like a piece of shit?”
Fair enough. While I’ve made my case that “voting with your dollar” (especially only for one day) as a way to change the world is largely a performative act that makes people feel good about themselves and achieves nothing (Jacobin agrees with me, by the way), everyone certainly has the right to align their spending with their personal values. And despite everything I just wrote about big businesses, I don’t shop at Amazon all that much. Here is my personal philosophy when it comes to shopping/spending:
- Buy less. Regardless of where something comes from, collectively, we all just. need. less. stuff.
- Swap, borrow, repair, buy secondhand. If a thing already exists, why not give it a second life? Plus, this is often less costly than buying new.
- Support small businesses not simply because they are small. I shop at my local refill stores because refilling products is not a service any large store provides. I enjoy going to farmers markets because in-season produce is extra tasty, and I adore connecting with the folks who grow my food. I frequently choose my neighborhood hardware store because I value the shopkeeper’s expertise, which I don’t always find at big box home improvement stores. I support many local restaurants because I like the food better than chains and neighborhood restaurants are places where families, friends, and communities gather. Shopping isn’t always about getting the best deal, but it doesn’t make sense to base a shopping decision solely on the size of the business, either.
- Buy directly, if possible: if you want the people who created your favorite product to benefit more, buy directly from them instead of going through an intermediary/distributor. Recently we bought a Crate and Barrel wooden table off Facebook Marketplace. Instead of buying the wax that C&B recommends to care for the tabletop from C&B’s website, I ordered directly from the company that manufacturers the product. It was easy peasy and didn’t cost me any extra money or time to purchase. (I did wait a few extra days for the product to arrive, but waxing my table is not an emergency. Most shopping is not!)
- You don’t need to be a moral purist. If I have done all of the above or simply don’t have the money, time, and bandwidth to make a different shopping choice, I don’t feel bad. Because, see above re. the real solutions to systematic problems!
How about your? Did you participate in the economic blackout? Do you believe in “voting with your dollar”?
Header image: Photo by Bruno Kelzer via Unsplash
Sensible Sustainability 
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