What do YOU support?

I played a very popular massively multi-player online game based in Iceland for a couple of years. I had other things I wanted to do so I parked the account and went on about life. 3 years passed. THEN I heard news of the Icelanders telling the International bankers to stick it where the moon doesn't shine. I reactivated my account so I would spend money in an economy that deserved support. This is how I see it (the revolution) is to be done. Spend your money as a vote. Support the people who WILL fight.

I don't know if this is the right forum category. Seems to fit. The world economy is blowing up while Iceland is recovering. In addition to the monetary support, I feel it is important to let others know that this can be done. If everyman started voting with what money he spends what else could be the result? other than the companies and countries that you do support will do better and those that don't will wither. You already vote. Make it count.

Let the oppressors wither. Let the recovery begin.

This is a thread because I would like to find the fallacy in my reasoning - if it is indeed there.

reply to post by yoesse

I don't understand anything about "massively multi-player online games," but apparently you have to pay to play. If i understand you, you'll give some money to Icelandic game designers rather than some other country's game designers because that will do what, exactly? Tell the Icelanders to keep on making better games than the competition? That's what it would tell me.

Suppose, the game designers finally figured out what message you were trying to send, what would they do? Go to their government and say "Thanks, we're getting extra money because some bloke on the other side of the world likes your policies?"

So, you keep money from a company in nasty country "A." That company suffers, maybe goes out of business. Will they go to their government and say "We could have hired more designers, bought more pizza and Mountain Dew if you had had different macroeconomic policies?"

I don't know if there are any flaws in your logic, I don't understand your logic.

Not a bad idea. Open a bank account in Iceland and trade all your dollars in for krona's. If you are not up for that at least move your money out of the big mega banks that control the government into a local credit union. Not that they would miss any one person but if enough people resisted it would put a stop to the increasing tyranny.

reply to post by charles1952


I do understand your confusion. To clarify, the game is just an example (real). But the point is to support activities with your money. Use where you spend your money as a conscious tool to bring prosperity to those that make a difference.

Support organizations that are out to help others rather than just what ever is convenient. I try to think of what will be the result of buying from vendor A vs vendor B.

If Vendor B uses slave labor to make a coat for you as opposed to Vendor A who custom makes coats with his wife. Which coat would you buy. The answer in this case is not as clear as it should be because the costs will be significantly different. If you have to buy from B, make a decision to make that coat last longer than usual so you can get one from A next time instead of from B every time because it is cheaper or more available.

If Vendor A gets enough business B will see the pattern and change his operation.

It is likely you do this already - but I think as a whole we are not thinking in terms of the money YOU have in your wallet is a tool. Something that you can and do wield every time you make any purchase.

Its a philosophy.

reply to post by yoesse


I agree that this should be a priority. But this needs to be implemented by millions of people in their everyday lives.

There are two major problems that I can see.

Firstly, corporations have driven out small local business to the point where you have to travel fifty miles to buy a loaf of bread from a real baker. Do any of us know a farm where we can go to buy our weekly milk, bread, eggs?
Consider what you need to buy, then look around you and consider where you can buy those things without supporting a massive global or national corporation that will funnel that money out of your city, state and even country to an off-shore account, I'm betting you'd need to travel to five different places all fifty miles away just to buy what you actually need.

The second problem is that people have become conditioned to think that fresh is somehow bad and that processed food is normal. Look at the vegetables you buy, there so generic and clean they could have been created in a lab. There's no dirt.
Most kids don't know where chips come from, and if you asked them what the most important element in making cheese is they'd probably say "orange coloring".

I agree that nothing will change until the people take the power back and stop supporting these disgusting corporations and their puppet governments. But although some moral people might be able to change their lives for the better in this way and learn to do without more crap made in China that they don't actually need, there are several areas where we are trapped into this situation and can't do much about it.

It can only work if enough people do it, and for most it's just too hard. And of course there are millions of others who either don't understand the basics of the economic problem or actually don't give a damn as long as they can still get their Big Mac.

Edited to add a personal memory...

I grew up in North London. In the 1980's. Every week my mum would take me shopping with her. It was a short walk up the road to the high street, and we'd stop at the green grocers, the bakers, the butchers, the sweet shop... There wasn't one place to buy everything. But it was so much better than it is now. I can still remember the smell of the sawdust at the butchers, the smell of damp earth and fresh rain in the grocers, the jars of sweets on the shelves behind the shop keeper on the corner.

That's how it should be. That money mostly stayed in the community, and the rest probably went in taxes to the state. It wasn't funneled out of the country to some global corporations bank account to be gambled in some sick global casino, avoiding taxes too.

reply to post by detachedindividual


Well said! You did a much better job than my attempt. Thanks.