Strike
Audio Recording by George Hahn
Government shutdowns have been normalized. Since 1976, we’ve seen 20 funding gaps, resulting in 10 government shutdowns. It’s a form of economic strike — just not an effective one, as shutdowns create blame but seldom achieve political goals. The Democrats have been uncharacteristically strategic in this standoff: Their demand(s), continued subsidies for healthcare coverage, likely affect more Republican voters. This focus achieves a messaging trifecta: It highlights affordability and healthcare and divides Republicans. However, that’s not what this post is about.
Seize the Means of Consumption
In the U.S. we suffer/benefit from an idolatry of the dollar. Our gods are CEOs, who pray at the altar of shareholder value. Our prophets preach growth, while our priests divine meaning from earnings reports. Every billionaire’s origin story, bootstraps and all, is scripture. Even authoritarians kneel to a higher power — the markets. In April, when it looked as though nothing could stop Trump’s protectionist fever dream, the bond markets rocked, then rolled, the president. The following month, Wall Street had a name for this phenomenon — TACO, i.e. Trump always chickens out.
We frame economic power as a contest between capital and labor, but the real star of the American economy is consumer spending, which accounts for 68% of GDP. The Great Recession saw a 3.4% drop in consumer spending — at the time, the most severe year-over-year decline since World War II. The U.S. economy registered a 9.8% drop in consumer spending during the second quarter of 2020, when Covid shut down the world as we knew it. In both instances the U.S. government responded aggressively, spending hundreds of billions, primarily on bailouts, to pull us out of the Great Recession, and trillions, primarily in direct aid, to get us through the pandemic. The lesson? When consumers stop spending, American leaders start listening. As Geo Hussar explained to his YouTube followers at the end of September, “this is not seizing the means of production, but seizing the means of consumption,” adding that if every American dropped their consumption, on average, by 2%, “that would be the most loud and potent form of protest.”
Red Line
Recently, Trump found his red line. It wasn’t Congress or the courts but a comedian. After bowing to government threats and suspending late-night host Jimmy Kimmel, The Walt Disney Co., which owns ABC, discovered that a strongman wasn’t as scary as a consumer boycott. One reporter put the number of Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN cancellations at 1.7 million subscribers … in less than a week. The outcry from celebrities on the left and a handful of people on the right, including Senator Ted Cruz and Tucker Carlson, pressured Disney’s leadership to do the right thing. But as journalist Lauren Egan wrote in the Bulwark, “There was no organized campaign against Disney.” The blowback was organic. Disney CEO Bob Iger needed screenshots of people canceling Disney+ to help him locate his testicles. At this point, the Disney CEO is Neville Chamberlain in a cashmere sweater, minus the dignity.
The boycotters realized they had to inflict financial pain to change Disney’s behavior. But according to Brayden King, now a professor at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management who studies social movements and corporate social responsibility, and Sarah A. Soule, now a professor at Stanford, the typical boycott doesn’t have much impact on sales. In their study of 342 boycotts against U.S. corporations between 1962 and 1990, they found that boycotts, on average, caused a 1% decline in a company’s stock price. “The number one predictor of what makes a boycott effective is how much media attention it creates, not how many people sign onto a petition or how many consumers it mobilizes,” King said in 2017. Ironically, Trump’s inability to shut up likely helped the boycotters by directing attention to their cause. In the end, it took fewer than 1% of the Mouse’s total streaming subscribers to capture America’s attention and accomplish what Disney CEO Bob Iger couldn’t — stand up to an authoritarian.
We the Consumers
Consumer boycotts are American. In the 1760s, American colonists pushed back against unlawful British taxation, not with muskets, but with boycotts known as nonimportation agreements. Participation was uneven and success was ultimately achieved through the Revolution, but historians credit the boycotts with demonstrating American resolve, promoting political unity, and encouraging domestic manufacturing. In The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence historian T.H. Breen wrote, “Only people who had experienced the pleasures and frustrations of so many consumer choices could possibly have come to appreciate how a disruption of that market might be an effective weapon.” American consumers have reached for this weapon throughout history.
