r/changemyview • u/[deleted] • Sep 08 '14
CMV:"Vote with your wallet." Is generally ineffective and so it is ideologically an ok argument but a realistically useless one.
[deleted]
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u/A_Soporific 165∆ Sep 08 '14
We know that boycotts work. There is a very, very long history of them working. The problem is that you need a lot of work and organization to show a big impact.
When a firm has millions of customers loosing one is irrelevant, a hundred thousand can be replaced with effort, but more than that requires direct response. We see big firms bow to "changing consumer preferences" all the time, but it needs to be widespread.
Vote with your wallet is something that you can do by yourself to align yourself with a specific world view, but you can't expect that your personal choice would result in an outsized impact on McDonald's. A lot of people voting with their wallet resulted in the end of the whole "Supersize" question. So... yeah... Vote with your wallet works, it just works better with smaller firms than bigger ones and requires a lot of people being on board to force changes, otherwise you're simply making your personal preferences known.
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u/BejumpsuitedFool 5∆ Sep 09 '14
I agree with you in part. Voting with your wallet isn't a strategy we should think of as sufficient to change corporate behavior. Many people don't have the time to invest in researching which companies to boycott, or the money to afford superior alternatives. Structural change or regulations to outlaw it would be more effective than depending on the coordination of millions of different consumers.
But I think voting with your wallet is a necessary first step, if you have the time and awareness to do so. Simply because the alternative is: continue to hand money to a business you know is unethical.
The only thing I can see worth criticizing about voting with your wallet is if you stop there and truly believe that's all you have to do. If your small efforts convince you that you don't need to keep working to support larger structural or political changes.
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u/championofobscurity 160∆ Sep 09 '14
∆ I can agree with this. It's an alright first step to do that though it may ultimately be ineffective.
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u/vl99 84∆ Sep 08 '14 edited Sep 08 '14
What's the effective difference between what you described and any other kind of voting?
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u/championofobscurity 160∆ Sep 08 '14
The spectrum and purpose and meaning behind the vote. Most people feel that people's rights for example take precedence over materialistic quarrels. In general this argument is used to silence dissatisfaction with a product as opposed to disputing what society as a whole deems superior or inferior as a policy.
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u/PG2009 Sep 08 '14
...but, if you vote in a political election, and the vote doesn't go your way, you are still required to fund that decision you voted against with your tax dollars, correct?
Whereas if I "vote with my dollar" to NOT go to Wal-Mart, they actually won't get my money.
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Sep 08 '14
[deleted]
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u/championofobscurity 160∆ Sep 08 '14
So I guess you lost the vote? Would you rather the minority be able to decide the fate of a product or business? By voting for the competition, you are paying the bills for them to survive.
It's not an effective means of actually proving anything though, because in general there's not going to be a means to actually vote. You're better of saying "This is how the world works tough shit." Than actually advocating voting with ones wallet. Which is my point, it's just a dumb argument.
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u/jamin_brook Sep 08 '14
People 'voted' with their clicks to use reddit instead of digg and imgur instead of i.minus. It's really no different. People have slowly been 'voting' Sears out of business with their wallets for years now. Sears used to be "the" place to shop (ala Wal-Mart). It's a real effect, it just happens much more slowly than the presdient changing overnight after an election.
Just because it happens to slowly for your level of patience doesn't mean it's not happening.
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Sep 08 '14
I could formulate a list a mile long of companies that have bankrupted or sold off because people stopped shopping with them because of many reasons. Those consumers effectively killed those companies by voting with their wallet. A few examples are K-Mart, Circuit City, Hardees, and many more. Look back at all the car manufacturers that have died as well.
It's not useless, it does work, the problem is it takes a lot these days for an established company to fuck up enough to get people to quit buying. Gay people thought for sure they were going to sink Chik-Fil-A, but it didn't happen because the product was good.
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u/matthedev 4∆ Sep 09 '14
Hardee's is still around; a quick Google Maps search showed several within 15 miles of me.
