This one yes I suppose, I guess its more symbolic. But I do see this comment on every protest so thought I’d clarify

Your city hall/capital building is empty on the weekend

Personal consumption accounted for 68.8% of US GDP in at the end of 2024, an all time high. Granted, ~45% of that is very hard to cut back on (healthcare, insurance, housing).

But even still, a drop of 10-15% would be devastating. If you could organize it, you could even skip payments on the big ticket services. Everyone skipping a month of bills at the same time would do serious, recession-level damage.

It’s not a direct fix for our problems, but you can play serious economic chicken when most of the economy flows through your wallets.

It’s literally illegal for these publicly traded companies to do anything that would be detrimental to their shareholders. The guy in oval office is telling them there will be consequences for not following his EOs (ie: lowering shareholder value). There’s not any decision to be made here (not that they aren’t laughing to the bank either way)

You proved it’s impossible to be a completely ethical consumer, but did you prove that it’s necessary to be a consumer at all? Or that all volumes of consumption are equally culpable?

People view boycotting as if enough homework will find them the fabled Free Market Unicorn©️, with sparkling udders they can ethically consume from to their hearts content.

Guess what: your coffee and chocolate are slave labor all the way down. Nestle owns all your water and 6 media conglomerates get your entertainment money no matter where you swipe your credit card.

But do you actually need to make those purchases in the first place? There’s nothing other than habit, comfort, and convenience keeping you from cutting most of it out of your life. It makes the ethical calculus so much easier.

Of course, how much austerity you can stomach in your modern life is a personal threshold. But every dollar you don’t spend is a dollar less to our corporate overlords. You could even donate it to a worthy cause for double the satisfaction (if you care to do that homework…)

Going off the assumption there aren’t any bad actors at play, these seem like a good approach and I’d gladly participate.

Only thing I’d question is a 24 hour economic blackout. The striking part is impactful, but putting off buying a TV for one day is negligible. Hell, you probably already paid for a full month of Netflix already.

I’d prefer a stronger commitment to progressively tightening the noose. Ramp up the economic pressure indefinitely until demands are met, you won’t die from not spending money.