Abolitionists deployed the Free Produce Movement to encourage consumers to boycott goods produced with slave labor. Although the economic impact was negligible and the movement didn’t bring about emancipation, it positioned slavery as a moral issue in the daily lives of Northern consumers. As one pamphlet put it, “If we purchase the commodity we participate in the crime.” Zooming out, historian Lawrence Glickman, author of Buying Power: A History of Consumer Activism in America, points to the campaign as the catalyst for centering consumer power in the American system. “The Free Produce Movement offered a radically new conception of causality and morality, one which posited purchasers as the first cause of economic activity and therefore made them the moral guardians of the polity.”
Nearly a century later, civil rights activists, inspired by Rosa Parks’s refusal to surrender her bus seat to a white rider, organized a one-day boycott of city buses in Montgomery, Alabama. At the time, more than 70% of the city’s bus patrons were Black; boycott participation was estimated to be 90%. In the aftermath of that one-day boycott, organizers, led by Martin Luther King Jr., established a carpooling network with more than 200 cars and 100 pickup locations. The boycott cost the city an estimated $3,000 per day ($35,000 adjusted for inflation). After 13 months and a favorable Supreme Court ruling, the boycott organizers successfully integrated Montgomery’s bus system. Their action helped launch the national civil rights movement.
Power to (Some) People
Historically, boycotts have been called “weapons of the weak against the strong.” Today, however, I believe consumer boycotts are weapons of the privileged against the powerful. Two factors account for that change. First, as Glickman wrote in The American Historian, “Through his description of a highly personalized economy, made up of specific companies, people, buyers, and investors, rather than an abstract ‘market’ too big and all-encompassing for anybody to understand, Donald Trump has promoted a worldview — albeit, an inverted one — amenable to consumer activism.” Second, concentrated wealth puts a lot of consumer firepower in the hands of relatively few people. Consumers in the top 10% income bracket account for half of consumer spending. That cohort leans Democratic 53% to 46%, but more important, they can afford to not spend. Setting aside multiplier effects, import leakages, and substitution, I estimate that the top 10% could achieve a 1% decline in GDP with a 3% reduction in spending.
Boycott the Enablers
While a general strike is appealing, the tactic has a poor track record in American history. See: the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, the 1919 Seattle General Strike, and the 1934 West Coast Waterfront strikes. Each ended in bloodshed and produced minimal gains. General strikes — whether driven by labor or consumers — are difficult to organize, nearly impossible to sustain, and by definition too generalized to articulate a clear demand. Rather than a general strike (difficult) against authoritarianism (vague), I believe we need targeted boycotts with clear demands directed at Trump’s enablers. The math is simple: You have power, and they need your money more than you need their product. So — will we actually do anything, or just complain about how someone should do something?
Here’s a place to start. Pick an enabler — plenty to choose from, but it’s best to focus on a brand you actually spend money with. Make noise when you cancel and show receipts on social media. State a clear demand. Keep going. If you believe a company shouldn’t let the president dictate its workplace policies, cancel your Target card and purchase a Costco membership. If you’re worried that Trump’s deal to sell TikTok to his cronies will make the platform “100% MAGA,” delete your account.
Here’s what I plan to do. I intend to take a sizable (for a professor) position in DIS to propose a slate of directors that does not include Iger, or call for a no-confidence vote. (Note: I’ve done this before, and before that.) If a law firm capitulates, I won’t hire them. And if UCLA pays Trump $1 billion in blackmail, I’ll start giving to Cal State instead.
Bob Dylan said money doesn’t talk, it swears. Well, fucking enough already. Trump has seized the means of production (a golden share in U.S. Steel, investments in Intel, carving up TikTok for his donors, and weaponizing institutions so firms bend the knee). Wealthy Americans, who’ve benefitted so much from the pillars Trump is attacking, need to get our shit together and seize the means of consumption.
Life is so rich,
P.S. This week on Prof G Conversations I spoke with Ian Bremmer about Gaza, Ukraine, and the end of American reliability. Watch it on YouTube, or listen to the podcast here on Apple or here on Spotify.
