| Boycotts typically have stated goals to them. They want the boycotted businesses to change some specific behavior. You measure the success of the boycott based on whether there was a resulting shift toward the change the boycott was seeking. History is filled with examples of both successful and unsuccessful boycotts. > Maybe instead of outright failure of a given company we want it to act with moral integrity. That is the goal of almost all boycotts. > It would seem to me that voting with your $ is the only way It is the only way ordinary people can have any influence at all, yes. Personally, I don't do or advocate for boycotts -- instead, what I do is recognize that every dollar I spend is a vote telling the company I spent it with that "I love what you're doing and want you to keep doing it." So I don't spend my money on companies that are doing things I find objectionable (as far as possible -- there are so many defacto monopolies around that it's literally impossible to live without funding some awful company or another), and advocate for others to do the same. It's not really a "boycott", which is a specific form of activism aimed at changing specific behavior of particular companies. Instead, it's a mindset the guides my spending across the board. It doesn't matter of "the mob" joins me or not. It's a personal ethical stance that is independent of whether or not others behave similarly. |