“Heavily integrated into eBay” except it isnt any more.
Firstly the article is a year and a half old but although you can still use PayPal on eBay to say it is heavily integrated is bullshit. EBay started moving away from PayPal years ago and at this point have integrated their own systems linking to your bank account to take the place of what they used to use PayPal for.
Maybe one of these options are good?
https://alternativeto.net/software/paypal/
https://alternativeto.net/software/venmo/
While we’re at it:
Looking through Amazon alternatives… they all suck so far. Though this Etsy alternative looks interesting:
Any alternatives to PayPal?
Depends on which function you want to replace?
With iOS app of paypal, you are forcefully giving honey as well, luckily, you can disable the safari plugin
I just have opted out overall and literally use as little as I can across the board.
You literally cannot escape these companies, they own everything. Every brand of every everything, and you’ve got a large corporation in there somewhere in the shadows. That’s why they tell you to separate the art from the artist, because it’s been made impossible to boycott anything.
I can easily avoid every company owned by PayPal.
I wish I could say the same, I use PayPal very frequently because my credit union doesn’t support debit-visa. With PayPal I can make payments with my bank online rather than use my cc.
Ah that’s interesting, all the banks around me stopped issuing ATM cards and only issue debit cards nowadays. I wish I wasn’t required to have a debit card with those banks - I purposely tell my banks to disable debit/POS features on the debit card so it is only functional at ATMs.
All that aside you should consider getting a credit card or a prepaid credit card for those types of transactions. It’s safer to separate your bank account from your day-to-day payments/shopping, not great when someone gets access to your debit card which then gives them direct access to your bank account balance. At least with a credit card those situations are just a dispute that never affect your actual money in the bank.
I work in a servo/convenience store and about 3/4 of our drink fridges (all 10 or so doors worth) are the same 4 brands. Probably most of the store is covered under like 7 brands.
Coke, Pepsi, Schweppes, Nestle, Unilever and there goes almost everything edible and drinkable that isn’t fresh.
Now here’s the scrubber of this all – If you REALLY want to be serious – Go to a farmers market.
Oh wait, almost every fucking farmer is a Trump supporter…
I’d rather support a working farmer than an evil corporation
Well obviously - me as well - but I’m being told by extremists here that any support for a Trump supporter makes me a Nazi, and I don’t want to be one of those.
Fairly accurate.
A lot of them, sure. Not all of them.
not for long, it seems…
Disagree, haven’t touched PayPal or anything related to PayPal in years without issue.
When PayPal bought Venmo I stopped using them too. And long before that stopped using Ebay back when PayPal/Ebay were tied together.
Really? Maybe true for things like Nestlé but I don’t use any of these services directly and it hasn’t been difficult.
Nestlé is easy. I didn’t know the last time I bought something from them.
I don’t know
Exactly.
Nestle owns…
Gerber NaturNes Cerelac SMA Nutrition NAN Alfamino Alfaré Althéra Ascenda БЫСТРОВ Beba Bobo Frut Ceregrow Cognita Gold Excella Gold G-Balance Good Care Illuma 3 Lactogen Lactogrow Lactokid Little Steps Folgemilch Materna Mater-Plus Mio Mucilon Nangrow Nanlac Nativa NatureNes Neslac Nestlé Junior Nestogen Nestum Nidal Nidina Ninho Opti-Lac P’tit Piltti Promise PE Gold S-26 Sinlac Yogolino Bottled Water Nestlé Pure Life Perrier S. Pellegrino Acqua Panna Vittel Alaçam Aquarel Buxton Ciego Montero Contrex Eco de Los Andes Erekli Essentia Glaciar Henniez Hèpar La Vie Levissima Minere Nałęczowianka Nestlé Splash Sanbitter Sta. María Valvert Viladrau Κορπή Cereal Fitness Nesquik Cereal Lion Chocapic Bar-One Box Bowls Cerevita Chokella Cini Minis Clusters Country