You cannot vote with your wallet. Or rather, you *can*, but you will lose that vote. Wallet-votes always go to the people with the thickest wallets, and statistically, that is not you.
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/13/consumption-choices/#marginal-benefits
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Margaret Thatcher tried to get us to believe that "there is no such thing as society." She wanted everyday people to abandon the idea of having a shared destiny, to throw away any notion of solidarity as an answer to social problems. Despite the fact that Thatcher's own backers happily formed cartels and cabals, from the Mount Pellerin Society to the Heritage Foundation, Thatcher insisted that everyday people should fight their battles alone.
2/
If you want higher wages, don't join a union - just go demand a higher wage from your boss. If you want lower rents, don't demand rent controls, just petition your landlord for a discount. If none of this stuff works (this stuff rarely works), then you are out of luck. "The market" exists to do "price discovery" and you've just discovered the price of your labor (less than you need to survive) and the cost of your home (more than you can afford).
3/
You voted with your wallet, and you lost. As Thatcher was fond of saying, "there is no alternative."
This has been our framework for change for the past 50 years. It's like we've had a collective lobotomy and have forgotten the way that actual change comes about. Change happens when solidaristic groups of everyday people - unions, political movements - directly confront politicians and power-brokers and demand change.
4/
Your boss won't equitably share the fruits of your labor unless they fear that all the workers on the jobsite will shut down the shop. Your politicians won't do the bidding of everyday people - who can't shower them in cash - unless they fear that they will have their offices blockaded, their homes picketed, and their seats primaried.
5/
Rather than demanding this kind of change, we're supposed to vote with our wallets, making a fetish out of our personal consumption choices and scolding others as "lazy" or "cheap" if they don't quit Facebook or stop shopping at Walmart. This isn't just ineffective, it's counterproductive.
6/
Refusing to form solidaristic bonds with people suffering in the same way as you because they buy things you disapprove of means that you can't attain the solidarity needed to make the *real* change you're seeking.
Shopping harder is no way to save the planet or your neighbors. Individual actions do not provoke systemic change.
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For that, we need collective action. Join your local tenants' union, your local DSA chapter, your local Electronic Frontier Alliance group:
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And also! Make consumption choices that improve your life and the lives of people you love. Support your local bookstore, buy online from libro.fm and bookshop.org - not because this will break Amazon's monopoly power (for that we will need unionization, antitrust, and tax enforcement), but because when you shop at those stores, you make a difference *to the lives of the people who operate those stores*, who pay decent wages and don't maim their warehouse workers.
9/
Go to your local family-owned grocer instead of the union-busting monopolist, because they're nice people, the food is good, and they pitch in to help their community, rather than draining its finances and lobbying for tax exemptions.
10/
Buy from artists and creators you like online, join their crowdfunders and Patreons, get their music on Bandcamp - not because this will shatter the hegemony of the five giant publishers, four giant studios, three giant labels, two giant app companies and one giant ebook and audiobook store - but because it will help people whose art you love pay their rent and buy groceries.
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Get off Facebook, Insta and Twitter and join Mastodon and/or Bluesky - not because you can disenshittify the internet by switching to federated social media, but because you, *personally* can have a less shitty time if you get away from the zuckermuskian rot economy.
Do all this stuff - to the extent you can. Support your local bookstore, but don't forego buying and reading books you love because the store is a two hour drive and you only get there once a month.
12/
Support your local grocer, but if they don't have the ingredients you need for the special dinner you're making for your friends or your picky kids, then go to Safeway or Whole Foods or Albertsons. Buy art from artists where you can, but if there's a movie you want to stream and the only way to get it is on Prime or Youtube, pay the $3.99. Get a Mastodon or Bluesky account, but if your friends or customers or audience won't move with you, then reach them where they are.
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Above all, don't isolate yourself. As Zephyr Teachout writes in *Break 'Em Up*, when you miss the picket at the Amazon warehouse because you've been driving around for hours looking for an independent stationery story to buy markers and cardboard for a protest sign, Jeff Bezos wins.
14/
Give your comrades grace. Don't call them scabs because they bought McDonald's for their kids after a long shift. Don't turn your nose up at them because they bought a shirt at Zara. Give yourself grace. The damage you do to the cause by flying home for Thanksgiving, using a plastic straw, or using proprietary software is immeasurably infinitesimal.
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And if you're connected to your family, well hydrated, and get your tech needs met, you will have more energy and resources to throw into the fight for *systemic* change.
Make individual choices that make your life better. Take *collective* action to make society better.
16/
Your individual hand-wringing about whether to buy organic produce or get a Frappuccino just makes you less effective. It's not a boycott. A boycott is planned, social and solidaristic. It's something *lots* of people do together. Boycotts work (which is why génocidaires hate the BDS movement). Scabbing isn't buying something from someone unethical. Scabbing is crossing a picket line or breaking a boycott.
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Margaret Thatcher's crude trick - "there is no such thing as society" - fools fewer and fewer of us every day. Doing the right thing isn't a matter of personal orthodoxy - it's a matter of movement tactics. We won't cure enshittification by zealously pursuing an approved list of correct merchants and products - we'll do so by changing the policy landscape so that enshittifiers sink and disenshittifiers rise:
https://pluralistic.net/2025/07/31/unsatisfying-answers/#systemic-problems
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If you think buying something different, or shopping somewhere else, will make your comrades' lives better, then sure, by all means, give them a helpful tip! But don't nag them for shopping wrong. The best reason to suggest a consumption choice is to improve the life of someone you care about.
19//
And speaking of which: this is my last blog post before my Kickstarter to pre-sell the audiobook, ebook and hardcover of my next book, *Enshittification*, winds down. I don't have a Patreon, I don't paywall my work or sell ads. I support my family by selling books, and the Kickstarter is the way to buy the books that does me the most good - I get the most money per book this way, and it does more to help the books get on the bestseller lists:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/enshittification-the-drm-free-audiobook
20/
So I'd love it if you'd consider backing the campaign. But also: don't worry about it if this isn't the easiest way for you to read my work. If you're short on cash, or you can't use Kickstarter, or you prefer the library, get the books some other way. That's fine. Your individual consumption choices can make a difference to me, personally; but the way *we* will change society is by joining and participating in a movement.
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@elfburgerman As the first line of my bio reads, "I post long threads."
This essay explains why, why I use the server I do, and how to manage your feed to accommodate threads, and where to get my work elsewhere if you'd prefer not to do that:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/16/how-to-make-the-least-worst-mastodon-threads/
The content of the threads is CC-BY, so you're also free to manually or automatically repost them to Frendica if you'd like.
I want to tell this to all the parents at my kids school who spend half their time on the group chat obsessing over having the correct constellation of corporate boycotts because Instagram/Tiktok told them this was how to Do Activism.
The secondary boycotts / solidarity actions in support of United Farm Workers in the 60's and 70's definitely qualified. I don't know that I could put a finger on a precise answer but somewhere closer to that than what I'm seeing bandied about in the various hashtags right now.
These recent scattershot boycott campaigns seem more intended to distract and fragment attention, than focus it on a single coherent issue. But that might be my internal Dale Gribble coming out.
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The Lack Thereof 
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