I want you to know that I am treating your concerns seriously and have been writing a response, but it is already 5000 characters long and I need to eat dinner, so I hope you will allow me the courtesy of replying in time without assuming that I am either conceding or disregarding your comment.
Fine, then I’ll just paste my unfinished and unedited comment without taking the time to edit it or care about it anymore.
Look, I respect that you’re genuinely trying to discuss this, so I’m going to get into here. I apologize for the length, frankly I didn’t really think this was going to ever be more than a little drive-by and admittedly indulgent but still well-meaning and well-placed snark, but at this point do feel you are due a response and unfortunately I don’t know how to be briefer while still being comprehensive. Here we go:
Brother: restaurant no get money, money no come next day.
So your point of meaningful impact is that the only businesses who might experience this would be those like restaurants with specifically perishable goods and services… So the only people experiencing this meaningful impact then would be small businesses in this section who run tight margins and can’t cushion the blow the way the corporate-owned entities, the actual opposition, can? Look I understand that we’ve arrived at your earlier point of contention with me as stated here-
You could even argue that small businesses will be unfairly targeted by this protest and I’m here for it.
-but I have to admit that I did not expect that you would accept negative impact here denying you my concession earlier. If that’s the new line then sure I guess I have to give it up to you at this point but I can’t imagine that’s what you intended or is a satisfying resolution for either of us.
Who knows what the impact will be, why don’t we find out before we lable it pointless? Do you have any data showing that me standing in front of my city hall on Tuesday with a sign makes a difference? Because it’s been tried quite a few times since Occupy and nothing has improved. Or is that also operating off of “trust me bro”?
This is a tremendous point, to be fair. But I do think they are different, and I will try to articulate how.
Because we live in the real world and understand nothing is without cost, material or otherwise, so we must engage in cost-analysis in all things, the more so the more they matter. Effort is not unexhaustive, unfortunately. And people are easily discouraged and easily distracted. And words carry meaning. You yourself have brought up Occupy multiple times as a, I am assuming, personal disappointment even though I would argue there was some level of material impact from it, albeit minimal, so it sounds like you understand the kind of discouragement I’m describing; these are the stakes at play.
In the grand scheme of things, these are very low stakes. I think it is important to acknowledge this before we continue because if you’re approaching this from the standpoint that I think this protest is grave evil then everything is going to fall apart immediately. We are discussing low stakes here, almost zero stakes, but not zero stakes. So now we need to consider benefits to weigh them against these stakes, and this is where the rub is for me and where I see the separation between our two examples.
On the side of the protest we have the sending of a message and possible minor economic hit as the possible reward to weigh against our risk. Of course that’s not nothing, that’s something. But I think any reasonable person would then need to question the variables, and this is where you and I are going to disagree, I know, but I have to assume the same reasonable person would at least acknowledge that we are discussing a minor economic impact as a longshot possibility. Suddenly we’re feeling a lot more shaky; a chance of a minor economic hit which is presumably mostly temporary in at least most sectors suddenly feels a lot less substantial of a counter to the stakes. And as far as I see it, that is the only gain in this category.
On the side of physical protest, I guess we’re just going to ignore or pretend that it isn’t literally harder to ignore than a mere single day absence of clientele, on top of the history of physical protest having actual impact (again, we aren’t discussing solving here, we are discussing improving), here are putting the collective in collective action into play. What we have here that we don’t in your stay at home isolated from your community the same as you do any other day protest is people actually communing together in activism. This is how connections are made, this is how progress happens, this how you hear real ideas from real people without the nefarious filters of the internet. In all honesty the actual sign-holding and appearance-making is kind of secondary to the vital action of community activism building.
So in the case of the “Economic Blackout” you have a small chance to do minimal effort in the absolute best case of scenarios, which I still think is based on a faulty premise to begin with, which either has its small impact or it fails entirely, but that’s it, whereas in the case of the real protest there are secondary benefits at play that just don’t exist in your example.
But again, I’m not even calling the Economic Blackout bad or harmful or problematic really, really I’m just calling the whole thing pointless.
This is coming from a person who wants to do both. Is your argument that we should do nothing?
