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The Boycott Mania / Artikel mises.org

verfasst von - Elli -, 22.04.2003, 15:33

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The Boycott Mania
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by William L.
Anderson

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[Posted April
22, 2003]

 

[img][/img] When
I click onto the Drudgereport.com site these days, I often am greeted with an
advertising bar at the top of the page that declares,"Boycott
France." As we have heard ad nauseum, France was against the war,
so France is against the United States, so we should not buy French products
to punish the insolence of those people.

 

For the past
few decades, the boycott has been a tool of choice by interest groups seeking
to spread the impact of their various causes. During the 1980s, we were told
to"boycott Nestle" because that company sold infant formula in
Third World countries, which supposedly was bad. We are instructed to boycott
Nabisco products, since the parent company is RJ Reynolds, which we all know
produces"killer" tobacco.

 

Boycotts
supposedly are a free-market approach to making a point about social issues.
After all, they are voluntary and simply permit firms to know that consumers
ultimately direct not only the where's and why's of production, but also the
very choices of governance within a firm. Thus, if consumers are unhappy with
the wages Nike pays the workers who produce its shoes in Vietnam, while they
cannot be in the boardroom in person to force Nike to give those employees a
raise, at least they can express their displeasure by refusing to purchase Air
Jordans or whatever Nike is selling these days.

 

Leftists are
not the only ones making statements about corporate policies. Take the boycott
against Target stores, for example. About 10 years ago, Target's parent
company, Dayton-Hudson Corporation, notified Planned Parenthood that it would
no longer contribute its annual $50 thousand to the organization, as it wanted
to move away from contributions that could be deemed political.

 

Planned
Parenthood's leaders, which permit no dissent, immediately swung its public
relations machine into highest gear and announced it would organize a boycott
of Target unless Dayton-Hudson relented and gave Planned Parenthood the $50
grand that was rightfully theirs. The threat was successful and Dayton-Hudson
gave in and continued its"donation."

 

That was
hardly the end of the story. Pro-life activists then swung their PR machines
into high gear and called for a boycott of Target. To make matters worse, the
singer Amy Grant, who started her career in Christian pop music, did
endorsements for Target, so it was not long before the anti-abortion groups
pointed their big guns at her. Thus, we saw the"logical" chain of
causality: Dayton-Hudson gives $50 thousand to Planned Parenthood,
Dayton-Hudson must support abortion on demand, Dayton-Hudson owns Target,
Target's profits enrich Dayton-Hudson, with some money going to Planned
Parenthood, and since Amy Grant does commercials for Target, Amy Grant is
wittingly or unwittingly supporting abortion on demand. Therefore, if
pro-lifers refuse to purchase Amy Grant CDs and if Christian radio stations
say no to her music, then Grant will back down and pro-lifers supposedly will
have won a Great Victory over abortion on demand. And all of this is based
upon voluntary choice, so it falls completely within the domain of a free
society.

 

Of course,
Planned Parenthood and right-to-life groups hardly are the only participants.
Jesse Jackson has made a career out of threatening boycotts and lawsuits
against firms for ostensibly"racist" practices. These companies,
however, can make it all go away in return for a sizeable donation to
Operation PUSH, Jackson's base of operations. In fact, after he made such
threats against beer distributors in the Chicago area several years ago, one
of the companies created a lucrative distributorship—and gave it to one of
Jackson's sons.

 

Like the
current French boycotts, all of these examples point to something that
ultimately destroys any free society, not to mention a free market. The
modern boycotts come about precisely because modern society has been poisoned
by politics, and a politicized society is inherently not free. In such a
society, every choice—and I mean every—is examined not from the
perspective of the individual, but rather from the collectivist viewpoint. To
put it another way, when Gloria Steinem three decades ago declared that"the
personal is political," she was saying that all choices that individuals
make must ultimately be judged by the political impacts they create, or at
least the political effects Steinem and her allies believe they are
creating.

 

For example,
if one purchases Nike shoes, according to the anti-Nike activists, one is
implicitly supporting all of Nike's employment policies, since one
chooses to give money to that company. Of course, in a free market, one is not
giving money to anything in the process of purchasing a good. Economic
exchange is not an act of donation; it simply is the exercise of a choice to
give up something in one's possession in order to gain something else.

 

That a boycott
of Nike products means that those poor,"underpaid" workers of the
Third World will receive nothing in the wake of loss of demand for
shoes means nothing to the activists. In fact, given their support for
government policies that prevent workers from freely contracting with
employers over things like pay and benefits, the ultimate beneficiaries of
such actions are not the workers themselves but the boycotters, who can claim
"victory" in their quest for political hegemony.

 

Boycotters do
not wish to target only business firms; they also are trying to influence the
political process by directing political campaigns against people and causes
that the pressure groups want to marginalize. Take the current anti-French
boycott, for example. Not only are private organizations urging Americans not
to purchase French products, but politicians are also introducing legislation
either to ban or heavily tax goods that happen to have originated from France.
Notice that there is not a peep of dissent from the anti-France groups for
this political intrusion into personal choices. Indeed, the politicians are
carrying out part of the boycotters' agenda. So much for"voluntary"
action.

 

In a free
society, individuals are free to choose (and refuse) whomever they will
patronize. If a waiter at a local restaurant gives me surly service and
insults my ancestry, I am free to decline to eat at that establishment in the
future. However, my choice not to eat there anymore might likely involve the
self-imposition of a cost that I will have to bear, but it is my choice and
mine alone.

 

Boycotts,
however, do not operate in that manner. First, they usually are politically
motivated, which means that individuals are supposed to live their lives based
upon politics über alles, something that ultimately
threatens free choice. Second, it is rare that boycotters do not enlist the
support of politicians to aid them in their righteous causes, thus bringing
the ugliness of politics to the fore.

 

Politics by
its very nature is coercive, and is inimical to a free society. Yes, by
all means if I do not wish to purchase goods from certain people, I should be
free to do so. However, do not disguise a process that ultimately is based
upon coercion and tell me that it is all voluntary. Boycotts, then, are not
the product of people who respect the choices of other individuals, but are
nothing more than the continual slide of a society into the sewer of politics.

 

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William
Anderson, an adjunct scholar of the Mises Institute, teaches economics at
Frostburg State University. Send him MAIL.
See his Mises.org Articles
Archive.

Thread gesperrt

gesamter Thread:

The Boycott Mania / Artikel mises.org - - Elli -, 22.04.2003, 15:33
- Re: Mises, Capt. Boycott, Drudge, Roy, Chomsky und - aaah! - Tim Roth! - dottore, 22.04.2003, 19:43
  - Chomsky, Roy, Roth - beni, 23.04.2003, 09:35
    - Re: Chomsky, Roy, Roth - Popeye, 23.04.2003, 10:08
    - Re:"Wohlfahrtsstaat" ade! - dottore, 23.04.2003, 10:18
      - Re:"Wohlfahrtsstaat" ade! - beni, 23.04.2003, 17:47
        Re:"Wohlfahrtsstaat" ade! - dottore, 23.04.2003, 18:07