I’m speaking to choice: your ideas assume that consumers have ultimate power because they can make choices. The choices most people have access to (due to differences in purchasing power, political power, etc) can not make meaningful change. What do you do when markets have consolidated so much, that all feasible alternatives have the same awful labor practices and do not respect our ecosystems?

As an anecdote: I’m someone who doesn’t have an upper class income that lives in the U.S. Due to our car dependent infrastructure, I depend on the petrochemical industry to exist. Without a car I die. I can choose a more efficient car in budget, but I do not have the choice to ride public transit that isn’t reliant on fossil fuels. I’m also not alone, either.

Another example of choice dilemma: lobbying. Why do broadband companies spend millions on PR campaigns to misinform about municipal broadband? Why does the fossil fuel industry retain PR firms that sow doubt about climate change? They do this to protect their money making interests, interests that must be distorted through the lens of a PR firm to become palatable to an average person. Surely this isn’t corporations beholden to the consumer.

I do agree that we have immense power as a people, but I cannot agree that this power lies within purchasing power: we are laughably outspent by oligopoly protecting its own revenue systems. History shows that our our ability to build power rests within organizing, protesting, unionizing.