They don't.

To be clear I was not endorsing the current system, as much as observing that monetary incentives are powerful motivators for companies to change their behavior.

Also, not all currencies require income: when using DuckDuckGo instead of Gooogle, one is redirecting ad money from one company to the other; or think of Keybase teams vs Slack, Gitlab vs. GitHub, etc. Every choice we make can affect whether money is sent the way of companies that share our principles or not.

> voting with dollars may effect the change that voting with ballots may not

This does not mean 'real' change is only created by consumption. I think spac means that consumption may well affect what political institutions do not. So people with less money can still use their political votes to change many things. I would contest the idea that they do not vote (significantly) as consumers though.

People with less money still have some money, and rich people don't buy ten iPhones, while many poorer people do still buy one as the richest people do too, so any kind of consumption with a very steep decline in marginal benefit probably hands out power to individuals in the market more equitably than you would otherwise expect.

Apple is very clear that only wealthy people can have privacy. If you don't give them money for iPhones and Macs, no iMessage for you. Remember how they publicly made fun of "green bubbles", painting talking to non Apple users as something bad?

WRT to consumerism in the US, money has never been a barrier to prevent people from purchasing products.

Yes, Apple carries a premium price, but it's not so high that it prices itself away from all but the absolute dirt poor.