What’s the point in Boycotting?

[u/cacxte]

It seems like everyone forgot about standing against major corporations that eliminate DEl and supporting small businesses-only to turn around and go back a few days later for something like cheaper cake. What's the point of starting a movement if everyone abandons it so quickly?

[u/Interesting_Ad_9924]

People miss that the petit bourgeoisie are still bourgeois. Small business owners don't have as much capital, but they're still competing on the market, still hoarding wealth and fucking over workers. They actually have incentives to be even more ruthless to the working class because they have more to lose (and are the historical base for fascism). They're not inherently better at all, they're just smaller. Their model is the same, it's likely their products and practices are the same or similar.

I think boycotts can be great when they're part of a campaign, like BDS or to support a strike, but it's so logistically difficult to boycott a supermarket long term, and it's never going to have the same impact as industrial action. We should stop blaming poor people, especially because consumption doesn't really represent power, power is in action in numbers.

I hope I never have to work for a small business again, so many of them are micromanaging psychos on a power trip.

[u/Murky-Peanut1390 → u/Interesting_Ad_9924]

Yea small business also pay the same wage rate as big. So who exactly am i helping? I could understand if they paid living wages with benefits for their employees then it would be more like community helping community but if the employees are just getting paid the same, i rather save money and shop at big. As much as i hate the big corps

[u/jacob6875 → u/Murky-Peanut1390]

In my area at least small businesses actually pay less and have zero benefits compared to places like Walmart.

Since they are under 50 employees they don't even have to provide health insurance.

[u/Interesting_Ad_9924 → u/jacob6875]

Australia has free healthcare, but you still do have less rights at work if you're employed by a small business, they're allowed to fuck you over more.

It's fucked they don't have to provide health insurance. Fuck that, I'm so sick of small businesses complaining about having to pay staff, the entitlement is crazy

[u/cenimsaj → u/jacob6875]

Yeah, I don't know that I've ever worked for a great company, but small businesses are often worse. No or garbage benefits. Crappier pay. I basically never took a vacation because they either didn't offer PTO or ran such a skeleton crew that they acted like they'd implode if anyone took time off. Calling out sick would have been a personal offense, as if I was out there licking doorknobs just to catch something and wrong my employer, lol. And they ALWAYS pulled that "family" BS and expected you to be as passionate about their stupid business as they were.

I do try to support small businesses as much as I can. I'm lucky that I can actually mostly get away with buying my groceries from locally owned shops. But I'm not going to pretend small businesses are great places to work.

[u/Murky-Peanut1390 → u/cenimsaj]

The same people that preach to customers. " here we are a family "

[u/No_Importance3779 → u/Interesting_Ad_9924]

And small business has no positions that paid as well as large companies. GM at Wal Mart makes several hundred thousands....how high does a small business pay its employees?

[u/garaile64 → u/No_Importance3779]

To be fair, small businesses don't have the same budget.

[u/garaile64 → u/Interesting_Ad_9924]

However, those small businesses still need to exist to avoid monopolies.

[u/Interesting_Ad_9924 → u/garaile64]

The best thing would be actual anti trust legislation and real enforcement. You can have all the small business you want, the market doesn't regulate itself