r/politics • u/Quirkie The Netherlands • Mar 06 '25

Soft Paywall Elon Musk Suddenly Doesn’t Want Credit for Disastrous DOGE Cuts - Musk is warning Republicans to stop blaming DOGE for the cuts.

https://newrepublic.com/post/192415/elon-musk-warns-republicans-doge-job-cuts
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u/Medlarmarmaduke Mar 06 '25 edited Mar 06 '25

Some people can be so defeatist about boycotting and the possibility of economic blowback- but they shouldn’t be

I’ve said this all over Reddit- the inherent weakness of Oligarchs in a consumer driven society and economy is that they need consumers to consume!

Purchasing power can be weaponized into political power if you organize it

Speaking of which- there is no time like the present to cancel your Washington Post subscription and Prime membership

There is a week long boycott of Amazon starting tommorow

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u/YouthObjective3077 Mar 06 '25

AND...never, ever buy a Tesla, sell all your Tesla stock if you have any, never used Airbnb because their CEO jumped onboard to work for DOGE a few weeks ago, and don't use Team Mobile- they use Starlink.

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u/Medlarmarmaduke Mar 06 '25

Stop using Accuweather- stick to weather channel

The Accuweather CEO is a huge Trumper who is going to be the one favored by Trump when Trump privatizes every federal weather related agency and department that relies on meteorological science

Farmers, among others, are going to have to pay for this

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u/Fatdap Washington Mar 06 '25

Stop using Accuweather- stick to weather channel

Why the fuck are any Americans using ANYTHING but NOAA?

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u/SpicyMustard34 Mar 06 '25

a lot of enterprises use Accuweather as a service because they'll have an account manager who works with them on their specific events to track weather for a very specific location instead of an entire city.

e.g. sporting events, concerts, outdoor festivals, etc.

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u/Fatdap Washington Mar 06 '25

So it's mostly useful for the enterprise level, and that's about it, is what it sounds like.

Hopefully companies start moving off of it, we'll see.

Hopefully all private citizens for personal usage just use NOAA because it's really, really good.

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u/SpicyMustard34 Mar 06 '25 edited Mar 06 '25

So it's mostly useful for the enterprise level, and that's about it, is what it sounds like.

that's most of their business and they make a lot of it.

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u/RottenNewt Mar 06 '25

Phone App

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u/Fatdap Washington Mar 06 '25

That's fair.

I've always used CLIME on Android which AFAIK pulls data from NOAA.

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u/thisusedyet Mar 06 '25

Is that who runs weather.gov ?

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u/Fatdap Washington Mar 06 '25

Yeah. Weather.gov is just a website run by NOAA.

The noaa.gov weather search re-directs you to it.

I just prefer using NOAA's primary site because they post a lot of important regional weather information on it as well.

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u/tjsean0308 Mar 06 '25

Because lots of Americans don't realize AccuWeather and the others are mostly data aggregation and display from NOAA and like many .gov entities NOAA legally can't compete with commerce. That means no official NOAA app that functions like AccuWeather or Wunderground or any of the others. They do have a decent mobile site, but its not the same experience.

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u/Mediocre-Iron-7991 24d ago

So I have to stop using an app just because of politics?

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u/ewokninja123 Mar 06 '25

Sell Tesla?

Puts on tesla

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u/reds91185 Mar 06 '25

Signs, signs, everywhere there's signs...

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u/[deleted] Mar 07 '25

I just bought one…you guys kept advertising them so I jumped on. #puss

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u/haightwrightmore Mar 06 '25

I have been preaching this same exact theory for 10 years. Everyone's comment is that their little consumption won't amount to anything. This makes me furious as a union member(retired), knowing that if WEas a group collectively, stop buying,it WILL do massive amounts of damage to their cause. Pull the money out, and they will implode.

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u/Medlarmarmaduke Mar 06 '25

Already Tesla’s stock has been dropping and orders are dropping precipitously in Europe. Today Elon told Republican to not say that DOGE is firing fed workers - it might be a case of the dog that caught the car for him soon.

Boycotts are the easiest, most discreet way someone can protest effectively.

You don’t have to risk being arrested at a protest or feeling threatened by your community if you live in a deep red area and put out signs- no one can tell that you stopped buying from Amazon and now do Costco or now look at the Weather Channel exclusively rather than Accuweather or why you uses Vrbo instead of Airbnb

Plus stopping buying from corporations and funneling your money into your local community will help that community withstand an economic downturn

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u/offroadadv Mar 06 '25

I couldn't wait. I cancelled Prime today.

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u/faux_glove Mar 06 '25

I keep telling people that the flaw in the Republican system is that it requires our active and willing participation. You don't have to throw your life away with violence to defeat them, you just have to stop buying anything you don't need, and source what you do need from local community stores and thrift shops first! 

It's not even hard. It just requires y'all to stop measuring your self-worth in how expensive your shoes are.

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u/mollymcbbbbbb Mar 06 '25

I'm very excited to cancel my Prime membership (for good). I've realized how much less garbage I didn't need that I'd just been mindlessly buying from Amazon because it was convenient and free shipping, but I've cut way down over the past few months and feel much better about my shopping habits. Also glad to find out I get to keep my digital purchases, kind of sad to lose the Prime streaming services though. Oh well!

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u/Medlarmarmaduke Mar 06 '25

Prime streaming was nice but I figured I should cut back on streaming services anyway to cut expenditures

I kept Disney and Hulu and that’s enough for now- I can wait for a deal or just sign up for a month or two at other streaming platforms and then quit

But Amazon is never going to be back in the mix- nor is anything I can avoid that I can that is Bezos affiliated

Some things are on Amazon cloud infrastructure- and I can’t do anything about that at this moment

Do what you can do is my motto

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u/Miyatz Mar 07 '25

Did you know you can order something from Amazon and have it delivered to an amazon locker, then wait and don’t pick it up and they will take it back and refund you?

You don’t even have to do anything, but you take time from them arranging and delivering the product, you take up space in a locker for a few days, and you take time from them arranging and processing the return and refund.

You’re out some money for a week or two until you get it all back, and Amazon have spent quite a few man hours handling your request, and there’s probably some bank charges involved along the way for them.

Boycotting doesn’t give them any money, but doing this actively costs them. At some point they’ll probably ban your account but if you’re planning on boycotting anyway what’s the harm?

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u/AgentCirceLuna Mar 06 '25

It’s pretty scary how they have all this money yet they still want MORE MORE MORE. I really think they have no self worth and just think money is all that counts.

As for whether they’re afraid of war or think they can escape to bunkers as people think, I believe they really are scared of it because money is just some virtual thing to them. A toy. I doubt they want the whole world to be destroyed.

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u/Medlarmarmaduke Mar 06 '25

I think that I agree with the idea that when you are that rich - money isn’t understandable as money the way normal people see it

Money for the unimaginably rich is power that can shape the world to their desires

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u/yfunk3 America Mar 07 '25

I never understood how dumb billionaires can be. They're the ones building secret underground bunkers for when society collapses without realizing that you need a society where money actually fucking matters and you have the "poors" who give you the lavish, comfy lifestyle that your money gives you. Morons.

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u/knocking_wood Mar 06 '25

A week will accomplish  nothing.

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u/Medlarmarmaduke Mar 06 '25

It’s a start, it will be an introduction to organized boycotting for many. There are several more boycotts planned - so this isn’t an isolated one off event

Boycotts and general strikes haven’t been utilized fully in America- and they should be

Wall Street demands perpetual growth from companies or their stocks tumble. A boycott doesn’t have to decimate a company’s profit. It just has to make it wobble a bit for Wall Street to freak out.