November 22nd, 2004

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The Long View
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Buy Nothing Day: Don’t Believe the Hype

This Friday is Buy Nothing Day. From Adbusters, the originators of the idea:

For 24 hours, millions of people around the world do not participate — in the doomsday economy, the marketing mind-games, and the frantic consumer-binge that’s become our culture. We pause. We make a small choice not to shop. We shrink our footprint and gain some calm. Together we say to Exxon, Nike, Coke and the rest: enough is enough. And we help build this movement to rethink our unsustainable course.

In its 13 years, BND has become a flashpoint, a day when people of all stripes come together in symbolic protest. Visit the new BND Action Pyramid for a sample of great ways to celebrate.

Don’t believe the hype. From The Rebel Sell FAQ:

Thus Adbusters magazine has managed to turn their annual “Buy Nothing Day” into a global phenomenon, currently celebrated in over 55 countries. The problem is that cutting back your spending, without cutting back your income does absolutely nothing to combat consumerism. Your total income gets spent, whether you like it or not. Either you spend it, or else you put it in the bank, who then loans it to someone else who will spend it. This is not an accident - total spending and total earnings in the economy always add up to the same amount, because your spending is someone else’s income, and your income is someone else’s spending. That’s because the economy is fundamentally a system of exchange. So the only way to make a dent in that is to withdraw from the economy completely, which means neither providing services nor consuming them. Yet somehow, an annual “Earn Nothing Day” doesn’t have the same ring to it.

Let’s be clear: Exxon, Nike, Coke aren’t listening. There are better ways to affect social change. The first step is to evaluate why you’re really participating in Buy Nothing Day, and act effectively on that motivation.

For example, I might choose not to buy things (on Buy Nothing Day or otherwise) in order to reduce my environmental footprint. I’m consuming less, therefore less if being manufactured and less resources are being used. Doing this on one day is useless, but thinking like this every day can have an (admittedly tiny) impact. Simple actions that can make a difference?

  • Walk or take public transit to work.
  • Buy organic food and eat less meat.
  • Recycle more (a debatable point–we’re a long way from the tipping point on this one).
  • Live with fewer things, in a smaller home.
  • Have fewer children.
  • Give money to responsible, effective environmental organizations (The David Suzuki Foundation and Greenpeace would be on my list).

Instead of Christmas gifts, I make donations in people’s names to charities I support. I ask those who give me gifts to do the same.

Alternately, if you support Buy Nothing Day because you’re concerned about workplace exploitation in the Third World, try this:

  • Take a few minutes and identify ethical clothing vendors. Buy from them.
  • Buy Canadian products.
  • Give money to organizations like Amnesty International.

Regardless of your particular concern, contact your leaders. Write to them, call them and talk to them about your concerns. Tell them who you’re voting for, and why.

Buying nothing on November 27 is a symbolic gesture. It’s also a useless one. If you care enough to not shop on Friday, then you probably care enough to try to effect real change.

Comments: 10 Responses so far

donna
November 22nd, 2004
2:15 pm

Also, that’s the day of my fuckerware party, and everybody MUST buy things that day. :)

These are very important things to buy, especially in the depressing winter months! Sanity is cheap, when it’s made out of silicone.

Man, I am so not a salesperson… fuck it.

[Reply]

joke
November 22nd, 2004
3:39 pm

This is a bit silly. The point of Buy Nothing Day is not to reduce aggregate consumption — although it probably also does that if the money from foregone purchases is saved. The point of buy nothing day is to take a day to try to understand the impact of consumerism on your life. I think this is valuable.

As for your alternatives, I agree with the first set. As for the second set, I too am against worker exploitation in the third world. I am also against poverty in the third world, and I think that it is unconscionable for anyone to likewise cares about third world poverty to suggest that an appropriate solution is to buy Canadian products. If the first world doesn’t buy third world products, the billions of people living in poverty in the third world will remain that way, for a lot longer. Look the perverse system of agricultural tariffs in Europe and the US which prevents African and South American companies from effectively selling produce to the first world.

