That individuals, not an oligarchy or oppressive majority, have all power in a free market makes it both the most moral economic system in human history, as well as the most efficient one.
We, as separate consumers, issue far more rapid and precise price signals to suppliers than can technocrats, bureaucrats, or even a majority vote. And capitalism remains the one system under which all transactions are voluntary. But lost in the bounty of the fruits of capitalism is an odd collective amnesia where we’ve somehow forgotten that we’re active consumers, not pawns to be controlled.
How often do you hear conservatives gripe about Google and call for government intervention against the tech giant without even deleting their own Gmail accounts? And why do liberals want to nationalize the entire healthcare industry with Medicare For All, just to stick it to the health insurance industry, when they could already be using increasingly cheap direct primary care services that cut out the need for insurers?
We’ve lost the plot of capitalism, not because the system itself is broken, but because we as consumers have forgotten that we have power.
We need to regain that lesson now. The instant backlash to the NBA and now video game giant Blizzard cowering at demands of communist China’s dictatorship offers us a chance to relearn what it means to be an active consumer.
China has been using its vast market — nearly one-fifth of the human race — to bully Hollywood into self-censorship and even to collude with Silicon Valley to shape opinions at home and abroad. But only with China’s demands toward the NBA and its cowardly response have the Chinese communists managed to outrage everyone on the political spectrum. Within the NBA’s failure, there’s an opportunity to use the market forces bestowed to the individualism by the capitalist system and stick it to those murdering, torturing thugs ruling China.
As Phil Klein noted yesterday, the NBA’s pathetic display is an obvious call to boycott the brand. But unlike boycotting Coach or the Top Gun remake for their self-censorship in the service of Chinese propaganda, an NBA boycott would be easy and immediately have a meaningful effect. Paramount Pictures, the studio remaking Top Gun, wouldn’t be too burned by a boycott of that movie alone, and it’s a tough ask to have the public parse through which films belonged to that studio. Furthermore, American audiences now lack the market influence for movies that they used to have. But getting people to not watch or attend basketball games would seriously harm the NBA in a matter of months without asking consumers to be overly-conscientious in their discrimination.
At times, such as with conservatives breaking Keurigs and liberals canceling their Equinox subscriptions, boycott culture is both unproductive in its end-goal and detrimental to the notion of a civil society where people ought to be able to respectfully disagree with those holding different opinions. But the case of China, a dictatorship that tortures millions of Muslims in concentration camps and deprives its citizens of any semblance of civil rights, people of all political stripes understand that we do not want to fund or abet such activities. Thus, we must take the mantle back of active and thoughtful consumerism, put our money where our mouths are, and stand up to companies that think capitalism means corporatism, as opposed to a radically decentralized free-market system that gives consumers the last laugh.
