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Comment by twelfthnight | Hacker News Reader

I like to think that the generous money I get from Tech is as much a responsibility as it is a luxury. I try to avoid mega retailers like Alibaba, Temu, Amazon and Walmart. In my mind, it's less to do with getting better costumer service or anything, but rather that if everyone puts their money in the same place then companies get too big and distort economies.

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I find this noble and do some similar tiny acts of defiance myself, but if we're being real it doesn't move the needle. The avg behavior has to change to affect their bottom lines, and your personal spending (even with advocacy) is not likely to meaningfully affect the mean. Supply side changes are needed, whether by way of regulation or emergent competition.

That's true but doesn't really invalidate the approach, nor is it an excuse to revert to whatever everyone else is doing.

It's not intended to invalidate the approach (again, I participate in the same manner as OP). But free-market capitalism's (well studied) failure mode is natural monopoly and _that_ really can't be fixed without further intervention. Preventing megacorp monopoly isn't something you can do by simply swaying the individual's dollar vote. Or maybe I'm missing some example in history?

Yeah there is no way to coordinate a critical mass of wallet-votes to convince companies to change, especially as long as their prime offering (pun intended) is convenience. There are people on this very website who will openly admit to comprehending the problematic nature of their participation in such systems and yet still justify it openly on the grounds that they have too much money to care and value their own time over the suffering of others.

Systemic problems require systemic solutions. To preempt an obvious rebuttal: shaping the landscape of choices that are available to consumers is literally how markets work so it's not like libertarians or other "free" market fanatics have a high horse when we introduce ideas like regulations on corporate behavior.

IMO the same could be said about voting. If someone states that they voted for (in this case with their wallet) for a worthwhile cause I wouldn't respond to it by reminding them about the insignificance of a single vote.

In your example my comment is intended to read "I vote because it has local impact, but don't forget that it's not enough to only vote. The underlying system is flawed and big strides can't happen without fundamental realignment of incentives."

“voting” with money is going to be a lot less impactful because you simply have a lot less money than the owner class

A few people doing that can make an enormous difference on a small local shop.

Agree, which is also why I also still prefer to shop local. I was responding to:

> if everyone puts their money in the same place then companies get too big and distort economies.

You're not going to make the big companies smaller or prevent market distortions by doing this. That's what I was referring to by "move the needle."

Well they can become big and turn into utilities...think electricity, water, gas, post office etc.

I think beyond a point govt should just buy a stake in them. That would keep them from misbehaving too much. Which is what happens in China, India, Brazil etc cause otherwise large poor populations will just be pushed out of markets.

Instead it works the other way around, these companies buy a stake in the government

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