If you’re concerned about workplace exploitation in the third world, the only fair thing to do is to identify companies that manufacture ethically in the third world. Shockingly, companies like Nike and Adidas — as opposed to second-tier companies that can get away with it, like Umbro and Puma — are at the forefront of this.

Finally, it is controversial, but I don’t think Canada or the US needs low-skilled sweatshop jobs that can easily be offshored. We have fairly low unemployment as is, and we should be concentrating on creating jobs in the many industries in which we can compete effectively.

[Reply]

Darren
November 22nd, 2004
3:48 pm

Joke: Thanks for your comments. The difficulty with BND is that most people who participate go right back to irresponsible consumerism. So, a lot of effort is expended (on the part of the organizers–obviously buying nothing doesn’t take much) but nothing is tangibly gained. In short, symbolic protests are rarely effective ones.

Regarding buying Canadian and exploited workers, I absolutely agree with you. However, I was focusing on easy things that the average person could do. Buying Canadian products ensures you’re not buying from exploited workers. It’s not the best solution to the problem, but for those unwilling to expend the (non-trivial effort) identify responsible companies, it’s a decent compromise.

[Reply]

Sue
November 22nd, 2004
4:16 pm

“Buying Canadian products ensures you’re not buying from exploited workers” — you really think so? Care to re-evaluate that statement?

Labour unions exist in Canada because there are STILL employers out there who are willing to exploit their workers, regardless of the research that indicates that exploited workers are less productive.

Now in some cases, “exploitation” in Canada may simply mean “getting only 1% raise instead of 10%” but there are still employers out there who will ignore basic worker safety guidelines and try to scoot in under the Employment Standards Acts in other ways.

You can’t go around saying “I buy ethically because I buy Canadian.” There are more layers to that argument than I even care to unravel, but the short story is that there are plenty of companies in Canada acting in unethical ways that we will never discover until someone goes a-digging.

[Reply]

Darren
November 22nd, 2004
4:27 pm

Sue: This is all relative. Relative to exploited developing world workers, exploited Canadian workers are incredibly well off:

* They have basic healthcare covered by the Canadian government.
* The economy affords them many opportunities to change employers.
* They are protected by the Employment Standards Acts, and have legal recourse to address their concerns.

In short, they’re guaranteed a set of rights totally foreign to the developing world. So, on my scale of exploitation, they don’t register (or register so minutely as to be indistinguishable from zero).

[Reply]

caleb walker
November 23rd, 2004
8:28 am

buy nothing?

Darren Barefoot posts some thoughts on Buy Nothing Day, Fri Nov 26. I agree that buying nothing for one day of the year does little, if anything, to effect change. What would make more of a change is something

Anonymous
November 23rd, 2004
12:46 pm

Spread the word…
This Saturday is “Buy everything you didn’t buy yesterday” Day!

[Reply]

Marcy
November 23rd, 2004
2:05 pm

to an extent, i agree with you. however….i think some benefit comes from celebrating the day, even if only to raise some awareness of the issues at stake. for example, at the high school where i teach, i help run the culture for peace club. when i began talking about responsible consumerism, and showing the kids articles and statistics about the environment and labour abuse, the students immediately jumped on board, agreed that they needed to be aware of the things and have made posters,are making brochures and are planning to have an information booth in the cafeteria on friday at lunch. the effort is not to insist kids buy nothing all day ( let’s face it, they couldn’t pack a lunch to save their lives) but rather to raise awareness of their purchases every day.
at least the 12 kids who are spearheading this event are aware. that’s 12 more kids aware of the consquences of their purchasing actions than there were last thursday.

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Michelle
November 26th, 2004
7:29 am

Hi–found you at Caleb Walker’s. I like your thoughts. For me, today is automatically a “buy nothing” day, because I abhor the throngs of stressed-out people populating the stores today.

In regard to Joke’s comment about low unemployment…when people can hold down a job at Walmart and still qualify for food stamps and other forms of governement assistance, that is not low unemployment. At least not in my book. Manufacturing jobs typically pay more than service jobs. I want them back.

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Andrew Careaga
November 23rd, 2007
11:26 am

What interests me most about BND is the way the culture-jamming activists at Adbusters will gladly sell their merch to you on any other day. I posted about this today also.

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