If you want higher wages, don't join a union - just go demand a higher wage from your boss. If you want lower rents, don't demand rent controls, just petition your landlord for a discount. If none of this stuff works (this stuff rarely works), then you are out of luck. "The market" exists to do "price discovery" and you've just discovered the price of your labor (less than you need to survive) and the cost of your home (more than you can afford).

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You voted with your wallet, and you lost. As Thatcher was fond of saying, "there is no alternative."

This has been our framework for change for the past 50 years. It's like we've had a collective lobotomy and have forgotten the way that actual change comes about. Change happens when solidaristic groups of everyday people - unions, political movements - directly confront politicians and power-brokers and demand change.

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Your boss won't equitably share the fruits of your labor unless they fear that all the workers on the jobsite will shut down the shop. Your politicians won't do the bidding of everyday people - who can't shower them in cash - unless they fear that they will have their offices blockaded, their homes picketed, and their seats primaried.

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Rather than demanding this kind of change, we're supposed to vote with our wallets, making a fetish out of our personal consumption choices and scolding others as "lazy" or "cheap" if they don't quit Facebook or stop shopping at Walmart. This isn't just ineffective, it's counterproductive.

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Refusing to form solidaristic bonds with people suffering in the same way as you because they buy things you disapprove of means that you can't attain the solidarity needed to make the *real* change you're seeking.

Shopping harder is no way to save the planet or your neighbors. Individual actions do not provoke systemic change.

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For that, we need collective action. Join your local tenants' union, your local DSA chapter, your local Electronic Frontier Alliance group:

efa.eff.org/allies

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And also! Make consumption choices that improve your life and the lives of people you love. Support your local bookstore, buy online from libro.fm and bookshop.org - not because this will break Amazon's monopoly power (for that we will need unionization, antitrust, and tax enforcement), but because when you shop at those stores, you make a difference *to the lives of the people who operate those stores*, who pay decent wages and don't maim their warehouse workers.

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Go to your local family-owned grocer instead of the union-busting monopolist, because they're nice people, the food is good, and they pitch in to help their community, rather than draining its finances and lobbying for tax exemptions.

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Buy from artists and creators you like online, join their crowdfunders and Patreons, get their music on Bandcamp - not because this will shatter the hegemony of the five giant publishers, four giant studios, three giant labels, two giant app companies and one giant ebook and audiobook store - but because it will help people whose art you love pay their rent and buy groceries.

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Get off Facebook, Insta and Twitter and join Mastodon and/or Bluesky - not because you can disenshittify the internet by switching to federated social media, but because you, *personally* can have a less shitty time if you get away from the zuckermuskian rot economy.

Do all this stuff - to the extent you can. Support your local bookstore, but don't forego buying and reading books you love because the store is a two hour drive and you only get there once a month.

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Support your local grocer, but if they don't have the ingredients you need for the special dinner you're making for your friends or your picky kids, then go to Safeway or Whole Foods or Albertsons. Buy art from artists where you can, but if there's a movie you want to stream and the only way to get it is on Prime or Youtube, pay the $3.99. Get a Mastodon or Bluesky account, but if your friends or customers or audience won't move with you, then reach them where they are.

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Above all, don't isolate yourself. As Zephyr Teachout writes in *Break 'Em Up*, when you miss the picket at the Amazon warehouse because you've been driving around for hours looking for an independent stationery story to buy markers and cardboard for a protest sign, Jeff Bezos wins.

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