35 Comments
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Consumer power, look nor further than Bud Light after the Dylan Mulvaney ad. Anheuser-Busch stock is still below where it was when the ad first appeared more than two years ago. Meanwhile, Bud Light sales still haven’t recovered back to the level prior to the ad.
Consumer power rings so true. Must try it!
It is worth noting that menbers of Congress continue to receive their salaries during a government shutdown.
This is due to Article I, Section 6 of the U.S. Constitution, which requires that senators and representatives:
“. . . . . receive a Compensation for their Services, to be ascertained by Law, and paid out of the Treasury of the United States.”
This Congressional pay is, therefore, treated as “mandatory spending,” and not impacted by funding lapses.
So, the US Congress and the Senate, in particular, bear none of the result of their incompetent and unsuccessful work to pass a bloody budget.
JLM
Your formerly thoughtful and insightful blog has devolved into a hopelessly knee jerk left wing diatribe — FFS, “In the U.S. we suffer/benefit from an idolatry of the dollar.”
Haha, you actually wrote that? You sound like a pimple faced freshman philosophy major at Berkeley.
Let’s deal with the reality of the situation — it is the Constitutional duty of the House of Representatives to originate all spending bills; they did their work, though they get no style points and they were late.
It is the job of the Senate to ratify or amend that work and pass it along to the President for his signature.
A majority of the Senate did just that by a vote of 55-45, but, of course, the Senate requires a vote of 60 Senators to stop debate and invoke cloture.
This is not a collision of idealogy or combat between great ideas; this is a petty ante little squabble wherein a tiny minority of Senators wants to blackmail the country when the Senate itself has already indicated otherwise.
Shame on both the House and the Senate for having failed to discharge their work prior to the end of the fiscal year and thus creating this mean spirited little pettiness.
Senate, do your job. I don’t drink because it’s bloody poison so I don’t care who TF drinks — what is it — Bud Light?
JLM
Agree that money talks and S. Galloway thank you for becoming an activist. It is the top spenders that can inflict the greatest pain. So anything you can do to influence the billionaires to use this power- great. I wish all the podcasters would become activists too because many of them know powerful people. Commentators, experts and pundits are making millions off our anxiety – it has become a huge industry – and we’re busily commenting (understand the irony here) on all our podcasts and think somehow this is doing something. Maybe we don’t feel empowered or know what to do. The courageous positions many individuals are taking like Beth – look below- are amazing but unfortunately maybe doesn’t have the impact needed. All the media folks like Scott are informing us which is good and a whole media industry has emerged making these pundits money (well earned) but participating in this is not doing something. Now there are loads of pundits talking to each other – Scott has talked to.David brooks, Heather Cox Richardson, and they like Jon Stewart have interviewed each other etc – but it is time that all these pundits do something with their power as Scott is doing. Heather does give us good advice as to what we can do as voters and citizens though. Please Scott convince others for us and I’ll try to do my bit.
A key factor in my decision to resign from a large publicly traded ad agency holding company was when – on April 1, 2025 – they announced taking action on Trump’s Executive Orders by eliminating key DEI initiatives including Women’s Leadership. WTF. Media and Entertainment is meant to align with progressive social and cultural values and stand up for rights of the marginalized groups – not aid their dissolution. Shame on them. NO regrets.
I’ll take things that didn’t happen for $1,000, Alex.
I’ve been boycotting most name brands that I can since Israel has been sacking Gaza
Will trump may be a sleazeball and an oligarch and greedy and corrupt.But he’s right about one thing.We cannot have a consumer economy that doesn’t produce anything.
For years, we tried to push everything away through globalization and live by selling each other insurance, over priced coffee, pizas and burgers.
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But me, I will boycott sports, illustrated budweiser and ESPN BET forever.
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How much do you want to stop His Royal Heinous and the fascist takeover of the country?
Enough that you’re willing to make a small sacrifice? Like altering your spending habits for a month or two or three? That could be all it would take to get the attention of the oligarchs (formerly known as The Robber Barons in the first Gilded Age, also The Fat Cats, The Greedy Bastards).
