(My original text didn't get posted for some reason, damn mobile posting)This is kinda interesting. Buy Nothing Day as promoted by Adbusters.
The idea is... "[that it] just [isn't] about changing your habits for one day. It’s about starting a lasting lifestyle commitment to consuming less and producing less waste. With six billion people on the planet, the onus if on the most affluent – the upper 20% that consumes 80% of the world’s resources – to begin setting the example." (link)
This is the kinda activism that I can get into. I'm required to do nothing at all on one day. This inactive activism is something everyone can do anythig to do!
5 comments:
I don't really understand the statement that such a protest tries to make.
If there's something you've been wanting that happens to be on sale on Black Friday, then it would make sense to try and grab the deal and come out ahead.
If people are worried about being manipulated by corporations into buying unnecessary "deals," then staying home seems to be a poor attempt to hide a general lack of willpower.
If it's a statement against overconsumption, then permanently changing one's day-to-day lifestyle makes a bigger statement than not spending for a few days.
If it's an attempt to avoid the huge crowds, long lines, and aggravation... well then I agree =)
Happy Thanksgiving
Yeah, this has to be the weakest form of protest I can think of...
I realize that they are trying to make people aware of the vicious corporation-consumer cycles in capitalist systems that lead to corporate abuse. By this I guess I mean that us americans(of the middle and upper class) over-consume. But we over-consume because goods are cheap and they are cheap because some little boys in brazil made it for 2 cents. I guess they are also protesting the corporations abuse of media and advertising by telling us that we need more crap.
However, corporate abuse will not change unless the majority of the population refuse to buy their products or services. This will never happen as long as cheap goods are availible on the market. People do not care how, where or by whom thier goods were made and how much the workers were paid for it. For those who do care about this, chaning your spending habits will not change the system. There need to be some government intervention in corporate practices, etc.
There are more efficient ways of protesting against all this, but no one is doing it because we like our crap cheap.
... or those who do care about the abuse are trying more effective and creative ways to go about protesting/changing the system.. but asking the entire population to change their spending habits seems too ambitious
I would go so far is to call this protest absolutely unAmerican.
Our nation is founded firmly on the principles of a free market economy. While we are free to buy (or in your case NOT buy) any good or service we choose, it is known that today is a day set aside for the public to use our purchasing power--the nation's retail companies are depending on it.
If it is corporate greed that you fear, then I would suggest using your purchasing power to support local Mom and Pop establishments instead of the WalMarts of the corporate world. If it is the wastefulness of modern materialism that concerns you, then buy more useful items with a longer life and less packaging so that we aren't needlessly depleting the world's resources.
So, it is our duty to go out and spend money on things we don't even need? I think the point of Buy Nothing Day is that nobody needs most of the things they go out to buy, that the buying has become some kind of reflex that is totally unconnected with whether what we are buying is useful to us. I agree that buying locally is a good alternative to big chain stores, but would any local stores have comparable deals on Black Friday? If people, as you say, only care about what is cheap, then why would they buy locally? The logic seems compeletely circular.
In the end the only power we do have is where we spend our money, so I don't think that it is too ambitious to attempt a cultural shift in spending habits. It is only from a mandate from the people that change is possible, and the choices are civil disobedience and economic boycotts. If Wal-Mart moved into Berkeley and no one shopped there, the store would be forced to close down. The mandate for local and organic food in the Bay Area has created the opportunities we have here for buying food. Just try going to the store in rural Alabama or North Carolina, for some people the only choice is Piggly Wiggly, and I'm telling you, you really don't want to eat the meat from there.
The free market economy means that everyone is free to make choices, and to me that means that I am not obliged to help out retail companies, especially when most of them no longer employ Americans and have moved much of their production overseas. In fact, I am happy to buy from my neighbor's yard sale, because that money goes directly to her, and definitely does not support pollution and exploitation.
And at the very least, Buy Nothing Day sends out a message that our purpose here on earth is not to consume until we die, and that there are alternatives to spending hours shopping for things we don't even need. If food production and manufacturing shut down tomorrow, how many people would be able to grow their own food, make their own clothes, and truly survive without a store? It's something to think about, and I think that self-sufficiency is American, not supporting retailers. So, here's to learning how to make things and not buying anything on Black Tuesday.
Post a Comment