this post was submitted on 22 Nov 2023
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I literally debated someone yesterday over whether or not it's the consumers willingness to buy that created the demand for a product.
Dude straight up tried to argue that it's the company's fault for making a product, as if they wouldn't do it specifically because they're going to make money on it.
This website is full of kids who can't grasp basic economic principles. If everyone stopped buying, all these businesses would go under. They don't care about the social media bitching, the only way to get the message across is the only thing they care about.
Stop giving them your money.
On one hand yes, if everyone stopped buying their product then the company would go under. Just like if you just eat less, you'd lose weight
But these such oversimplifications that they lead to the wrong conclusions. You want to lose weight? Learn about nutrition, avoid triggers, and learn to cook from single ingredients. Raw willpower can work... But it's basically the worst strategy. Most people can't do it, and most of them that do regain the weight within 18 months
You want companies to stop doing consumer hostile things that destroy companies? You need to look at the small number of people making profits on the process of destroying the company
The problem with economics is that it's taught like a religion. You get nice, believable mechanisms, but not only are they not tested empirically when they're adopted, it takes decades of being obviously false for the idea to lose steam.
Inflation is an example... Wage growth is empirically not tightly coupled to it - we have the numbers, they aren't ambiguous. But you tell this to people and they'll scoff, because the commonly used model of economics says so in a neatly packaged narrative.
Voting with your wallet is the same. Refusing to buy a product does not push a company in a desired direction, they'll (accurately) see it as a pr and/or marketing problem. It's cheaper to change the minds of consumers than the build better products, it's cheaper to lobby governments than to clean up after yourself, and it's easier, more reliable, and highly profitable to reposition yourself to win big by tanking a company than it is to making it better
I fuckin hate how right you are.
goddammit.
Regarding your last paragraph: asking for forgiveness is cheaper than asking for permission (when you're rich)
Oh, I'm not talking about asking for forgiveness... What I'm saying is that you can straight up make enormous profit in tanking a company, and it's not even illegal. You just have to do it right
The problem with that reasoning is that capitalists have a means of generating demand artificially.