Corporations are weaved into the fabric of everyday life. You don’t want a soda (or a “pop” to you Midwesterners), you want a Coke, or a Pepsi if you have low self esteem. You don’t drive a car, you drive a Toyota. You “tweet”, a neologism derived from the platform. You “post” on Facebook (or you “enter the Metaverse”, which is my new excuse for taking too long in the bathroom).
This free market system functions only when placing corporations at the feet of their customers. After all, they’ll do anything to not lose you, the consumer.
A slight tilt in this formula and the market ceases to exist. When a handful of corporations run the show, what are you gonna do? Close your account at Bank A and move to Bank B, which has the same long wait times, same overdraft fees, and one teller window open? None of these corporations need you as a customer – in fact, losing your business does them a favor in ceasing to use their resources to retain you as a customer.
Corporations are aware of this, which is why the old customer service model of “we’ll make it right” has been replaced by “go away”. It’s why corporations are far bolder now in making political pronouncements, something they would’ve balked at a couple of days ago out of fear of offending the consumer.
In the better-than-now old days, corporations donated to both sides politically, usually in blanket self-interest: lower taxes and policies that allowed them to function more effortlessly. Now corporations are emboldened to “take a stand”, leading to the Orwellian pronouncements of corporations “certifying” the 2020 presidential election and “condemning” the “violence” of the January 6 protests.
Not one person at the Capitol on January 6 was provoked or prevented by whether or not T-Mobile released a statement regarding that day, but corporations felt compelled to bleat focus group boilerplate.
These aren’t politicians or elected officials.
Their sway over policy is supposedly limited to niche interest like broadband coverage rights, not electoral fraud in a handful of states. But they saw fit to act in a way that alienates at least half their customer base.
If you’re on the Right you can safely assume a corporation you transact with on a monthly or even more frequent basis doesn’t like you or want your business, despite needing it to survive. They’ve already calculated you’re not going to organize, boycott, or make a fuss in any way that will hurt their bottom line – they’ll continue to despise you and your values but happily take your dollar.
A good example is Dick’s Sporting Goods.
After the Parkland shooting, CEO Ed Stack “took a stand” by phasing out gun sales at Dick’s Sporting Goods stores, arguably the safest and most legal way to purchase a gun.
Stack went on to advocate for gun control, despite the measure being opposed by 80% of Republicans.
4 of the top 10 stores Republicans shop at are sporting goods stores.
Ostensibly, more Republicans shop at Dick’s Sporting Goods than Democrats.
“Well just shop elsewhere!” you say, perhaps at a store that greater reflects your values.
I found myself needing to shop for weightlifting gloves, which, courtesy of supply chain issues, are sold out at Amazon and on eBay and not available at any other place except, you guessed it, Dick’s Sporting Goods.
And of course, Dick’s Sporting Goods has, in concert with a few other major sporting goods stores, gobbled up any local mom-and-pop shop selling the same item twenty years ago. In fact, you’d be hard pressed to find a locally-owned store these days that isn’t a restaurant, which if they want to keep their margins fat enough to survive, is just a storefront for Sysco.
I was faced with the decision millions of Americans make without hesitation every day – do I shop at a store that hates what I believe but needs my business?
I got my gloves and left, realizing I just put $50 in the coffers of a company that’ll use their profit percentages to employ a whole bunch of people they disagree with and donate to causes that those employees and their customers disagree with.
“What we need is a conservative sporting goods store!” someone will shout into the void, mustering the same energy that formed Black Rifle Coffee, a liberal window-dressing operation that threw Kyle Rittenhouse under the bus faster than his assailant.
In absence of ideologically parallel corporations, the Right needs to do what the Left has been doing for years – make it uncomfortable for corporations to support causes you disagree with.
The Left is organized – they send in petitions, target advertisers and suppliers, and stage protests and boycotts.
The Right huffs and puffs and shops there anyway.
The pendulum can, and should, swing back to the center.
You don’t need the place you buy your running shoes to be societally woke, you need them to have the best price for running shoes that will last you a few years.
Every place that sells a gun, or a fur coat, or some other staple of American life up to a couple decades ago should be allowed to sell those items without fear of backlash under the same principal pronounced by the Left when it comes to legalized infanticide – “if you don’t like abortion, don’t get one”.
And for god’s sake, we shouldn’t even be worried that Christmas is cancelled because ships aren’t able to unload cargo from another continent – we should be making enough things in this country that supply outstrips domestic demand.
Maybe – if corporations made more things here – they’d be more worried about what their customers here thought of them.