No, do whatever the fuck you want. Hell, even do this blackout. I actually participated and in the blackout myself. Just don’t call this a protest like you’re doing something meaningful. This is at best commiseration, which has personal emotional value, but is not a protest.
I want you to know that I am treating your concerns seriously and have been writing a response, but it is already 5000 characters long and I need to eat dinner, so I hope you will allow me the courtesy of replying in time without assuming that I am either conceding or disregarding your comment.
Save yourself the trouble, this isn’t going anywhere
Fine, then I’ll just paste my unfinished and unedited comment without taking the time to edit it or care about it anymore.
Look, I respect that you’re genuinely trying to discuss this, so I’m going to get into here. I apologize for the length, frankly I didn’t really think this was going to ever be more than a little drive-by and admittedly indulgent but still well-meaning and well-placed snark, but at this point do feel you are due a response and unfortunately I don’t know how to be briefer while still being comprehensive. Here we go:
So your point of meaningful impact is that the only businesses who might experience this would be those like restaurants with specifically perishable goods and services… So the only people experiencing this meaningful impact then would be small businesses in this section who run tight margins and can’t cushion the blow the way the corporate-owned entities, the actual opposition, can? Look I understand that we’ve arrived at your earlier point of contention with me as stated here-
-but I have to admit that I did not expect that you would accept negative impact here denying you my concession earlier. If that’s the new line then sure I guess I have to give it up to you at this point but I can’t imagine that’s what you intended or is a satisfying resolution for either of us.
This is a tremendous point, to be fair. But I do think they are different, and I will try to articulate how.
Because we live in the real world and understand nothing is without cost, material or otherwise, so we must engage in cost-analysis in all things, the more so the more they matter. Effort is not unexhaustive, unfortunately. And people are easily discouraged and easily distracted. And words carry meaning. You yourself have brought up Occupy multiple times as a, I am assuming, personal disappointment even though I would argue there was some level of material impact from it, albeit minimal, so it sounds like you understand the kind of discouragement I’m describing; these are the stakes at play.
In the grand scheme of things, these are very low stakes. I think it is important to acknowledge this before we continue because if you’re approaching this from the standpoint that I think this protest is grave evil then everything is going to fall apart immediately. We are discussing low stakes here, almost zero stakes, but not zero stakes. So now we need to consider benefits to weigh them against these stakes, and this is where the rub is for me and where I see the separation between our two examples.
On the side of the protest we have the sending of a message and possible minor economic hit as the possible reward to weigh against our risk. Of course that’s not nothing, that’s something. But I think any reasonable person would then need to question the variables, and this is where you and I are going to disagree, I know, but I have to assume the same reasonable person would at least acknowledge that we are discussing a minor economic impact as a longshot possibility. Suddenly we’re feeling a lot more shaky; a chance of a minor economic hit which is presumably mostly temporary in at least most sectors suddenly feels a lot less substantial of a counter to the stakes. And as far as I see it, that is the only gain in this category.
On the side of physical protest, I guess we’re just going to ignore or pretend that it isn’t literally harder to ignore than a mere single day absence of clientele, on top of the history of physical protest having actual impact (again, we aren’t discussing solving here, we are discussing improving), here are putting the collective in collective action into play. What we have here that we don’t in your stay at home isolated from your community the same as you do any other day protest is people actually communing together in activism. This is how connections are made, this is how progress happens, this how you hear real ideas from real people without the nefarious filters of the internet. In all honesty the actual sign-holding and appearance-making is kind of secondary to the vital action of community activism building.
So in the case of the “Economic Blackout” you have a small chance to do minimal effort in the absolute best case of scenarios, which I still think is based on a faulty premise to begin with, which either has its small impact or it fails entirely, but that’s it, whereas in the case of the real protest there are secondary benefits at play that just don’t exist in your example.
But again, I’m not even calling the Economic Blackout bad or harmful or problematic really, really I’m just calling the whole thing pointless.
No, do whatever the fuck you want. Hell, even do this blackout. I actually participated and in the blackout myself. Just don’t call this a protest like you’re doing something meaningful. This is at best commiseration, which has personal emotional value, but is not a protest.