Not saying Bregman is wrong (I don’t really have a belief on the matter) but this is not what I’d call a “strong case”. He says
As a historian, I’ve studied some of the major consumer boycott in history. Which ones changed history, and which ones fizzled out?
The answer is surprisingly consistent: the successful ones didn’t try to fight everything at once. They picked a single target – one that was both symbolically powerful and genuinely vulnerable – and went all in.
But then he provides only one example (Montgomery Bus Boycott), and doesn’t provide any evidence that the Montgomery Bus Boycott was an important causal factor in ending segregation.
FWIW I certainly wouldn’t tell anyone not to boycott ChatGPT. Decreasing OpenAI’s revenue is good for the world.
FWIW I certainly wouldn’t tell anyone not to boycott ChatGPT. Decreasing OpenAI’s revenue is good for the world.
I suppose if you’re using a free account and blocking ads, you are adding costs without adding revenue. The important thing is to boycott acts which put money in OpenAI’s pocket, which is not necessarily the same thing as boycotting all of their offerings.
I’m unsure about whether using free accounts is good or bad (I lean toward bad). It decreases gross profit, but it also increases usage numbers which makes it easier to raise money, which I think is more important than gross profit right now.
That’s a good point maybe I was going a bit far with “strong”. I’ve changed the title to “Decent” I think it’s pretty well established though in the activist world that is often effective to pick one specific thing to get a”win” on, at the right time. For sure proving casualty in activism is rarely possible.
I agree it’s hardly a comprehensive argument, but it’s not bad for a LinkedIn post ;).
pretty well established though in the activist world that is often effective to pick one specific thing to get a”win” on, at the right time.
It may be well established, but given the incentives in that world, it’s unlikely that the belief would need to correlate with truth to have become well established.
I think you’re being too cynical about activists. I would say the strongest incentive for activists is to actually achieve what they want in the world. Sure there are other competing incentives (pride, justification of action etc.) but many activists (maybe a minority but many) do actually really really want to win and optimise for that....
There are loads of clear cut examples where picking one thing to win has just straight up worked. For example my wife (unbiased example) led a big campaign here in Gulu district Northern Uganda to ban the smallest unit of alcohol—they sold spirits in small plastic bags for only 15 cents. The campaign started through a small group at a church, and they built a coalition of the local government, NGOs, churches, mosques etc. and then got the law through regionally and enforced it successfully. Now the smallest unit of alcohol costs twice as much here—getting the lowest unit price of alcohol higher is basically proven to reduce problematic alcohol use.
There’s just no way that would have happened without the careful, targeted campaign over 3 years, the counterfactual is hard to deny given all the difficult steps needed to get the ban and no other district ever did it.
Then 2 years later the whole country banned the alcohol sachets. Now that one might have happened anyway, or their campaign might have contributed its hard to tell.
This is a smaller scale example but I know of a bunch of other similar ones where the causality is pretty clear.
Not saying Bregman is wrong (I don’t really have a belief on the matter) but this is not what I’d call a “strong case”. He says
But then he provides only one example (Montgomery Bus Boycott), and doesn’t provide any evidence that the Montgomery Bus Boycott was an important causal factor in ending segregation.
FWIW I certainly wouldn’t tell anyone not to boycott ChatGPT. Decreasing OpenAI’s revenue is good for the world.
I suppose if you’re using a free account and blocking ads, you are adding costs without adding revenue. The important thing is to boycott acts which put money in OpenAI’s pocket, which is not necessarily the same thing as boycotting all of their offerings.
I’m unsure about whether using free accounts is good or bad (I lean toward bad). It decreases gross profit, but it also increases usage numbers which makes it easier to raise money, which I think is more important than gross profit right now.
It also decreases conversion rate, which could make it harder to raise money?
That’s a good point maybe I was going a bit far with “strong”. I’ve changed the title to “Decent” I think it’s pretty well established though in the activist world that is often effective to pick one specific thing to get a”win” on, at the right time. For sure proving casualty in activism is rarely possible.
I agree it’s hardly a comprehensive argument, but it’s not bad for a LinkedIn post ;).
It may be well established, but given the incentives in that world, it’s unlikely that the belief would need to correlate with truth to have become well established.
I think you’re being too cynical about activists. I would say the strongest incentive for activists is to actually achieve what they want in the world. Sure there are other competing incentives (pride, justification of action etc.) but many activists (maybe a minority but many) do actually really really want to win and optimise for that....
There are loads of clear cut examples where picking one thing to win has just straight up worked. For example my wife (unbiased example) led a big campaign here in Gulu district Northern Uganda to ban the smallest unit of alcohol—they sold spirits in small plastic bags for only 15 cents. The campaign started through a small group at a church, and they built a coalition of the local government, NGOs, churches, mosques etc. and then got the law through regionally and enforced it successfully. Now the smallest unit of alcohol costs twice as much here—getting the lowest unit price of alcohol higher is basically proven to reduce problematic alcohol use.
There’s just no way that would have happened without the careful, targeted campaign over 3 years, the counterfactual is hard to deny given all the difficult steps needed to get the ban and no other district ever did it.
Then 2 years later the whole country banned the alcohol sachets. Now that one might have happened anyway, or their campaign might have contributed its hard to tell.
This is a smaller scale example but I know of a bunch of other similar ones where the causality is pretty clear.
https://movendi.ngo/blog/2017/04/05/problem-sachet-alcohol-gulu-uganda/