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Voting with your dollar is a practice that is encouraged as a part of being a responsible member of society. I remember being a young kid and hearing about the destruction of the Amazon. I and some others from my class all created a “class newspaper,” and in it, we wrote about how horrible it was that they were taking homes away from all the animals that lived in the rainforest. We drew pictures and made posters that would never be seen by anyone except for our parents. But we felt a little better, thinking that we had helped. As a kid with very little understanding of the world or the economy, I saw the bad guy as the man chopping the trees down. I didn’t make the connection, until much later, that he cut down those trees for our use.
At the point in a child’s life when they do make that connection, guilt can creep into every corner of his or her life. The weight of the world falls on this child’s shoulders. Every decision we make is part of this global system. To think that the future of the Amazon and the global climate has to be considered for every purchase, every meal, every item of clothing, can break a person.
And this is when well-meaning adults will explain that this is why we have to be smart shoppers. We vote with our dollar, so we have to make sure we only buy from the good guys and not the bad guys. And like those colorful posters we made of monkeys and birds native to the Amazon, it eases our conscience a little further to know that we can at least do something. However, this philosophy is neglectful of globalization and the resulting complicated, modern supply chain of most products. Despite the shroud of mystery that hides most of the atrocities like Amazon destruction, we are somehow convinced that the responsibility falls on our own shoulders.
Tracking down every single component or ingredient in a single product, its social and environmental impacts, the workers involved, the transportation required, and the legitimacy of its certification labels is an impossible task for one concerned shopper to take on. Even if this information were more accessible, so many products fall under the same large corporations, and so many of the large corporations all have the same issues associated with them. More sustainable and socially responsible products may be more expensive. They may not even be available in certain areas, as food deserts already ensure some lack of accessibility.
And what does our reinforcement of the idea of voting with your dollar have to say about our own communities? As Noam Chomsky points out in his book Hegemony or Survival, under this premise, only those with money have votes. Only those with money have a say. It excludes marginalized groups from a movement that should be for everyone. This is a painful reality of American society, but to see it so accepted and engrained in this practice is alarming.
And yet the impact of influencing corporations is immeasurable. For example, with the sheer volume of sugar that Coca-Cola purchases, they have more influence in the sugar industry than any government or supranational organization ever will. Governments across the globe could spend years writing and refining policy to regulate and incentivize more sustainable practices in the industry, or Coca-Cola could decide, at any point in time, to make a company-wide switch in their sugar suppliers, thusly causing a global shift in sugar markets.
These large corporate suppliers are, after all, the biggest consumers in the world economy. Maybe they themselves should hold the responsibility for the social and environmental impacts of their own products.
This is not to say that consumers who can shouldn’t even try to choose the most sustainable option. Anyone who does have access to more sustainable options should absolutely do what they can, with the cards they have been dealt. We can encourage and celebrate those that are able to revise their practices and purchases, without alienating those who do not have the same money, access, or time. Ultimately, the actions of one struggling individual with little resources or knowledge of the issues is not to blame for the unsustainable practices of any product which he or she happens to rely on. As much as we are able, let us vote with our dollar. Let us not financially support the corporations who built such an atrocious system. But let us not blame the individual who has limited power. Let us blame those who have the power to make changes as massive as we need, yet continue to fail to act.