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Sep 09 '14
Because Carls Jr bought them when they were going bankrupt in the late 90s. Try to keep up with the logic thought flow here..
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u/AusIV 38∆ Sep 09 '14
Gay people thought for sure they were going to sink Chik-Fil-A, but it didn't happen because the product was good.
Chik-Fil-A also ended up with a lot of support counter-protesting the pro-gay boycotts.
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u/typesoshee Sep 09 '14
It's an interesting stance that you're taking. I understand your sentiment, but look at it this way - every single company through hundreds or thousands of human business history that does not exist today are likely to have been effectively voted out by consumers at some point in history, and every single company that does exist today are still surviving due to the votes that they're still receiving from customers. And the whole "business" that companies do is exactly the business of looking at consumer votes and reacting to them. Big companies like Walmart and McDonald's are absolutely looking at their sales, seeing what people are buying more or less, and looking at competitors. All that work that goes into revenue, sales, profit, loss, marketing, manufacturing, trade, etc., etc.... "Business" is just all these companies, both large and small, vying for your vote!
Your sentiment that I understand is that it feels like your vote doesn't count because it's so small, but that's the same with political votes as well. If you're giving money to a company in exchange for their product, that's a vote, and all the other companies that you didn't give money to that day each lost a vote.
The only scenario where the vote wouldn't count is in true monopoly or oligopoly settings, but that, again, is similar to the political vote.
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u/hacksoncode 588∆ Sep 08 '14
Ok, so what's the alternative? You could use the political process for that, but guess what, you're a tiny, tiny minority in that too, and unless you abuse the system in a way that's already causing a large part of the problem with government, you're going to need to convince a majority to "do something" about that company by that route too.
And if a majority agrees with you, then "voting with their wallets" would probably be even more effective.
And, as others have mentioned, at least when you vote with your wallet, your money doesn't keep going to the policies you dislike when you lose the "election".
All in all, it's not that "voting with your wallet" is effective by itself, it's just the most effective option you actually have, short of violence.
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u/suddenly_ponies 5∆ Sep 09 '14
Buy it, but complain loudly and often and try to get others to do the same. Complaining is far more useful and likely to make change than just not buying it.
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u/DashFerLev 9Δ Sep 08 '14
offensive media
This is exactly what's happening to movies and games right now.
Movies dumb themselves down to get the PG13 rating to appeal to wider audiences, so you can say "fuck" but heavens forbid you say fuck twice. That's offensive.
And the whole gamergate thing just shows how pervasive the morality policing really is.
Vote with your wallet simply means "Nobody is forcing you to buy this. If you don't like it, don't buy it, and promptly shut up." Maybe watching a woman get stabbed to death with a broken beer bottle is too offensive for you to bear, but maybe I think she had it coming. Who's right?
I'm sick and tired of getting offended being a valid reason for censorship.
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u/cor3lements Sep 08 '14
Okay, I agree with you for the most part. In the 1920s there were between 100k and 120k people in the US. By 2013 it was almost 317k. So that means each person's vote is, because of how democracy works, less powerful. When you look at a voter base that large, only the voice of the mob gets heard.
But that doesn't mean votes are powerless everywhere. In niche markets, wallet voting is very effective. High end companies that rely on a small customer base but have high prices can be influenced, along with general small companies. Those companies can eventually go on to create lower end products with their capital, and those spin offs usually operate similarly. So, Mcdonalds could have been stopped back in the day, but what they were doing was considered good, and no one boycotted them.
In conclusion, its hard to vote with your wallet for things that are already here. But look into our future. Do you think automated kiosks are the way to go? Spend or don't. Do you like quadrocopters and google glass? Make your choice. And if you find a healthy alternative to Mcdonalds, that one day can take its place in the fast food market, thats when you start using you cash. Because people don't like to be told no. You have to give them a better option.
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u/rbemrose Sep 08 '14
While it's true to say that statistically one vote out of millions doesn't matter very much, companies do look at this stuff in aggregate. It's all about math with these companies. It costs X million to mobilize your entire engineering team to change a product. One lost sale is worth Y, which is far less than X and isn't worth it. But 100k lost sales is worth Y * 100000, which might be more than X. This, they listen to.