Corn Flakes Curiously Cinnamon Estrelitas GoFree Cereal Golden Morn Golden Nuggets Honey Gold Flakes Honey Stars Koko Krunch La Lechera Flakes Lifita Mix NAT Nesfit NesPlus Nestlé Musli Neston Oats & More Snow Flakes Uncle Tobys Zucosos Chocolate, Cookies, and Confections Kit Kat Toll House Smarties Quality Street Aero Rowntree’s Garoto Orion Cailler After Eight Damak Allen’s Lollies Alpino Amor Animalines y Saladitas Anticol Baci Balaton Bananita Dolca Baolu Baton Besos de Moza Big Turk Boci Bolero Bombones Surtidos Bon Pari Bono Bros Buon Natale Caja Roja Calipso Caramac Carlos V Chambinho Charge Choclait Chips Choco Crossies Chokito Coco Classic Cocosette Coffee Crisp Cremositas Crispy Shark Wafers Cui Cui Deli Dois Frades Dolca Doré Ecuateur Extrafin Familiar Negro Fox’s Freskas Fruitips Fun Fruit Galak Hašlerky Hsu Fu Chi Joe Jojo Комильфо Kaštany Kofila Lanvin Larín La Fête Chocolat Lentejas Lentilky Les Recettes de l’Atelier Lion LZ Mabel’s Wafers Mackintosh’s Margo McKay Menier Milkybar Mini’s Mirage Modré z Neba Morochas Munch Munchies Mypa Negresco Nescau Nesfit Nestlé 1927 Özel Serisi Nestlé Amor Nestlé Mio Nestlé Muecas Nestlé Sal Nestlé Snack Nestlé Turrón Nestlé Vainilla Nestlé Zoologia Nestlé Nuts Passatempo Passions Peppermint Crisp Perugina Ping Pong Plaistowe Polo Prestígio Princessa Россия щедрая душа Ricas Sahne Nuss Samba São Luiz Savoy Sfinx Soothers Sorrento Studentska Sublime Suflair Sundy Super 8 Susy Svitoch Talento Tango Tex Toffee Crisp Toffo Tola Toronto Trencito Triangulo Turtles Yes! Yorkie Coffee Nespresso Nescafé Nescafé Dolce Gusto Coffee-Mate Starbucks Coffee at Home Seattle’s Best Aguila Bonjorno Blue Bottle Coffee Bonka Bracafé Brite Buondi Café Musun Cremora El Chana Linde’s Orzoro Presto Sical Zoégas Culinary, Chilled, and Frozen Food Stouffer’s Hot Pockets DiGiorno Buitoni Tombstone Pizza Lean Cuisine Sweet Earth Maggi Libby’s Pumpkin Chambinho Chamyto Chandelle California Pizza Kitchen Creme de Leite Crosse & Blackwell Delissio Pizza Del Monte Frozen Bars Farinha Láctea Gourmet Grego Hälsans Kök Haoji Herta Hirz Jack’s Pizza Leisi Life Cuisine Lindahls Litoral Longa Vida Mahler Mezeast Milk Pak Mivina Nestlé Baker’s Choice Original Wagner Pizza Outsider’s Pizza Company Pak Fook Pasta Italiana Raita Solis Thomy Torchin Tostines Totole Wildscape Food Winiary Dairy Carnation Nido KLIM Svelty Amanecer Anchor Canprolac Cap Nona CereAvena Crema de Leche Dairy Farm Dancow EasyWhip El Mundo del Dulce Esencial Every Day Gloria Green Butterfly Ideal Impulso La Campesina La Laitière La Lechera La Vaquita Lactalis Leche Condensada Manjar Media Crema Table Cream Milkmaid Moca Molico Nespray Nestlé a+ Nestle Omega Nestonutri NesVita Nutri Rindes Quesos Nestlé Rica Chicha Sunshine Sveltesse Qué Rico Yogu Yogu Drinks Nesquik Nestea Ovaltine Milo Abuelita Bolero Brasa Caro Chococino Chocofans Choladi Chuckie Copacabana Ecco Eko Fruita Vitals Gingerino Good Host Granko Huesitos Le Chocolat Morelia Presidencial Natura Nescau Nesfruta Nespray Nestlé Hot Cocoa Nestomalt Orchard Pensal Ricacao Ricoré Salep Savoy Schokolade Sıcak Çikolata SPECIAL.T Sweet Leaf Tea Company Tonimalt Vascolet Food Service Chef Chef-Mate Bear Brand Docello Fruit Time Grown Respectfully Minor’s Milky Time Nature’s Heart nesQuino Procafé Puljonki Sjora Starbucks by Nescafé Dolce Gusto Sunkist Beverages Sunsational Trio Vitality Health Care and Nutrition Boost Optifast Peptamen Novasource Arginaid Benecalorie Beneprotein Betaquik BrainXpert Carnation Breakfast Essentials Celltrient Clinutren Compat Compleat Diabetisource Douglas Laboratories FDgard Fiber Choice FiberMais Fibersource FruitiVits Garden of Life Glutasolve Glytrol IBgard Impact Infasource Isosource Klean K.Quik Meritene Microlipid Minami Mixxpro Modulen ModuLife Nature’s Bounty Nestlé Wellness Nutren Nutrição Até Você NutriStrong Nuun Optisource OptiFibre OsteoBi-Flex Persona PronoKal Pure Encapsulations Puritan’s Pride Quick Eze REMfresh Renalcal Renutryl Replete Resource Solgar Spoonfulone Sondalis Sustagen ThickenUp Tolerex Vitaflo Vital Proteins