Why organized boycotts don't work: Part II

Last week I posted a blog on organized boycotts and why they don’t really work.

For those of you who missed Part I of this blog I will recap my assertion that for a public, organized boycott to be successful it must have not only widespread participation but also a real reduction in demand for the product or service being offered by the person or company being boycotted.

Last week I took a look at what I call the one day boycott. This week I take a look at a second type of boycott (and my favorite to make fun of)...

The political/philosophical disagreement boycott.

Why organized boycotts don't work: Part I

The Wikipedia entry defines a boycott as “an act of voluntarily abstaining from using, buying, or dealing with a person, organization, or country as an expression of protest, usually for political reasons.” And if the boycott is simply a means of personal expression I believe the boycott works.

There are some products that I just don’t use or companies that I just won’t do business with simply because it is important to me not to support them with my wallet. I believe this to be a success not because I have force a change in the policy of the person or organization but because I have eliminated them from my sphere. But public, organized boycotts are different.

A public, organized boycott seeks to force change onto a person or business by the use of economic forces, specifically the use of reduced demand. But for such an action to be successful the boycott must have two components: 1) widespread adoption 2) actual reduction of demand for the product or service offered by the offending person or business.

In this first post I will take a look at one type of public, organized boycott and explain why I don’t think it works. First up…

The One Day Boycott

We deserve better. We should demand better.

Rep. Anthony Weiner

Today marked another in a long list of US politicians that have been recently caught in an embarrassing sexual scandal.

At this point I am not interested in discussing the politics of all of this because, honestly, it happens on both sides of the aisle; Republicans and Democrats alike.

Mark Sanford. Elliot Spitzer. John Ensign. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Chris Lee. Larry Craig. Mark Foley. John Edwards. David Vitter. Anthony Weiner. And many more.

I think the thing that bothers me the most is all the lying.

Let us all take a step back for a minute. Even if we strip away the discussion of Judeo-Christian morality and monogamy we are still left with questions for these men.

These politicians put up a persona, a facade that is intended to make them electable by the majority of their constituents. They fudge a little here and there to make their family look happy and well adjusted, yet we find that in many cases the life we see is really little more than a cardboard prop; a thin veneer that hides the truth about these men and women we choose to lead us.

How can we really trust someone when nearly everything we know about them is a lie? How can we trust anything they tell us when everything they have told us about themselves is, at best, a well spun half-truth?

And what happens when the deeds of the past threaten to surface?

In the latest scandal to surface there were six women who each had enough to individually blackmail Rep. Weiner.

How do we know that they hadn't already?

How are we supposed to be sure that parts of the massive amount of debt the federal government has racked up was not a sole result of governance of the people?

It is one thing to debate the merit of Keynesian economics verses free market capitalism, but something entirely different and sad to consider the possibility of using tax money to cover up a scandal.

There really is no way to know what extra funding, what road project, what hidden earmark was written into a bill in order to pay a blackmail ransom.

These are not the kinds of things we should have to be wondering about those we choose to govern us.

They should have honesty.

They should have integrity.

They should have character.

But instead we elect whomever can hold on the longest in the centrifuge we call our election process.

Who ever can dig up the most dirt on the other guy while keeping his mess a secret? Yep, that is the candidate that will win.

But shouldn't we have more?

We deserve better, and we should demand better.

But what are you for?

"They have a cave troll." - LOTR

So, yesterday I had an interesting run-in with a troll.

For those of you not familiar with the modern slang use of the word troll, rest assured that I did not come across a mythological creature from a Tolkien story.

In modern use, a troll is a person who posts provocative and often off-topic statements in online environments such as blog comments, Twitter, etc. with the purpose of eliciting a strong response or otherwise derailing the conversation.

It all started when I tweeted that I thought that though it was very early in the primary season, I was impressed with Herman Cain as a candidate.

Almost immediately I received a reply about how Herman Cain was a poor choice because he does not hate Islam.

Normally I try to stay away from feeding trolls (a euphemism for responding to or acknowledging a troll's statements) but I guess I was feeling a little feisty because I replied.

Makes sense; right?!?

Essentially the whole conversation descended into a great deal of logical fallacies and assumptions being spewed by the troll, but the one thing I never got an answer to was what this person stood FOR.

She talked a lot about how she hates Islam...

And how she has a right to hate Islam...

And she has a right to say that she hates Islam...

And how I was trying to silence her, but she never really articulated a positive direction for her life.

Is it really so strange that I don't feel the need to make decisions based on a religion that I don't even practice?

I don't know about anyone else, but I am so tired of voting for someone because of what they are against or because they press all the right "fear" buttons.

What ever happened to leaders who inspired us to be better and to achieve more? Are we doomed to live in fear of the things we hate? Must we all sink to the lowest common denominator when making decisions?

Can we all just drop the hate-for-the-sake-of-hate and just start leading off with what we are for rather than what we are against?

I don't think such a thing would end conflict, as there are plenty of things a person can be for that have opposites, but at least we would start the conversation on a positive note.

I don't really expect many of the potential political candidates to read my little blog; but if they did I would just like to ask one question:

What are you for?