By Evelyn Pyburn

I just read a reference to “the power of the boycott” – suggesting that people are just discovering it.

It’s kind of amusing that this should be a surprise to anyone. The power of a boycott is nothing more than consumers making choices. It is the very foundation of a free market system that we should all know and understand. Any one in business who doesn’t know that the ultimate decision-maker is the consumer is not long to remain in business.

A boycott is just a lot of consumers rejecting a political product or idea being foisted upon us in some way by a business in cahoots with the government.

It’s for sure that most politicians know who the ultimate decision maker is. It’s why we see ourselves and our freedoms being attacked from so many different directions. Many – a great many – politicians are trying to eliminate our freedom to choose in the realm of politics, knowing we might not choose them as leaders.

Boycotts are being taken up in something of an unprecedented way to make a point, because many other avenues for citizens (consumers) to make a choice are being blocked. Boycotts remain one of few alternatives for people to make themselves heard due to a public /private “unholy” alliance between government and big companies.

Of course the choices of consumers are being constrained in other ways under the Biden administration as they try to coerce what consumer products we are able to buy, as government attempts to gain increasing power over each one of us. But while they may be able to make it difficult if not impossible to purchase some products, it becomes difficult to force us to buy others – as the weak market for electric cars demonstrates.

That is the power of the market. No matter what they do, eventually the market will prevail. No matter to what extremes the government may be willing to go, in the end it will fail because really, there is nothing more powerful than markets – than each person choosing what they will support and what they will not.

So while some people may be surprised by the effectiveness of boycotts, they shouldn’t be – they are at play every day and always will be.