Vivonex Wobecare CBD Wobe-Mugos Wobenzym Ice Cream Dreyer’s Häagen-Dazs Mövenpick Nestlé Ice Cream 8Cubes Aiskrim Tradisi Antica Gelateria Del Corso Baton Bilz Pap Centella Chamonix Chocolito Chomp Cola de Dino Cola de Tigre Crazy Crocante D’anafria Danky Dis Frutt Drumstick Egocentrico Eskimo Especialidades Napolitano Extreme GOODNORTH Kriko La Cremeria La Frutta LollyPop Mat Kool Maxibon Mega Parlour Prestigio Pura Fruta Real Dairy Sensação Serenata de Amor Scoops Sin Parar Stalden Sundae Swirlz Trululu Zoorpresa Pet Care Purina Purina One Purina Pro Plan Alpo Cat Chow Dog Chow Fancy Feast Tidy Cats Friskies Beggin’ Frosty Paws Adventuros Bakers Complete Bella Beneful Beyond Bonzo Busy Chef Michael’s Canine Creations Darling Dentalife Dogui Doguitos Doko Felix FortiFlora Gati Gatsy Gourmet Honest to Dog Kit & Kaboodle Kitten Chow K-Nina Lily’s Kitchen Luv Merrick Pet Care Moist & Meaty Mon Petit Perrarina Prime Scamp SecondNature Supercoat Terra Canis The Pioneer Woman Dog Treats Tom Poes Trekker’s Whisker Lickin’s
And they print Nestlé on most, if not all, packaging. So it’s easy to see. Your comment has horrendous formatting, so I’m not 100% sure if I got everything, but most of the brands I haven’t even heard of, probably because I just don’t buy that much processed food.
So yes, avoiding Nestlé is easy if you are paying just a little bit of attention while shopping groceries.
That is only the main nestle products. They own so so many things that do not have the nestle brand name on them.
They own the city of Toronto? Explains much I guess
I have none of these in my house, many by conscious choice. It has made no difference in my life. I challenge everyone to do the same. It’s really not THAT hard.
To the point of this post, do you know just how many subsidiary brands nestle operates? Likely true that you didn’t know the last time, but very likely you have patronized them.
Don’t buy processed shit… This simple trick really hurts that parasite.
Yes, as long as they are not operating the vegetable farms in Europe I am rather safe I think
You don’t buy any soda or water?
I do, but they don’t own Coke. And my tap water comes from my tap.
And my tap water comes from my tap.
Every glass is profit stolen from the daddy Capital 🐸
I just finished removing all my payment methods from paypal and have to wait for a transaction to complete before I can delete the account entirely. Took less than 15 minutes.
Who are “they” and who says that that is valid advice?
“Separate the artist…” is fairly accepted by any decent people I know as a way for selfish people to forgive themselves the burden of minor personal sacrifices related to their own consumer activities. The long form is literally, “Yes, Michael Jackson did horrible things to that little boy’s butthole, Woody Allen molested his daughter and married his adopted child and Bill Cosby drugged and raped women for decades, but let’s go buy their movie/album!” - you likely wouldn’t say the long form through, would you? You would hide and obfuscate behind, “sepatate the artist…” So you don’t have to say the bad things out loud.
Nobody with any integrity buys into “separate the artist…”
Also, to your point about this post, again it’s a similarly lazy way to forgive yourself the burden of trying to stay aware of these things and making little changes to how you vote with your wallet. You can absolutely do something like go shop at Costco this week instead of target - as one performatively eliminated diversity programs at their company while one preserved them as a stand. That’s where your opinion falls apart because yes, you can likely find something to hate Costco as well (because they are all garbage companies, but there are shades, they aren’t all equal. You have to participate to function, but you can do the slightest amount of work to shop more consciously. But that is the work you are trying to forgive yourself of.
The point isn’t perfection, but to do enough for this week and try again next week. Before you know it, you’re shopping more consciously wherever you go.
