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this post was submitted on 26 Nov 2023
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Asklemmy
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People haven't learned to vote with their wallets
As was once said(something like): if vote with your wallet, the people with bigger wallets get more votes.
Capitalism: a short story.
Sounds like a weird saying.
It assumes that the people with bigger wallets also use a larger portion (absolute money, not percentages) on the "thing" to begin with. If the billionaire and the middle class man uses 10€ on the same thing a month, and both stop doing it, then they both got the same amount of "votes". Much more fitting would be: "if you vote with your wallet, people who spend more money get more votes".
Of course this only applies if you're talking about boycots etc, and not about buying stuff.
And yes, people with bigger wallets probably have more sway and power when it comes to get getting their way if they want to, but when people talk about voting with your wallet, they're not talking about this.
as i said "something like", but overall it's the same idea, semantics.
It applies in both cases, for example the design of a product (game Diablo 4) or the process of gentrification.
Yep that's true, but I think in the long haul appealing to more people is better than just one
No, this line of thinking is wrong, I wish people would stop saying this. Voting with your wallet never works when 1% has >50% of wealth. It’s easier for 5% of people (wealthy, top execs) to agree on milking the rest than 95% of people to agree on boycotting a certain brand. That’s why we have regulations, we wouldn’t need them if “voting with wallets” actually worked.
Free market capitalism got us to this point, it cannot take us out of this.
1% might have 50% of the wealth, they do not account for 50% of the spending. Especially not at Taco Bell.
Pure capitalism is broken af, but companies like this will feel it if 10% of costumers stops going there. The increase in price can recover some of it, but only to a certain extent. It's a simple supply and demand issue.
That being said, I'm not from the US, so take my opinion on local issues with a grain of salth. And I definitely don't mean to imply that wealth inequality is not an issue. On the contrary.
You mean well and I wish you were right, but capitalism proves you wrong time and time again. Remember when everyone cancelled their Netflix subscriptions and the company went bankrupt because they disallowed account sharing? Yeah, that was the sentiment on all social media.
Nobody did that in net change numbers.
If your theory was right, Netflix is succeeding because Saudi billionaires from the 1% bought up thousands of Netflix subscriptions to make up for the average Joe from the 99% that unsubscribed.
What really happened was that when they added household restrictions they saw a net increase in subscriptions, not from the 1%, but from the 99%.
While the concentration of wealth has significant effects on opportunity and access to capital, it means pretty much jack shit to access to revenue, which is dictated by mass spending and very susceptible to voting with your dollar.
We literally just saw a company hit hard by people voting with their dollar, with one of the largest alcoholic beverage companies taking a significant loss because they pissed off two sides of the market with their behavior, with effects still going on today.
No, it proves me right. People are still willing to pay for the service despite the price hike. So it must mean that people think this non-essential service, for which there are alternatives, is worth the money.
Unfortunately, this is users allowing for this kind of behaviour.
The original comment was that voting with your wallet doesn't work. I'm saying that it's a problem with enough people voting with their wallet. If you are the only person that cares about something and stop buying from a particular company, they will not even notice it.
On the other hand, look what happened when bud light had this thing with a trans influencer and conservatives got ridiculously upset with this, as they do. ABInbev is still feeling the effects of that.
Hard to do that when everything is a fucking oligopoly. If you don’t like Taco Bell, have fun also avoiding KFC, Pizza Hut, and The Habit, all owned by Yum! Brands.
Go to your locally owned Mexican restaurant instead.
Stop letting advertising direct your purchasing intent towards mega-corp brands.
We're in a generation of complacency. Nobody cares and our to busy consuming to care.
A sizeable chunk is too busy surviving.
The system is working as intended.
I mean, you would save a lot more money if you did 2 seconds of research by comparing prices before you buy things and also avoiding unnecessary expenditures like convenience foods like Taco Bell, junk food, and carbonated beverages.
It's amazing to me how many people let themselves get nickel and dimed to death because, "it's only $20."
source: https://nlihc.org/oor/about
this isn’t even taking into account groceries, transportation, medical expenses, etc. the problem is not buying too many carbonated drinks.
It says the average rent for a 2 bedroom rental is $1,486. If you're working $15/hr then you absolutely should be avoiding unnecessary expenses if you want to afford to live. Many people lack impulse control and financial literacy. If they had savings, then they could afford to ride out emergencies and move for a better job, things you can't do when you have $15 to your name. It honestly hurts to watch some people actively hurting themselves by their own bad decisions.