Forum Post: Easy to bring down corporations- one simple step
Posted 13 years ago on Oct. 29, 2011, 1:25 a.m. EST by ramous
(765)
from Wabash, IN
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
It is frightfully easy to bring down corporations no matter how huge, and so simple that every kindergarten kid realizes it instinctively. Don't buy. Boycott the things these corporations make, and they will fold. Consumerism, all-- ALL our consumerism, made them strong. Our demand for cheap goods created the walmarts and the importers and the goods created overseas and destroyed the local businesses, the mom and pops, forcing them to close. OUR consumerism. We did this, begging mom and dad for a Toyota because we wouldn't be caught dead on a Schwinn. We bought foreign made clothes and the clothing mills closed. We bought foreign made cars and sent the US auto industry to its knees. Boycott, boycott, and watch the giant corporations fall. Put your wallet where your mouth is and buy only local, buy small, buy American. Throw out your foreign cell phone and write a letter. Look for the made in America label and save someone's job. Pick a corporation you hate the most and make sure you own nothing made by it, and never will. Only then, when WE cease buying from the corporations we are vilifying, can we say we've done what we could.
But you WANT stuff that they make; cars, food, video games, indoor plumbing, etc. Thats why corporations have a lot of wealth, because we want the stuff that they sell. How can you sell someone something that they dont want?
I'm down, but then I don't call it a boycott, I call it my lifestyle. I by my cars 1 year old and drive them for many years till they die, I upgrade my computers instead of buying new ones, and everything else I buy used. My phone is pretty much the only new thing I've bought in years outside of books. I use open source software which I do donate for if I keep using it. I buy groceries, but try to get as much as I can from the farmers market. If rent and insurance weren't so ridiculous, I could easily live very comfortably on an amount well below the poverty level.
The need to hoard crap, and keep buying new crap, is like adding your own links to their shackles.
Organize! Pick ONE to boycott and pick on it HARD! CRUSH it and move on to the next. Repeat.
Single voices and single visions will fall on deaf ears and will fail - unseen.
We must attack as one to succeed.
The most effective approach to civil disobedience that is entirely legal and an exercise of the capitalist system is to boycott those corporations and parties that oppress the 99%. This is the most effective way to engage the nation and allow those who are not able to travel to support an occupation. We need national-level boycotts that show the 1% that this nations and the worlds 99% have solidarity and the right to a decent life.
I boycott Wal-Mart, McDonalds, Denny's Restaurants, and a couple local businesses, all because they either treat their employees like shit, rob their customers, or both.
That will do it.
Also it would put an end to the hypocrisy of corporate bashers holding Ipads.
Have you ever, even once, considered that maybe the "big, bad, mean, evil corporations" aren't really the problem?
That maybe, just maybe - the problem could be ... wait for it ... the corrupt, bribe-taking, fat-cat, tax-feeding, slick-scum-bag politicians?
That perhaps, it just might be the people who call themselves "The Government", and their buddies at "The Fed", (who can print money, manipulate interest rates and loan free money to broke-ass gambling Banksters) who are the problem?
Is it possible that the problem of unrestrained consumerism might be the result of reckless, unlimited credit? That the USA is the one country in the whole world who can borrow and print money without limit? AND, in turn, through their banking system, extend credit to broke-ass consumers without risk, because they have a multitude of meek, whipped taxpayers who will just take it up the ying-yang and pay for endless bailouts?
Have you EVER considered that it is NOT hard working foreign workers, (trying to pull themselves out of poverty), that are your enemy, but your own Government?
Just wondering.
I think Freebird, you're right. Corporations pay big bucks to their candidates and lobbyists. Im pretty afraid Obama didn't amass 80 million dollars for reelection so quickly, from donations by individuals, and that he'll have to repay those corporate election dollars with more favors like buyouts and bailouts and handing programs from the government to big corporations. If the politicians were any kind of strong, they would have been able to stand up to the money.
you are right ramous, if anyone could organize a large, 1 mil plus boycotting group it could make a huge difference. I would add this: have this group demand achievable change and then boycott certain companies while visiting their competitors until they carry out the small change. Repeat every year. Incremental change is the only way we will be able to fashion a perfect system.