[oddeyed]

I'm curious how you think that a country would ever stop consuming soy from Brazil unless there was a strong desire from the populace of the country to stop doing so.

Markets allow you to vote every time you buy something on what your values are. Every time you choose to buy something from, say Brazil, that will be read as an endorsement of Brazil whenever someone looks at a balance sheet of imports and decides whether they can afford to instigate some kind of ban.

I think that people making personal choices about their own consumption is a very reasonable way for them to signal their desires and so the changes you say (and I agree) are required can be worked towards through grassroots community (e.g. asking people to individually boycott products).

[imtringued]

> Every time you choose to buy something from, say Brazil, that will be read as an endorsement of Brazil

But that decision was not made by the consumer. It was made by the executives of Burger King who decided to buy beef from a factory farm that has decided to buy soy from Brazil which has farmers that have decided to exploit the rain forest because the government has decided to not do anything against it.

[distances]

I don't think consumer choices are good for this at all. Society has to have structure where you can buy the things you need without doing a background check on everything. I don't want to research that each and every piece of electronics I buy is free of conflict minerals and slavery!

It's a job for our chosen representatives. We've given the mandate, it's up to them to create market frameworks with this through policies and trade agreements. And it works: EU doesn't import hormone laden meat, and could similarly decide on environmental requirements too.

Policy can be affected by voting, public discourse, and demonstrations, whereas active consumer choice would be very poor driver for that.