Boycotting people and companies for their opinions

Megan McArdle and Radley Balko also think that a boycott of Whole Foods is both despicable fruitless. A blogger at Daily Kos is now pushing the boycott. As Balko writes,

Let me see if I have the logic correct here: Whole Foods is consistently ranked among the most employee-friendly places to work in the service industry. In fact, Whole Foods treats employees a hell of a lot better than most liberal activist groups do. The company has strict environmental and humane animal treatment standards about how its food is grown and raised. The company buys local. The store near me is hosting a local tasting event for its regional vendors. Last I saw, the company’s lowest wage earners make $13.15 per hour. They also get to vote on what type of health insurance they want. And they all get health insurance. The company is also constantly raising money for various philanthropic causes. When I was there today, they were taking donations for a school lunch program. In short, Whole Foods is everything leftists talk about when they talk about “corporate responsibility.”

And yet lefties want to boycott the company because CEO John Mackey wrote an op-ed that suggests alternatives to single payer health care? It wasn’t even a nasty or mean-spirited op-ed. Mackey didn’t spread misinformation about death panels, call anyone names, or use ad hominem attacks. He put forth actual ideas and policy proposals, many of them tested and proven during his own experience running a large company. Is this really the state of debate on the left, now? “Agree with us, or we’ll crush you?”

These people don’t want a dicussion [sic]. They don’t want to hear ideas. They want you to shut up and do what they say, or they’re going to punish you. (See original for links)

And notice that departing from the liberal mantra on a single issue is enough to generate calls for a boycott. The WSJ editors weigh in.

Those who actually read Mr. Mackey's piece may find the racket puzzling. The CEO suggests ways to reform health care without a new deficit-busting entitlement. He'd equalize tax laws between individual and employer-provided health insurance, make health costs more transparent and let people check off a form on their taxes to make a voluntary, tax-deductible donation to people who have no insurance. "Like food and shelter," Mr. Mackey wrote, health care is "best provided through voluntary and mutually beneficial market exchanges."

These are views held by plenty of voters, but no matter; the hardest cases on the left have had it in for the Whole Foods CEO for a while. Mr. Mackey drew the left's ire for his position against unionization in Whole Foods stores. Instead, the company adopted a raft of its own progressive employee policies, such as letting workers vote on their own benefits packages, including health savings accounts....

Whole Foods is a publicly traded company, so the effects of a real boycott would mainly damage the pocketbooks of those nice Whole Foods employees and its stockholders. They may have little to worry about. Summer is nearly over and when the weekend farmers markets close, a real protest would require the store's hyperprogressive customers to withdraw forever from the Whole Foods community to get their artisanal foods at the supermarket chain down the block.

I bet no employees will quit working at Whole Foods due to its supposedly regressive approach to health care benefits.

McArdle is quite skeptical that such boycotts will work.

Here's why boycotts don't work: the vast majority of customers don't care. And yes, that includes the vast majority of Whole Foods customers, a surprising number of whom drive SUVs and even--I swear!--occasionally vote Republican. Now consider the demographic that cares enough about health care to actually boycott a company over it. Most of them are a) wonks or b) political activists. The latter group is disproportionately young and does not spend a great deal of money on groceries. The former group is tiny.

You may get a large number of people who say they'll boycott Whole Foods. But then when they're out of extra-virgin olive oil and the Safeway doesn't have organic, and the nearest Trader Joes is a twenty-five minute drive away through traffic--they'll shop at Whole Foods. Three weeks later, they'll have managed to forget that they ever intended to stop shopping at Whole Foods. The stores are successful because they dominate their market niche, putting together a collection of things in one store that you would ordinarily have to go to several stores for. Shopping in mulitple places is a big pain in the butt.

Such boycotts that put an actual burden on the people boycotting by forcing them to change their shopping habits will probably not work. If there is little burden on the consumer, there could be some success. An attempt to organize a boycott against Citgo because it's owned by Hugo Chavez might be easier to organize since there are so many choices of where to buy gas and people wouldn't have to sacrifice much to shop elsewhere.

Another type of boycott that might have effect is putting pressure on companies themselves. There is an effort now to force companies to stop advertising on The Glenn Beck show and they're claiming success in getting at least eight companies to cancel their advertising. The last thing companies like Wal-Mart, CVS, or Best Buy need is to be associated with controversy, especially when Beck's critics claim that his show has racist overtones. We'll see how successful they are and if Beck has the power to fight back. I remember when there was a big push in the 1990s by the National Organization of Women, the NAACP, and the NEA to boycott Florida orange juice because they had hired Rush Limbaugh. They might have achieved the short-term goal of getting Florida to drop the campaign on Limbaugh's show, but they certainly didn't achieve the long-term goal of damaging the spread of Limbaugh's show. Personally, I find his show irritating and bombastic without the dollop of humor and insights that make Rush's show much more listenable.

Raising controversy and then threatening the companies directly is more successful than trying to organize a boycott. It's a lot easier to make a skittish company scared of having its reputation tied to controversy by a few noisy protesters with a big megaphone such as the NEA than to truly affect the bottom line by getting actual people to change their buying habits.

And we'll see if another sort of economic action works. Reportedly, thousands of people are leaving AARP over their support of the perception that the huge interest group is supporting Democratic reforms of health care.

CBS News has learned that up to 60,000 people have cancelled their AARP memberships since July 1, angered over the group's position on health care.

Elaine Guardiani has been with AARP for 14 years, and said, "I'm extremely disappointed in AARP."

Retired nurse Dale Anderson has 12 years with AARP and said, "I don't wanna be connected with AARP."

Many are switching to the American Seniors Association, a group that calls itself the conservative alternative as CBS News Investigative Correspondent Sharyl Attkisson reports.

Last week alone, they added more than 5,000 new members. Our camera was there Friday when the mail came.

Letters were filled with cut-up AARP cards.

"I think that probably the seniors are most upset with cuts in Medicare," said ASA President Stuart Barton.

The American Seniors Association is flat-out against President Obama's plan, which calls for $313 billion dollars in Medicare cuts over ten years. The AARP is widely viewed as supporting the President.

60,000 members might be only a small dent in AARP's membership, however, it might also be enough for them to step back from any perception that they are on board with the Democrats' proposals.

However, it's rather demoralizing to see our red/blue divide now oozing over from politics to consumer choices. On the other hand, as I teach in my course on the Revolution, it was the ability of Americans to organize nonimportation organizations to boycott British imports that was one of the most effective tools in the period leading up to the Revolution. So both sides are simply following in the steps of our founding generation.