Separate the Art from the Artist is accepted by SANE people, who don’t have time to milk tirades so that they can play victim on the internet so that strangers think they are virtuous.
There is not a thing you do, have, own, buy, or operate that isn’t part of slavery, human exploitation, etc in some way or another. You only do this because you want to virtue signal to others that you think “good thoughts” and so you can be praised for being brave.
You’re not brave. You don’t make a difference. And nobody cares.
If you eat any kind of meat, your an evil “carnist”. If you don’t adopt pets from the shelter, then you’re contributing to pet farming. If you don’t drink from a paper straw then you’re killing turtles.
Everyone everywhere has some problem with someone’s something. You literally cannot avoid it all. Own a smartphone? Then you’re evil and deserve to die because you’re carrying an item that was made by slavery! Let me guess…you’re not gonna give up the smartphone…are you? Yeah - I didn’t think you would.
Nonsense. Most people who boycott products aren’t posting about it on the internet.
And I don’t know why you assume that opposing one company means you have to oppose others. People are allowed to oppose PayPal but not give a crap about eating meat.
You operate under the false premise that people think this is about binary choice, it’s not. The shades of gray matter here. Again, as I stated, perfection isn’t the goal, it is how much of an effort you make to consciously navigate the bullshit we are forced to live within, while also hopefully working to fix the larger broken systems somehow in your lifetime. Progress, not perfection.
You very baldly read as extremely selfish and again, you performatively forgive yourself in public forums so you don’t have to try. You sound like a professional victim. Start listening to those rogue thoughts at night when you’re staring at the ceiling, the ones that tell you you might be completely full of shit, they are on to something…
This site provides absolutely no evidence of any of its claims and even includes the following little gem in the FAQ section on that page:
Is PayPal Safe?
Yes, all Paypal transactions are encrypted. Plus, it has two-factor authentication and fraud protection.
Safe for its customers, or safe for PayPal?
The site was a quick roundup of info to link to. Post isn’t an endorsement of the site and doesn’t try to be, it’s an endorsement of the broader idea. I didn’t say to eat a bowl of horseshit and smile about it, I said PayPal owns Venmo and the implication is that a lot of decent people will stop using Paypal in protest and say, “I’ll just use Venmo instead”.
So helping some of the younger folks realize that separation doesn’t exist in many large brands - a thing that a lot of us do know and consider, but don’t be so arrogant as to assume people aren’t learning these things every day.
You want to hurt the money changer?
Use cash as much as possible… that shit really hurts these parasites.
Buy us bonds directly from the Treasury! They hate it!
Another tactic is … don’t spend money on things if you don’t really need to. Why keep spending just to continually spend, spend, spend.
Wrong time to put money into government…
my man… USD is daddy’s money…he lets you use them, if you you don’t piss him off.
if you are worried about USD, them being in some shiti savings account aint gonna be any less risky then having it in US treasuries.
what did PayPal do?
It’s an early specimen of “unregulated bank”, founded in part by Trump buddy Peter Thiel and merged with Elon Musk’s X.com in 2000.
They have a history of locking accounts under false pretenses and seizing the money. It’s screwed over many a Kickstarter and Indiegogo. Early in Minecraft history, Notch lost access to over half a million dollars. They’ve failed to pay rewards in their software bug bounty program.
Edit: The usual antics for Musk and friends for 20 years.
Also, I checked my records. I’m biased (a word that the current US administration is erasing from all government documents) because of an early Amazon third-party seller plus PayPal experience; the item I was sent was wrong and 5% of the value of what I ordered. Returned sealed cheap item, seller wouldn’t refund. PayPal ruled in the seller’s favor and Amazon did not care because of third-party seller terms and conditions. A young person out a few hundred bucks doesn’t forget that.
Braintree, Honey, Paydiant, Tradera, Xoom, and Zettle all owned by PayPal.
Not the modern X.com to be clear; Musk just has a weird fetish for the letter X like an edgy teenager.
Now you got me started on X… 😂 While true, Musk is no fool and bought such a simple and recognizable domain back from PayPal in 2017 for an undisclosed amount.
He’s a successful businessman, no doubt. Problem is that billionaires are pulling up the ladders behind them as wealth inequality is increasing (power is concentrating).
