So this store on my block has nice things at good prices. The owners seem to be really nice people, but they don’t share my views on some social issues. So I’m not going there any more.
Also, I’m telling my friends to avoid them. Actually, I hope that they go out of business, as their views are so extreme and unpopular (though no more than mine are) that going out of business really is what they deserve.
This is, more or less, what Hollywood talks of doing to the great state of Georgia, in retribution for its passage of a bill prohibiting abortion after the eighth week of gestation. That may sound extreme, but no more than the law that passed in New York last winter, permitting abortion up to the moment of birth and perhaps even after the baby had drawn its first breath.
Conservatives were aghast at the bill, but would still grant to each state the right to do as it wishes, but liberals insist on the power to impose their own opinion on everyone. The problem is that their methods have problems already, and efforts to use the hammer of economics to hit the small nail of politics have seldom worked out very well.
For the past seven years, Hollywood and Democrats everywhere have waged a war of attrition against the Chick-fil-A fast food franchise because its founder gave money to a group that defined marriage as between one man and one woman. (That is, by the way, a view held by society for thousands of years and by the Obamas and Clintons until it became politically inconvenient.) Through protests and riots and denial of licenses by Democratic governments, the Left has tried to drive down Chick-fil-A’s sales. Yet since the boycott began, its profits have tripled, its locations have doubled, and its annual sales have increased to $10.2 billion.
In October 2016, marketer Shannon Coulter launched “Grab Your Wallet,” (a response to the “Access Hollywood” tapes) and succeeded in getting Trump products removed from a great many stores. But Trump became president anyhow, and the Washington Post reported that in response Trump voters bought Ivanka’s clothes anyhow, whether they liked them or not.
It also reported that many local establishments staged a reverse boycott, suggesting the Trumps were not welcome, one spa owner expressing shock when she discovered Ivanka had taken one of her classes, believing her karma might never recover.
On the other side, one customer canceled her gym membership when the owner announced free classes the morning before the Women’s March started, outraged at the assumption she would even want to attend it. It proves the maxim that commerce should stay out of politics, and the customer’s politics should always be assumed to be right.
In fact, politics and economics don’t mix well. Boycott Chick-fil-A and you turn out its supporters; push Ivanka’s line out of Nordstrom’s, and people who like her can buy things online. If Hollywood does pull out of Georgia, the state’s people will suffer (well, maybe), but filmmakers will find their costs higher elsewhere.
Blue states have millions of red voters in them, and red states have millions of blue voters. Whatever a business owner or a consumer does, it will hurt the people on his or her own side. Political problems should be solved by political means.
