The moral boycott

Some boycotts to think about;

Ethical Consumer's boycott list


It is often a criticism of boycotts that they achieve nothing. The argument goes that there is no point in just four or five people boycotting a product, because it makes little or no difference to the profits and running of the company. This is largely speaking true when dealing with large multinationals.

One way of defeating this argument is to point out that you have to lead by example. The only way to get lots of people to boycott a product is to start it yourself. So your own personal boycott is jsut the first step.

But for me this is all irrelevant. Whether or not it effects the company concerned is not as important as boycotting it for moral purposes. If you can not support an action morally then you have no choice other than to boycott it. Otherwise you become a hypocrite. "Do what I say, not what I do" is not a strong position to hold.

For this reason I am henceforth working all Coca-Cola products out of my diet.

It's a big one I know. And it'll be tough (I'll have to find something else to drink for a start), but it's the right thing to do.

Boycotts can be difficult, but you find different things instead, you just have to be careful. So I found with my boycott of Nestle(see earlier blog post). My boycott of sports companies wasn't exactly the hardest though.


Ian, the big moralist, and boycott extraordinare. May even become a vege one day, but that's likely to take a very, very long time.