Culture warriors face two additional problems:
They tend to want to boycott places they never shopped at in the first place.
The company’s actual core demographic takes umbrage about the boycott and stages a much more effective counterboycott.I can’t tell you how many times I have had some version of the following conversation:
Angry person on the Internet: Wal-Mart’s treatment of its workers is shameful. I am not going to give that company any of my business!
Me: How much did you spend at Wal-Mart before you realized its treatment of workers was shameful?
The modal answer to this query is sudden disappearance from the conversation. I’m not sure anyone has confessed to spending as much as $1,000 a year at the stores. Of those who claim to shop there, most seem to do so almost entirely on vacation in rural areas.
If this describes you, you are not Wal-Mart’s core demographic, and its executives don’t care whether you boycott the business; the loss in sales is less than they experience from miscalculating what sort of sunscreen to buy. They care very much about what their core demographic thinks, but those people are, by and large, not interested in these boycotts; they’re interested in paying 12 cents a can less for tomatoes.
As she notes, Chick-fil-A is a canonical example.
The problem is that too many companies don’t realize this. The left stage a Twitter Jihad against Foobar, Inc, and Foobar, Inc management say ‘OMG, we must DO SOMETHING!’ and they do it, and they suddenly find they lose a ton of business because the Twitter Jihadis were never their customers and the real customers are pissed off both by what they did and by the stupidity of doing so.
Still, I guess it’ll be a case of Evolution In Action over time, as the stupid companies die and are are replaced by smarter ones.
“In September 2012, The Civil Rights Agenda (TCRA) announced that Chick-fil-A has “ceased donating to organizations that promote discrimination, specifically against LGBT civil rights.” According to the TCRA, Chick-fil-A officials stated in an internal document that they “will treat every person equally, regardless of sexual orientation.”[67] In a letter from Chick-fil-A’s Senior Director of Real Estate, the company states, “The WinShape Foundations is now taking a much closer look at the organizations it considers helping, and in that process will remain true to its stated philosophy of not supporting organizations with political agendas.”[68]
According to Chicago Alderman Proco “Joe” Moreno, Chick-fil-A has a statement of respect for all sexual orientations in an internal document called Chick-fil-A: Who We Are and has promised that its not-for-profit arm, WinShape, would not contribute money to groups that oppose gay marriage.[69]”
chick-fil-a decided to change policy anyways.
Wasn’t Chicago the city that said they were going to close down all the restaurants that didn’t conform to ever changing Democrat ideology? Does that mean when Republicans are in power the can purge the business community from everyone that doesn’t support them on abortion or tax policy?
Do you have a citation for that?
The citations would be the vast number of news articles that discussed Rahm Emanuel and Boston mayor Thomas Menino’s pledges to ban Chik-Fil-A from their cities.
159,000 results in Bing for Rahm banning Chick Fil A alone, but I guess if deny guy never heard of it, it didn’t happen and wodun is just making it up. The internet equivalent of fingers in ears yelling, “la,la,la I can’t hear you”.
I don’t live in Chicago, so it’s not a news story i would follow, but it was interesting to google the stories. The ACLU and Mother Jones thought Emmanuel was
out of line here.
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/07/rahm-emanuel-needs-back-chick-fil
“I don’t live in Chicago, so it’s not a news story i would follow, ”
You didn’t follow Chick fil a? Did you know that a Democrat tried to shoot up a bunch of people and brought Chick fil a sandwiches to stuff in their mouths after they were murdered? Remember Obama and the Democrats accusation that rhetoric causes violence? This is sometimes true, especially when the rhetoric is a literal call to violence.
This was a story that had nation wide attention. The coverage seemed to drop off after the Democrat’s FRC shooting. I am not sure why Democrat claim to be anti-war but always use violence for their domestic political agenda.
They only like wars against the Domestic Enemy, not real ones.
I think it is funny that deny guy needs Mother Jones to tell him when Rahm is out of line. I guess those decisions are above his paygrade.
Is there any decision, other than whether or not to respirate, that isn’t above his pay grade?
The Left has been getting steadily stupider over the years (I blame the Internet, and you kids stay off my lawn), but it’s like this Hobby Lobby thing has caused their collective IQ to drop at least 20 points. It’s like they’re ALL dn-guy now! Look at what seems to be the arguments advanced by the State-shtuppers on the blog: “International Widget already provides benefits A, B, and C to their employees, so that entitles my gang to force Ineternation Widget to provide D” [and of course, down the road, E, F and G, or basically whatever the Hive feels like). As Ben Franklin’s dictum that “force sh/ts on reason” has never been better illustrated than in the Hobby Lobby dust-up.
I’d suggest you read NFIB v Sebelius where the Supreme Court stated that the PPACA was a
legitimate use of the Taxation Power of Congress. Congress can engage in all sorts of
social policy via taxation.
” Congress can engage in all sorts of
social policy via taxation.”
Except where it violates the Constitution.
In which case, usually a balancing test cuts in. Very few constitutional rights are “Absolute”, most are either basic rights or occasionally “Fundamental” rights, very few are Absolute.
That’s your progressive distortion of the meaning of rights.
Yes, Obama is the biggest tax increaser in history. According to Obama, health insurance is a right and it is a government benefit. It stands to reason that when SCOTUS determined that the Obamacare penalty is a tax, then it means paying your premium is also a tax.
So, your health insurance premiums are a tax that subsidize government benefits. Your employer isn’t buying you health insurance, they are paying a tax which allows the government to provide health insurance. The employer tax directly corresponds to the number of people employed. Meaning, the more people you employ, the higher the tax rate. A company can choose to pay the tax directly to the government or they can pay it to government controlled insurance companies. They can also choose to pay a larger tax than is required by the law but they can not choose not to pay the tax. To top it all off, a company that chooses to pay a higher tax in order to giver better insurance to their employees gets to pay another tax because that level of insurance isn’t fair to people who have lesser plans.
The thing to keep in mind, is that taxes are used to discourage behavior. Cadillac plans are taxed to discourage them from being offered because Obama and the Democrats want parity of coverage. No one is allowed to have better health insurance than someone else*. But Obamacare is a tax on employment, where the more employees you have, the higher your tax burden. This means Obamacare will discourage employment.
* Groups of people connected to Democrats will be allowed to have better insurance than others. In fact, the system is designed to funnel money and treatment to groups Democrats want to appeal to and those who are ideologically connected to the Democrat party.