The Great Boycott (Buy Local)
Buy from people, not machines
FARE
Free
uncoerced
Your score: —
Free
As voluntary as a proposal can be — self-chosen, two flavors, cheat days explicitly permitted, and nobody even knows if you quit. “The 'no' that makes the way for your yes.”
Active
participatory
Your score: —
Active
Daily, direct active participation, using your time, your effort, and your attention.
Relational
builds community
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Relational
Rebuilding weak (but human) ties is the entire point, and the hard boycott routes every dollar through your physical community. One point held back because the soft boycott's thank-you texts are the thinnest possible ties.
Effective
resources well used
Your score: —
Effective
Transforms your corner of the world reliably, but the dent in oligarch wealth is marginal — it would take mass adoption to make structural change. But it is a statement — a signal to policymakers of what you value.
Impact
“I am a cell-sized unit of the human organism, and I have to use my life to leverage a shift in the system by how I am, as much as with the things I do. This means actually being in my life, and it means bringing my values into my daily decision making. Each day should be lived on purpose.” - adrienne marie brown
Do our individual actions change the world, or does real change only happen when political leaders make large-scale policy decisions?
In this brief article, I’m going to suggest a boycott that’s simpler than it sounds, but more radical than the ones you’re probably used to. It will also be arguably much more effective, both in improving your own life and in fighting the systemic problems that may have led you to other boycotts in the past.
But first, the agency question — can individual action change a broken world? This is a debate as old as society itself, and I’m sure you have a position on it, as do I. But I’m not going to answer the question. Instead, I want to challenge a couple of assumptions that are baked into it.
First, the question assumes that there is only one world to change. But there are many. Each of us inhabits our own position in the world, and from that position, we live a wholly unique life. Some of us live in a world where the air has always been clean; others live in areas where the air is very dirty. For some of us, strangers can generally be trusted; for others, strangers are hostile. For some, there is always enough food to go around (and if there isn’t enough, we can buy more); others know what it means to truly go hungry.
The point is, different corners of the world are meaningfully different. This means that change can happen in your corner of the world, even if it lags in other corners. So while it is true that your individual actions will probably not change the whole of America, you can radically transform the world that you inhabit — and improve life for you and your community.
The second assumption in the question is a false dichotomy. Individual action and large-scale policy go hand-in-hand — they work together to create change. When you begin to act differently as an individual, you are making a statement, and people are listening. Policy doesn’t come from nowhere — policymakers are always taking in information about the ways people act, and they use that as a signal for where the country is and where it needs to go. The more visible the individual action, the more likely it is to shift policy.