Twitter was well-known to be infested with bots when Musk purchased it. Turns out, that made it more valuable to someone rich who wants to sway elections…
Shop local, use smaller local services (credit unions), drop services owned by or purchased by billionaires (Too busy ranting and I haven’t actually read this article yet 🤣)
Decentralization, power to the people and not just the few, as the founding fathers intended. To our European viewers… He’s coming. (You know who. Not talking about Jesus who the churches have replaced with culture war nonsense.)
right. I just thought they’d made the news today or something.
Nah. News… Uh, in an adjacent saga, billionaire Kanye West is selling swastika t-shirts. So that’s where we’re at with these people…
Oh boy… Look up peter thiel, elon musk and david sacks to start - three stains on humanity working very actively to end it as we speak. They were the basin founding faces of PayPal (I mean, I think musk came on after the fact or was pushed out early or something, continuing the trend of him never actually creating anything). Currently they are alll very active in the trump admin - two with officially appointed positions, one in the shadows. Vance is also created by thiel. Look up that “Dark Gothic maga” video (musk’s stupid name) that’s been shared often recently.
Then separately, PayPal owns Honey, and it turns out has been scamming millions, maybe billions away from online creators for years, probably some of your favorites included in that list. Active lawsuit ongoing - look up legal eagle’s video maybe as a start.
All these billionaire fucks made their fortunes through Paypal and still likely hold stock and maybe board positions, can’t recall?
Hear, hear. It fucking sucks that we created these monsters. At least I did, for simply wanting to use eBay.
Zelle is separate right?
From wikipedia
Zelle (/zɛl/) is a United States–based digital payments network run by a private financial services company owned by the banks Bank of America, Truist, Capital One, JPMorgan Chase, PNC Bank, U.S. Bank, and Wells Fargo.
So PayPal does not seem to own an interest in Zelle, but the group of owners isn’t necessarily better than PayPal.
It’s capital all the way down, man.
A group of different bad people behind Zelle. But maybe enough to stop supporting those few South African ghouls working to role America and then the would beyond. You’ll need to decide where your line is, but deleting PayPal account and uninstalling their apps is a start. Maybe you go to Zelle and use that while you research if there is something decent somewhere.
Maybe it means going back to small credit unions? paper checks? Direct bank transfers with friends/family? Not sure what best alternatives is currently. Banking in general is just not really ever going to contain good people - maybe if we allow personal banking at the post office one day - but that’s a pipe dream as fascists are denying judges rulings and releasing January 6 criminals who tased a cop in the neck and admitted to it under oath.
See, this isn’t viable.
This is the “ban plastic straws” of late stage capitalism. Overrepresenting individual action to distract from the need of structural reform.
Stop voting with your wallet, it’s pointless. Consumption is not expressing support. Vote with your votes, if you’re in a place where you have a chance to do so, find other ways to organize collective action if you don’t.
Naw sorry, I tried that this last election and got embarrassed. Went hardcore Democrat, Coconut-pilled, blah blah blah.
I genuinely tried to believe in it, voted early, got friends and family to show up and vote too. Not only did the dems lose, they lost worse than they have in decades.
And to make matters worse, the Democratic party largely has completely missed why they lost so badly to the most pathetic excuse for a president in American history.
It’s too late for large scale positive structural change with the current political parties in the USA. The Dems must be torn apart and re-shaped into a populist left-wing party to have any chance of meaningful change. Until that happens, voting with your dollar is the only kind of vote that will be taken seriously.
Extremely local elections, sure, vote for a leftist candidate that might actually win some small office. But unless it’s that, vote with your dollar and engage in direct action to serve your community and build genuine solidarity.
The two are not mutually exclusive…
People can take direct action
People can organized and act as a group in solidarity.
Stop voting with your wallet, it’s pointless.
Yes… consume like a brain dead idiot, esp follow shiti marketing campaigns online, deff make sure you buy that trash 🤡
And remember… “voting” is how we got here in the first place.
Americans don’t understand what going into proper opposition means. hint, it aint voting for the “other” guy
If you’re in a country with a two party system then voting has even less impact that than giving your money to a more worthwhile company.
Consumption is not expressing support.
You may not support them with your words but giving them money is literally support. Like giving a horse an apple and then saying you’re not feeding it.
No, it’s like giving the horse a sugar cube where you own exactly one of the grains of sugar, taking your grain of sugar away and pretending you’ve made a difference.
Or, you know, banning plastic straws.
You’re absolutely wrong about two party systems in any case, even those have tons of elected roles in different layers of governance where changes matter. And that’s also where the collective action comes in. Your feel-good token choices of companies and services to avoid haven’t done anything in the past thirty years and aren’t going to start now.
