How far do you go to not do business with a specific company?

[ricepad]

@Jackmannii

Baker Creek, an heirloom seed supplier, lies about GMOs to boost their business and invited Cliven Bundy and RFK Jr. to be keynote speakers at their spring planting festival.

I wish I knew that two months ago: I just ordered some seeds from them for the first time ever.

[puzzlegal]

@thorny_locust

@DrDeth

You wouldnt likely see them- on the bottom of the drink cup, pretty much hidden is John 3:16. The messages are quite discreet and hidden. They dont make a big deal out of it.

That’s not so bad. I routinely shop at stores run by local Old Order Mennonites. They’ve often got Bible verses up; but they don’t pick the hateful ones. And they don’t proselytize; they’re just telling you who they are.

I wouldn’t boycott a shop for quoting that. That’s a pretty generic statement of Christianity.

@nearwildheaven

Most people where I live boycott our local Popeye’s because the place is always getting shut down by the health department. I have no idea how they stay open.

That’s more “self defense”.

@LSLGuy

Substantially every small to medium business owner is a Republican even if not a frothing MAGA. And many are in fact frothing MAGAs.

Yeah, my auto mechanic and i once made the mistake of discussing politics. But he’s a good mechanic and I’m a good customer, so we backed away from that topic. He’s not a frothing MAGA, but I’m pretty sure our votes cancel.

[Measure_for_Measure]

I’ve boycotted Nestle for years. I dropped it for a while when they made peace with their critics (baby formula), then restarted it when they stopped playing nice. Now it’s just habit. It’s true that Nestle’s smaller competitors don’t have the greatest standards either, but I’m not in the market for baby formula at the moment.

1977 Nestlé boycott

I notice other Nestle scandals from time to time. This link has some ones I wasn’t aware of.

Controversies of Nestlé

[Mangetout]

@thorny_locust

It’s not possible to exist in this society without doing some damage.

I ought to rewatch The Good Place sometime.

Yeah, there’s got to be a set of overlapping scales for all of this stuff, including:

• How bad is the reason for avoidance? - that could be anything from ‘company goes out of their way to do something explicitly evil’ to ‘company probably doesn’t do as much as I would like to create good’
• How avoidable is the product or service in general? - I need to buy food from somewhere - probably including supermarkets; pretty nearly all of them will have some ingrained policies or behaviours that do some sort of damage to something or someone, but what’s the alternative? Buying from super-ethical sources always costs more, which means I have less money, which puts pressure on my ‘optional’ spend (that is the money I could stop spending and not die), which portion of spending includes my charitable donations.
• What situation occasions the business? - Sometimes I am the patron of a business by pure choice and I could easily go elsewhere with no effort. Sometimes it’s a bit more like an emergency and the first available choice, or the only choice, is the necessary one. (Say, someone faints in the street and needs water - I am grabbing a bottle of water from somewhere without checking the ethics of the company/parent company).