How Did We The People Lose Control Over Corporations?

[hunter]

16. Because people buy their crap?

I don't have a list of things I boycott, I have a list of things I don't boycott, mostly things I can eat or drink.

It's not that I believe my one voice will change anything, I just don't like participating in this world economy any more than I have to.

Society's current definition of "economic productivity" is a direct measure of the damage we are doing to the earth's natural environment and our own human spirit.

My computers (excepting the Raspberry Pi ) and my car are all salvage, diverted from the waste stream. The computers run Linux. My wife and I, by some planning and greater good fortune, haven't been commuters since the mid 'eighties, so we don't use a lot of gasoline.

Our internet, which my wife and I require for our work, is from a local ISP. We don't have cable, satellite, or broadcast television. Netflix is our only television indulgence since one of our kids is a huge fan of low- and medium budget film and television, likes to talk about stuff on Netflix, and is now living in Los Angeles looking for a career in that business. (The movie business is a family tradition that began with my grandma and her sister who were wild young things in Hollywood. My parents met working in Hollywood. My sister has screen credits for various small parts in television mostly, but she never made a living of it. My grandma tried to get me in the door as a child actor, but Hollywood had little use for a kid who stared at people like they were interesting insects and was always wandering off to poke around in the electrical equipment.)

I don't live as simply as I did when I was single (I haven't yet been able to convince my wife we don't need a refrigerator...), and being a U.S.A. citizen who is not living below the poverty line, I'm very solidly in the top 1% of world consumers, but I do what I can to avoid supporting the corporations I complain about.