While tens of thousands of people have joined Facebook groups in Sweden and Denmark calling for no longer buying American, Norwegian company Haltbakk Bunkers has announced that it will stop supplying US military vessels with fuel.
Consumer boycotts are not sufficient by themselves. However they do serve to reduce the economic strength of the hostile nation.
They also signal to the politicians that political actions is backed and demanded by the population.
The US wants to forbid talking about boycotts in some states. the German parliament passed a resolution to condemn the BDS movement. When the ICJ concluded in its advisory opinion regarding the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestinian land that there most be no economic complicity in the occupation, the German chancellor Scholz condemned the ICJs legal conclusion as “disgusting”.
They would not attack consumer boycotts in such ways, if they would not fear them.
I am talking about a level higher up the chain. At the simplest level, economies are driven by the biggest spender. This is where R&D and all real progress happen. In the past, there were attempts to redirect spending away from the military somewhat like with the Apollo program and space race with the Soviet Union.
It was after this era that the gamble on VC and Silicon started to pay off as an alternative. Everything about our present world has actually been peripheral to silicon chips. It is by-far the most expensive endeavor in human history. Its exponential growth exceeded even what the US military could keep up with and afford. This growth has been extraordinary. Most of human history is a story of economies lead by military spending. So it is impossible to understate how important the end of that exponential growth is to life as we know it. All of the other goods and services of our lives are peripheral to his driving force of who is funding the leading edge and their motivations. When that fundamentally shifts to a new driving force, all the peripheral stuff is not really relevant and more of a distraction than anything else.
I’m not trying to say “don’t boycott the stuff.” I’m saying, you REALLY need to pay attention to and understand this higher layer issue. The end of the silicon age means boycotting it will only accelerate the issue. We all need to be prepared for a world that is very different and much more like the world of the 1930’s in terms of politics and conflict.
Consumer boycotts are not sufficient by themselves. However they do serve to reduce the economic strength of the hostile nation.
They also signal to the politicians that political actions is backed and demanded by the population.
The US wants to forbid talking about boycotts in some states. the German parliament passed a resolution to condemn the BDS movement. When the ICJ concluded in its advisory opinion regarding the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestinian land that there most be no economic complicity in the occupation, the German chancellor Scholz condemned the ICJs legal conclusion as “disgusting”.
They would not attack consumer boycotts in such ways, if they would not fear them.
I am talking about a level higher up the chain. At the simplest level, economies are driven by the biggest spender. This is where R&D and all real progress happen. In the past, there were attempts to redirect spending away from the military somewhat like with the Apollo program and space race with the Soviet Union.
It was after this era that the gamble on VC and Silicon started to pay off as an alternative. Everything about our present world has actually been peripheral to silicon chips. It is by-far the most expensive endeavor in human history. Its exponential growth exceeded even what the US military could keep up with and afford. This growth has been extraordinary. Most of human history is a story of economies lead by military spending. So it is impossible to understate how important the end of that exponential growth is to life as we know it. All of the other goods and services of our lives are peripheral to his driving force of who is funding the leading edge and their motivations. When that fundamentally shifts to a new driving force, all the peripheral stuff is not really relevant and more of a distraction than anything else.
I’m not trying to say “don’t boycott the stuff.” I’m saying, you REALLY need to pay attention to and understand this higher layer issue. The end of the silicon age means boycotting it will only accelerate the issue. We all need to be prepared for a world that is very different and much more like the world of the 1930’s in terms of politics and conflict.