What if my actionable goal is crashing the broken economy that’s burning our planet?
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Joined 19 days ago
Cake day: February 9th, 2025
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Brother: restaurant no get money, money no come next day.
That’s not making any assumption. This type of protest hasn’t been tried in America at scale, how can I possibly present data. Who knows what the impact will be, why don’t we find out before we lable it pointless?
Do you have any data showing that me standing in front of my city hall on Tuesday with a sign makes a difference? Because it’s been tried quite a few times since Occupy and nothing has improved. Or is that also operating off of “trust me bro”?
This is coming from a person who wants to do both. Is your argument that we should do nothing?
I just gave one, please continue to ignore it 👌
You’re clearly upset because you THINK it won’t have an impact and you WISH they were doing something else. Which is weird because this protest doesn’t preclude them from doing anything?
Its not like I’m choosing to use a sick day today or next week to attend one protest or the other.
I’m sad I can’t get you to understand how businesses run or basic economics. Even if you pretend no businesses are running on fumes and that missing a payment doesn’t have an impact for anyone doesn’t make it true.
Or what about this brain blast: not all demand is the same. If I skip lunch today I won’t buy lunch twice tomorrow to make up for it… If everyone did that, all restaurants lose 3% of their monthly revenue automatically. Is that not an impact? Is there a magic percentage that it needs to meet to be “impactful”?
Did you ever consider what would happen if it wasn’t just you but everyone in the city was late on rent? You’re conflating an individual action’s impact with collective impact. Your landlord can price in some percentage of missed payments the same way that a store can price in shoplifting. Being drastically off on that estimate is still a problem.
Again, if you’re arguing the protest won’t be widespread enough that’s fine. You could even argue that small businesses will be unfairly targeted by this protest and I’m here for it. But ineffective is not the same as performative.
🚨THE
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🚨HAS
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I’ve walked you through it multiple times and you just choose to ignore it. If 300 million Americans did this for one day there would be an economic shockwave, businesses don’t budget around NOT HAVING REVENUE. Even IF they make up the difference later.
Next time I’m a day late on rent, I’ll just tell my landlord me having money tomorrow is just as good as today. I’m sure he’ll accept that as payment.
So then is your argument it won’t be widespread enough to have an impact? Because that’s not the criticism you’re offering, you’re completely dismissing it.
My brother in Christ it’s the exact same thing with any protest that isn’t en masse or an extended occupied disruption. My original question was “do you have any better ideas” and you clearly don’t. Why take the time to shit on it?
Edit: also not having $100 for multiple days is an actual impact that you’re ignoring. If you’ve got a bill due on one of those days you might be on trouble
The point is that it has an impact that you’re arbitrarily ignoring. If you scale your sign holding and chanting up to 3 million people in a state capital then it might be impactful as well.
The key here is which of these is a more accessible and reasonable thing to ask people to do as a first action? Is it easier to organize 3 protests of 50,000 people in a month or have 500,000 cut their spending in half for a month?
That’s completely backwards. It costs elected officials and our corporate overlords LITERALLY nothing to ignore your protest. It’s bad PR at best. Even then, manipulating news coverage, headlines and soundbites is second nature to these people.
How long would an economic strike have to be for it to have an impact you won’t handwave away? There could be prepped food on shelves today that gets thrown out tomorrow. Do it over a weekend and no tickets get sold to a show. Do it for a week and logistics starts getting fucked up.
Standing around and making noise without any other change to your lifestyle or attempting to organize your efforts is completely hollow. Not to mention, infinitely less accessible to people who can’t afford the time or don’t have the physical ability to attend.
Honest question, what is an accessible first step for a population that has basically never performed any collective action that isn’t performative?
Is standing outside a local government building holding a sign to protest federal policy affecting change?
In my view, at least this one day action has a marginal economic impact. Holding a sign on your lunch break so you can post some pictures to Instagram is way more performative.
The point is that every dollar in circulation still gets the billionaire tax at some point. So the question shouldn’t be “what are the things I can efficiently avoid while maintaining my lifestyle” but “what is the minimum consumption I need to keep a livable life”
The reason eating at the Vietnamese restaurant is more expensive than eating at home is because running the business consumes more resources. Instead of paying the market price for pho ingredients you’re paying for the gas that goes into employees cars, the lease for the business, HVAC, equipment, etc…
If you’re worried about the livelihood of the business owner, you could direct your resources towards supporting him instead of his entire business (mutual aid, charities or direct financial support).
The answer to how much austerity you can stomach is personal. You don’t have to grow your own rice and beans if its not feasible. But any organized action is going to be disruptive; you have to ask yourself how much you’re willing to give
Did you check with each of those businesses to make sure their supply chain and product offering is clean? Are those pho ingredients from a locally sourced farm? Does that farm run off of any big brand farm equipment? Hope they don’t need to buy new pots and pans off of Amazon to keep up with demand…
The point of a blackout is you can’t really choose which parts of a fundamentally broken system you want to support. These oligarchs didn’t gain total economic control by producing a single widget you can avoid or a single store you can boycott.
I agree! So let’s all stop spending today to get people on board and save a few bucks, then use that momentum to pool that money the next day.
People seem to dislike this protest because inaction is seen as ineffective and opposed to active protest. Its “too easy”, which puts a bad taste in their mouth.
But on the other hand:
If anything, I see putting the economic brakes on as allowing for more leverage and room to organize. If work is slow maybe you have more time to attend that protest; maybe you’re not in a rush to get back to the shop if it’s closed early.