A lot of people own a gram of sugar and make up a lot of sugar cubes. Informing them and motivating boycotts can have an accumulating effect.
But I’d say vote with both anyway. Your democratic vote and your money.
No, it can’t. It’s an ultraliberal fiction about a self-correcting market we know for a fact doesn’t play out in reality.
This would require wealth to be roughly evenly divided, it would require enough supply to always have a supplier available who brands on whatever issue the consumer is trying to push on every market and it would require the consumer to research every issue and track it throughout the corporate ownership chain effectively.
It just doesn’t work like that. The way it works is I don’t like to pay Microsoft OR Google for their crappy office suites, but the open source alternatives are bad and the people I work with require using those for compatibility reasons, so I pay both.
What I can do, though, is set up a social democratic state where I don’t have to make an ethical or political statement with my choice of office software, I have a government in place that will fine the crap out of them for their infractions.
And if that’s not working, my action can be placed on pressuring the government, for which I have way fewer constraints and way more agency.
If it makes you feel funny to pay for a thing absolutely pay for something else. That’s all well and good. But don’t fool yourself and others by pretending it’s an effective form of political action or a moral responsibility. It’s neither.
Now apply that logic to voting. Your vote is a grain of sugar, yet it somehow does have an effect, doesn’t it?
Yep. Because your vote is not based on how much capital you have, but assigned (more or less) equally across the population.
I did the math. The average US-ian’s vote counts as much as Elon Musk’s (if they live in the same state). On average their “wallet vote” counts 0.00002% as much as Musk’s. Even before he bought the presidency, by the way, just as a matter of purchasing power.
Where do you think you have more of an effect?
Again, voting with your wallet has exactly zero value. Your money is a rounding error compared to your vote and your direct political action.
Individually we do not make much of a difference in anything but that’s an excuse to avoid searching for a better company and often tolerating a worse offer (e.g. a fair trade product that costs more, or lacks modern features).
Change in politics certainly matters but your individual support of a political party in terms of one vote has practically no affect on the result in a winner-take-all/first-past-the-post voting system. Your individual “vote” in support of a company is at least a non-zero value, and sometimes is multiple “votes” per year.
People often say it would be better if just more people voted, but that’s only helpful for them because they imagine they would vote for the main party they like the most. I doubt that’s the case. The most important structural reform imo is to increase the representation of the public in government - and it’s not a main party’s self interests to do that. Voting is unlikely to change that.
Yes it is. What other company for payment management will you find? It’s an extremely narrow oligopoly, and that’s even counting the credit card agencies that suck just as much as PayPal.
You have zero agency as an economic player. Exactly zero.
You won’t impact PayPal getting richer by researching a different coupon provider than Honey. That’s not how this is going to play out at any point in time.
You don’t enact change by leveraging the breadcrumbs of an income you have as a salaried worker. You do so by leveraging real collective power in an organized, effective manner. As a player in government (by voting or holding office, because running is also part of democracy) or as a non-government organization. Those are your options. Anything else is whatever the equivalent of greenwashing is for activism.
There are no good options sometimes. I place my hope in GNU Taler as a means to send and accept payment in the future (it’s anonymous for the buyer but the seller is identifiable for tax reasons).
We’ll have to agree to disagree on the effectiveness of voting with wallets.
What would you call an example of ‘real collective power’?
We don’t have to agree to disagree, it’s measurable. You just don’t have enough capital to make a dent before large numbers and market forces make it impossible to have an effect. That’s why we have governments and regulations in the first place. “Vote with your wallet” is part of the anarchocapitalist fiction that free markets self-regulate by way of the public acting on them through their consumption choices affecting supply and demand. It just doesn’t happen, demonstrably.
Real collective power is, ideally, enacted through those regulations under a rule of law. Governments made of people and acting on their behalf get to coerce rich assholes into following rules. It’s also collective action, like collective bargaining through unions enforced by a right to strike protected by the government.
If your republic has failed to do these things get trickier and you get into the territory of forcing reform through protest, mass disobedience or general strike. And yes, in extreme cases eventually revolution, but man, people online sure like to misrepresent how quickly or effectively through revolution because waiting for revolution is easier than actually doing the work.
I find Americans in particular are surprinsingly reticent to acknowledging this for a place that sacralizes both their foundational moment and several key historical landmarks, all enacted through these means. Nobody ever remembers the Great Burker King Boycott of 1972 or whatever. How is this even a debate.