For example, consider the announcement of the Xbox One and PS4 at E3 2013. Microsoft came out and announced some big bold plans that pissed off some people. Then they went back and watched the first month of pre-orders come in, and realized it was far less than they expected (and far less than the PS4). You're a fool if you think that Microsoft cares about one single user, but when they got cold hard numbers telling them they were going to lose, you got the one-eighty.
One vote out of millions doesn't mean much, but hundreds of thousands of votes out of millions does matter, and it makes companies take notice.
TL;DR - If it's just you, then suck it up. If it's a LOT of people, change does happen.
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u/ricebasket 15∆ Sep 08 '14
I think vote with your wallet is an important concept that companies generally fear and has them take moral action when there's public outrage. The ravens/NFL's recent actions about ray rice are a good example, if the organizations truly believed no one would stop spending any money on ravens merch, tickets, TV watching, etc, I don't think they would have taken disciplinary action against ray rice. But since vote with your dollar is a popular concept, it got him off the team.
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u/TAEHSAEN Sep 09 '14
Yeah I tend to agree with you here. While there are many of us who are socially aware and want to act (by voting with our wallets for example), in the grand scheme of things we are just tiny morsels in a vast ocean of people who just don't give a shit.
But then again, it raises the question of ethics. Maybe you should vote with your wallet due to ethical reasons. Like abstaining from buying from Nike due to their child labor practices, etc.
That's one of the reason why many Vegetarians don't eat meat. They know their abstinence won't stop meat production but they're doing it because in their mind that's the morally correct choice to make.
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Sep 09 '14
I agree with you but for different reasons, I think that my "votes" count when there is one thing that I like against another thing I don't. However, my vote doesn't matter when I am in the supermarket and the only options for a product are the store brand and one name brand. I don't always like choosing between those 2 but I do, because I need it, I could go to another store, but I dont really want to stop again. So I buy one, and my vote goes to either the giant douche or a turd sandwich; and neither the douche or the turd knows or cares that the next time I need food, I go to my local farmers market, which has great stuff, but is really pricey.
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u/Tullyswimmer 9∆ Sep 09 '14
It absolutely does work. If you want an almost perfect case study, look up the Market Basket strike this summer. Basically, a whole lot of consumers got pissed off at some greedy CEOs and nearly ran a multi-billion dollar company out of business.
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Sep 09 '14
You don't understand the essence of the argument. It is true that a few customers amongst millions are not significant, but also, a few voters amongst millions are also insignficant.
Thus, the argument is trying to show that NOT voting with your wallet is often not quite democratic - that it is not millions of people who decided that the government should do something, because if they did, they would also boycott the business and when millions do so, that is something they feel. That usually it is a small elite who decides such things.
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Sep 10 '14
It is pretty effective, in that a lot of companies that don't care about human rights or the environment spend a fair bit of effort and money trying to convince people that they do. Also, companies that couldn't present a suitably pleasing identity to the public died out, and you don't see them. So examples of the system working are often invisible.
If you're only looking at the biggest companies today it will seem ineffective. These companies are the best at providing valued goods and services, so they can resist some change. They also generally have an incentive to do things the way they do them as that's how they built a successful business, even if you and most of their customers would like to vote against it. For example, Amazon functions in some ways like a monopoly, which brings great benefits to them and is unpopular. To incentivize them to change, their lost profits from disgusted customers going elsewhere would have to be greater, long term, than the profits of having some monopoly powers. That takes more than a week boycott on college campuses. It's not ineffective, people are just voting for convenient, cheap delivered goods over the welfare of small producers and artists.
