We have all been conditioned into believing that our only right and duty in this democracy is to cast a vote every two years, and with maybe an exceptional extra official vote or two every so often. That this is our only ability to affect the decisions that affect us as individuals and families, communities, fellow citizens, and human beings. Just vote when it’s time, accept the results, trust that those in power will represent you, and go about your daily lives without care or attention as to what decisions are being made, who is making them, and how they affect our lives, and the lives of others, both locally and abroad.
Beyond the ballet box, we as individuals have the ability, and the multitude has the power, to profoundly affect change at even the highest levels of society. This ability and power rests with our Purchasing Power—which is to say the way that we spend our dollar. Of course, even for those who are not deliberate and strategic with what products and services, companies and industries they choose to support through consumerism, their dollars and cents reinforce those companies and products and contribute to their prosperity and their legacy.
But what happens when we leverage our purchasing power strategically, symbolically, and systematically? When we choose to support alternatives to those brands which are associated with practices that do not align with our values and principles, whether with regards to labor practices, or environmental practices, or practices towards animals, or their political stance and their impact on public policy through corporate lobbying of elected U.S. officials and bureaucrats?
For example, what if we committed to alternative brands and/or products other than Coke-a-Cola, Frito-Lay, Nestle, General Mills, Foster Farms and Hillshire Farms, and other transnational monopoly corporations that are responsible for gross abuses of public trust and public health through the contaminates that they put in our food, as well as environmental and social practices, and in the case of the big ranching corporations, absolutely heartbreaking treatment of animals in addition to the toxic additives that they include in our meat products. What if, for example, we chose alternatives to COSTCO, Wal-Mart, and the other major grocers with the message that they should stock their stores with healthier products from smaller and/or more local businesses. What if we chose to fill-up our cars at gas stations who source their gasoline from companies other than the huge conglomerates of the Oil Cartel, such as ExxonMobile, Royal Dutch Shell, BP, Chevron, and the like, who fix the profit margins in the hundreds, likely thousands of percentiles? What if we boycotted Amazon? Boycotted Apple and Samsung? Decided to pass on the Tesla?
We are not powerless! Providing our necessity to earn a livelihood through our labor, we have naturally inherited an individual and collective form of empowerment that even Empire in its final push for National Socialism, cannot contain (at least not in this early and still highly contested moment). And that power, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, is our Purchasing Power—which is to say the power of the dollar, when well spent, and of primary importance, when strategically spent. And it is arguably the only real, effective and sustainable method for affecting corporate behavior, including the quality of options available. Government-imposed regulations are neither guaranteed, nor necessarily agreeable, nor guaranteed to last. Employees within transnational monopoly corporations with poor practices can rarely produce such changes—if one speaks out, they are out the door; and most are either indifferent or else complicit. But when the bottom-line depends on a corporation adapting to a new form of mass consumer demand, or else lose market share and profits—then those from the highest C-Levels down to the rank-and-file naturally and unanimously respond to that consumer demand, without fail and without delay. Because in capitalism, a business must continuously grow, lest it fail.
Spread this message, a message for Strategic Consumerism. It begins with the one we face in the mirror every day. As Ghandi said: “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” Ultimately, though, within the framework and context of Transnational Monopoly Capitalism, Individual Strategic Consumerism must evolve—through collective consciousness, dialogue, mobilization, and organization—into Common Strategic Consumerism on the part of the Multitude, which would then become a key and fundamental counter-veiling force against Empire’s pursuit of National Socialism, which absolutely depends on a corrupted system in which individual or conglomerates of transnational corporations operate independently, and in many cases contrary to the interests of the multitude, of the body politic.
#StrategicConsumerism
Money is an invention practically as old as mankind. Archeologists have confirmed that ancient societies and civilizations dealt in such goods as seashells in parts of Africa, pearls in the Arabian Desert, and Cacao beans in Mesoamerica.
Today, here in the United States, we know money in terms of dollars and cents (and in terms of precious metals and gems perhaps). Others in different countries may know money in terms of Pesos and Pounds, of Euros and Dinars, of Yuan and Rupees.
Up until the last 50 years, physical money has been the exclusive mode of exchange. But in today’s Digital Age, most Americans barely ever deal in cash. In fact, according to the Federal Reserve’s Diary of Consumer Payment Choice, only 14%-16% of the $16.69Trillion in annual U.S. consumer spending is conducted in cash. The rest—almost entirely debit and credit transactions. And of course, VISA and Mastercard predominate the credit card and debit card industry, owning 75% of the market share of the credit card industry, and as far as I know, 100% of the debit card market.
Whether you are a “Democrat” or “Republican”, a “Leftist” or a “Libertarian” or a “Conservative”—my observation is that at this moment, there is a unanimous concern that our freedoms and liberties are under siege, including many associated with money. That there is a real threat to such freedoms as to how and when we choose to spend the money that we have earned. Both Left and Right point to the REAL ID in China today, and how it restricts freedoms and liberties under the guise of anti-corruption and social benefit. Religious zealots refer to the Apocalyptical endgame of a micro-chipped humanity, subjected to total control; while some such as myself recognize that that is the endgame, but that this is a self-fulfilled prophecy on the part of Western civilization and the Evangelical-Zionist Alliance.
Whatever your political and religious perspective, I think we can all agree that there are freedoms and liberties associated with physical currency, with a mixed political economy that is at least in part capitalist (although not in its current monopoly form, I would argue). And, that there are those at the highest levels of government and bureaucracy, as well as in certain key corporations within certain sectors (such as Defense, Finance, Artificial Intelligence, Big Tech, Blockchain), whose desire is to ultimately abolish cash altogether, and replace it with digital currencies and modes of transacting, including ultimately a network of Billions of micro-chips implanted into the bodies of Empires subjects.
When we pay with cash, the transaction is “off the record”. When we pay with cash exclusively, our “consumer behavior” cannot be so easily tracked, nor is it as easily sold. When we preserve the integrity of money, our mode of purchase cannot be shut down or shut off from a switch room in a FBI or Homeland Security office. When cash has value, people who have it have greater ability to move where they wish freely, off-the-radar. When we deal in cash, we deny VISA and Mastercard the unearned privilege of profiting on every single transaction that we make.
For all of these reasons and more, I say: “Deal in Cash”—and exclusively in cash, at least as far as retail is concerned. Plus, now that the penny is abolished, many vendors will round down (and if they do not, then ask for you penny(s), and they will usually give you a nickel back. And those cents add up. Like they always used to say: “A Penny Saved Is A Penny Earned”. Plus, in my experience, I tend to spend less when I deal in cash instead of so mindlessly tapping, inserting, or swiping a card.
#DealInCash