A brief demonstration of We, the People’s, power of the purse could persuade them to quit supporting HRH and the politicians who enable him.
We quit spending, except on essentials, businesses lose money, stock market goes down, Greedy Bastards pay attention to our demands.
I’m again having to ask everyone involved in the ethics cesspool of Psychology Today to make sure unethical editor Kaja Perina stops the unethical hypnotherapy she tried to cover for.
I’ve figured out I’ve been tossing and turning at night enough to move the bed slats, and the unethical hypnotherapist is providing the torment responsible for that.
Its ethics code says my no means no, so its ethics code says this is a reasonable request.
The unethical hypnotherapist made sure I don’t know it’s name, but once a TP scribbler named John Sleazy Ryder mocked me when I inquired in his comments about stopping unethical hypnotherapists, I know some pathetic creature at TP can stop the unethical hypnotherapist, and I know that any decent, ethical human being there already would have.
You can also take this as a recommendation to avoid hypnotherapy, and also to avoid known hypnotherapists in any situation, for your own safety.
As someone who lives in London I’m surprised that you say that “consumer boycotts are American “. Maybe now but…
The word is named after Captain Charles Boycott, agent of an absentee landlord in Ireland, against whom the tactic was successfully employed after a suggestion by Irish nationalist leader Charles Stewart Parnell and his Irish Land League in 1880. Should we also boycott Masters Class which employs the pusillanimous Bob Iger and advertises on your show?
To be effective a laser approach is needed and might work as in the Disney example: one or two targets at a time. Anything that’s widespread, or crashes the stock market, is as futile as economic boycotts of countries and industries have been. The list must be prioritized. But mostly, it must have sufficient grass roots support to be effective. But even then it does not stop masked men disappearing people here; corrupting the military with punitive domestic deployment; or dozens of other actions we see and read of daily, aided and abetted by big tech and other economic powers. So the real action: throwing away our phones, refusing any dealings with Meta, Google, X, Apple, or the rest of the biggies, ain’t gonna happen. Soon more and more AI fake videos will appear, as an article in today’s Times reports, with Trump – or anyone else for that matter – having sex with chickens, or whatever, and the real fun will start. How do we deal with what is, let alone with what’s coming? That said, collective action and mass protest is still the most effective tool we Americans possess to overcome the onslaught. Who is willing to risk their comfort and safety for that?
y targeted boycotts are ineffective
Boycotts often fail because they require massive, sustained participation to create meaningful financial pressure, lack clear alternatives for consumers, generate insufficient negative media attention, and are easily weathered by companies waiting for the protest to fade. Additionally, the complex nature of modern capitalism and the proliferation of corporate conglomerates can make it difficult for boycotters to effectively target and impact a company’s bottom line or reputation, especially when companies have multiple revenue streams, like real estate, that aren’t affected by consumer boycotts.
In 2020, Goya Foods praised President Donald Trump on social media, which caused those in opposition to Trump to boycott their products. Trump loyalists simultaneously initated a counter-boycott, where consumers bought mass quantities of their products, in response. The boycott caused Goya profits to increase dramatically because Trump supporters started an opposing campaign.
I would like to submit that you consider a conversation with Phil Buchanan, President of The Center for Effective Philanthropy in Cambridge, MA. I have share this piece with him and suggested the two of you have a conversation about expanding the notion of a strike as a tactic for organized philanthropy in this country to issue meaningful protest to what is going on. Collectively, organized philanthropy holds hundreds of billions of dollars in managed asset funds. I would suggest your conversation with Phil would be to explore the impact if major foundations across the country threatened to move these assets to European-based financial institutions from the US institutions which now manage these funds. Hundreds of billions of dollars would certainly grab the attention of many politicians and bank CEO’s across the country.
It’s impossible to boycott when all the tech firms are enablers
A consumer boycott would have much collateral damage. This proposal seems poorly thought out.
Thanks, Scott, this was a real eye-opener to me and shed a lot of light on the Kimmel thing and shows where Trump is vulnerable.
It would have been 1.7 million plus one cancellations if we had not been overseas at the time: we did talk about cancelling Disney when Kimmel was canned.