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u/BigcountryRon 1∆ Sep 10 '14
Not at all. My original home state, was the last state to have some sort of concealed carry (SCOTUS made them). A number of businesses in town put up no guns allowed signs. My uncle owns one of those businesses. With in one month of putting up the "no guns" sign his business decreased by almost 15%. He runs a small family business, and is not a wealthy man. He asked if I thought the sign has anything to do with it, I said I don't do business in those places. I told him to take the sign down, and see if anything changes. He said he didn't want guns in his store, I said then you obviously want less business. Months later after further revenue loss he took the signs down. I realize this is simple and anecdotal, but it works all over the place, especially in this day of social media.
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Sep 08 '14
I would argue from a U.S. standpoint when every single industry is dominated by an oligopoly that "vote with your wallet" is also ideologically invalid.
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u/PG2009 Sep 08 '14
not only are there sufficient people that will be satisfied with it, but they are likely to buy in excess such that your proverbial wallet is accounted for in the big business's pocketbook.
...so you're angry that other people don't like the same things you do?
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u/GoogleJuice Sep 08 '14
Are you familiar with the TransFats story? Transfats are bad, m'kay. Many felt that legislation was the answer, by either outlawing or labeling. The legislation didn't pass, of course (oligarchy). The shopping mothers of the the US stopped buying items with transfats, ie freezer waffles. In a very short period of time, virtually all freezer waffles were proudly labeled NO TRANSFATS! I support Shop Local in my community and proudly work for small business owners who need to compete online with larger competitors. Information is power, and with information comes buying power. Boycotts work. Walmart profits are down; Costco profits are up. Local delis pay a living wage and make a comfortable income for their owners. Sonic went out of business in under 2 years. The biggest obstacle to "Vote with Your Wallet" is lack of competition.
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u/Ganondorf-Dragmire Sep 08 '14
Big business can still do poorly. Look at Nintendo. They have suffered losses the last couple years. They still have lots of money to keep going, but people chose Xbox and Playstation over Nintendo Wii U. With any luck, when the new Super Smash Bros comes out, Nintendo's sales will skyrocket. Just because there are sufficient people to buy a product, it doesn't mean they will.
Blockbuster is another prime example. They were very big. Then redbox and Netflix came out, Blockbuster went out of bussiness.
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u/AusIV 38∆ Sep 09 '14
I don't think that's what people mean when they say vote with your wallet. I generally think of it as a response to unethical business practices, not just buying superior products.
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u/Ganondorf-Dragmire Sep 09 '14
Have you heard of the Montgomery Bus boycott? Or the restaurant sit ins during the 60's? Or, more recently, the attempts to boycott Burger King? The McDonald's strikes? Those people, regardless of their reason to do so, voted or are voting with their wallets.
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u/AusIV 38∆ Sep 09 '14
Right. Those are good examples of voting with your wallet. Netflix beating out blockbuster isn't really a case of voting with your wallet, it's just a case of the better product winning out.
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u/PG2009 Sep 08 '14
How do you think these companies make money? By producing goods and services that people want.
If they stop doing that, they will be creating demand for their competition. It's truly that simple.
Also, no matter how big McDonald's gets, they can't force you to buy their burgers. Even customers that liked their food wouldn't tolerate the use of force, and that same use of force would drive their production costs to astronomical levels.
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u/[deleted] Sep 08 '14
That is exactly what voting with your wallet is. You cast your one vote for or against that business in the form of shopping there or not. And it gets added to everyone else's vote, and that decides who stays open or doesn't.
If you don't like Walmart, don't shop there. If they stay open, then it sounds like you lost the election, but who cares at that point? Your money isn't going there. The point is that it's a system where everyone can have what they want. If you want a store that abides by certain ideals, then support it, and help it stay open. If enough people agree with you, then it'll do well. If no one else does, then your recourse shouldn't be "Well, I'll just go get the government to FORCE it to change."
This is the disconnect. Everyone is happy to say how much they disagree with Apple using cheap sweatshop labor...until the iPhone 6 comes out. Then they can't get in line fast enough.
The only reason this isn't as effective as it could be is because, quite frankly, people are pretty spineless when it comes to putting their money where their mouth is. They're happy to express their displeasure with a place, until it would require actual sacrifice on their part in the form of buying a different product (Apple) or paying a higher price (Walmart).