Posted on 04/22/2003 4:39:33 PM PDT by Jason Kauppinen
The Boycott Mania
by William L. Anderson
[Posted April 22, 2003]
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 distributorshipand 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 choiceand I mean everyis 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. ---------------------------------------------------------
William Anderson, an adjunct scholar of the Mises Institute, teaches economics at Frostburg State University. Send him MAIL. See his Mises.org Articles Archive.
We were at 'war' with Iraq
The same goes for the Frogs.
Contrary to the neocon belief, we weren't with France
What absolute crystal clear undeniable logic < /sarcasm>
So by that statement any nation's government that has national interests other than what the government of these 50 States has is suspectible to boycott? Heck why not just boycott the whole world then? Agree with us or we won't buy your product!! Lock the doors and throw away the key, eh?
Tell me, when the government starts telling you what legal products you can and cannot own, and the very reason you can't own them is because it's from a nation that we're not at war with but politicians, who bow to public pressure instead of what's best for the economy as a whole, decided for us that we shouldn't be able to own them, how is that freedom again?
So by that statement any nation's government that has national interests other than what the government of these 50 States has is suspectible to boycott? Heck why not just boycott the whole world then? Yeah, but the original premise is a falsified one that was stuck in there by the Von Mises Boys to tilt the argument. "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." That was their formulation. Whether that is an accurate characterization of the public debate is questionable. I would say it is a deliberate over-simplification for the purpose of subjecting it to ridicule. There were many countries which disagreed with the United States on the subject of going to war in Iraq. Except for a few hotheads, not many people are calling for boycotts of all of them. France is special. France led an effort to undermine NATO as an organization, and the NATO treaty, at a time when Turkey was seeking assistance (which it had the right to do under the NATO treaty) with defending itself against possible attack. Representatives of France delivered personally insulting speeches on worldwide television directed at the Secretary of State of the United States. They were not alone in making such statements, but they were alone in making them literally on the world stage, and in a manner that would cause the Secretary of State to feel that he had just been blindsided by a treacherous enemy. France actively worked to sabotage negotiations between the U.S. and Turkey, on a subject which at the time was thought to have critical importance to our war planning. The French president attempted to intimidate Eastern European countries who were predisposed toward aiding the United States, into not doing so. He failed at this, but his efforts must be noted. None of these acts are those of a friend or ally. None of these acts are those of a power which merely "disagrees." Given its veto power on the Security Council, France needed to do none of these things to assure that no resolution would pass. But it did them anyway. It did things that an actively hostile enemy state would do in pursuit not of its own agenda, but of one designed to obstruct ours. There is no reason to purchase anything from these people if reasonable alternatives are available. |
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.
This biased clymer has some explaining to do as to just why that money was "rightfully" PPs.
Does Louis Pasteur's estate still get patent royalties for the pasteurization process? If so and you are so inclined, go to Whole Foods or another grocer where you can buy unpasteurized milk.
If you don't want to participate in a boycott that is your business but must you ridicule those who do choose to spend their money elsewhere?
We also have an embargo against Cuban products in this country.
Should the government field bids from France for construction projects in Iraq or offer those contracts to those nations that didn't obstruct our efforts?
By the way, are you being consistent and boycotting all products manufactured in China?
"If you don't want to participate in a boycott that is your business but must you ridicule those who do choose to spend their money elsewhere?"
Oh, absolutely! Anytime I see such blatant hypocrisy I can't help myself. You can call it a "high horse," but I call it common sense. You are the one taking a holier-than-thou attitude by calling for a French boycott.
I suppose you loved the fact that the house cafe in D.C. started serving "freedom toast" instead of "French toast." Does that give you a warm, fuzzy, patriotic feeling inside?
Tell me, have you boycotted everything made in China? What do you think about Bush granting that totalitarian regime permanent most favored nation status?
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