I’ve been ringing this bell since February. We have the power, but do we have the will? If we don’t use our power now, it will be taken from us.
The sacrifice is worth the pain.
This has happened before, never, ever thought it could happen here.
” Their demand(s), continued subsidies for healthcare coverage, likely affect more Republican voters.”
That’s like black people saying DEI mostly helps white women. Good, if true then lets stop both of those things. But you don’t want that, cause you know you lying because you don’t really want republicans or white women to be helped here. you know you finessing the public
Eloquent and valuable as ever.
Isn’t something even the under-privileged could by way of a proxy boycott, is simply not pay their taxes. En masse. The IRS has been crippled. They don’t have the manpower to go chasing down $2000 defaulters in person. They still use fax machines, so no danger of them writing an AI agent to automate the process.
So if “just” a million ordinary people simply… stopped — arbitrarily, like Trump’s tarrifs — wouldn’t that scare the shit out of government? They couldn’t really retaliate on a State or city level, because so many people mixed in to a State would still be dutifully paying.
They couldn’t send in the National guard to quash the “I didn’t pay my taxes” gatherings.
And if those million suffered no direct consequences yet garnered a lot of media attention, it could 10x nationwide and put the bejeebers up the Dicktator’s rectum.
Just an idea.
You need to team up and brainstorm with the I’ve Had It podcast ladies.
Do you think President Schmucko cares?
I like that Professor G will act on DIS.
Statements like “we suffer/benefit from an idolatry of the dollar” are hollow and questionable. Does it include Professor G, or only everyone but him? It is also a simplification because if we ignore the dollar, we end up beggars. Also, if, for example, instead of the dollar, an opera becomes our idolatry, we would not be able to enjoy it without spare dollars for a ticket.
100% agree with the article and the arguments against a general strike. I lived through the general and oil-sector strike in Venezuela in 2003 against the abusive president Hugo Chávez, who used it to fire 18,000 PDVSA workers and seize control of the oil industry, a signal of what was to come as he captured every democratic institution and bent an imperfect democratic system to his will. A word of caution to the Democrats: even with a defensible and clear ask, government shutdowns feel like leverage but mostly spray pain across the economy and in particular to the lower-middle class. Unless objectives are crystal clear (i.e., extension of ACA) and there’s a time-bound way out (clear path out after X days), shutdowns don’t deliver wins, they just create blame. And the party seen as driving it risks looking like the arsonist holding the hose.
At this particular moment, Trump is punishing Blue states by cancelling infrastructure funding (which may be illegal) because Dems had the temerity to enter into a federal government shutdown. Taking your logic one step further, is it possible to do a consumer boycott of products produced and sold by Red states–home to the Republican juggernaut? How would one even go about identifying products from Red states (OK, Walmart in Arkansas is easy I guess).
My fav part of the boycott was celebrities indicating they re-subscribed so they could cancel. I’m here for the level of petty that garners important attention. In this crazy world of everyday in the US feels like wtf, it’s a great reminder that we do have discretionary spending as our power.
Excellent suggestions. Let’s speak with our dollars or loss thereof for Trump’s enablers. I wish there were a way to boycott the SCOTUS until they stop enabling Project 2025, and overturn Citizen’s United.
One thing you forgot to mention…the Jimmy Kimmel show was losing money!
Based on what’s publicly known, it seems likely that Jimmy Kimmel Live! is under financial pressure and may be operating with very tight margins—or possibly modest losses—in its current form. Whether it’s losing money in a major way is not verified.
If I had to pick, I’d lean toward “yes, it likely is losing money (or at least not generating strong profits)”, especially given the trends in late-night network TV (declining linear audience, more fragmentation, advertiser caution).
Scott – Are you proposing that consumers boycott companies they disagree with, or are you advocating boycots against companies to stand up to President Trump? I guess it’s probably both.
I’d be interested in why you object to the US Govt. (not DT) taking small stakes in some us companies. Seems like there could be some benefit. Your thoughts?
As always, love the thoughtful provocation and incisive commentary.
FUCK YEAH