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First Draft Response To May 19 Dont Buy GasFirst Draft Response To May 19 Dont Buy GasSee http://www.chat11.com/May_19_2004_Gas_Price_Boycott
Thanks for the spam! Please send more! I enjoy these. No, seriously... :)
I had a lot of fun analyzing this, and writing a response to the message here:
http://www.chat11.com/Garnet's_Thoughts_On_Gas_Boycotts
In fact, I already wrote an editorial on a very similar spam that was popular a couple of months ago: http://www.chat11.com/February_2004_Gas_Price_Resistance
These spams are ridiculous on many fronts. The first part is sending it to all your friends. That spam above was talking about how we could reach 300 million people with the spam. Carried out one more generation of people sending the spam out, it could have boasted about how it would reach 10 billion people. Obviously that can't happen. What probably would happen is that if everyone did this, you and most of your friends would be choking on dozens, if not hundreds, of copies of the same message.
Also, why would the oil companies care about this, becauses, where is the call to less consumption? Most people probably buy gas once, maybe twice, a week. So this email really would affect less than a fifth of the driving public who might have bought gas on this day. And of those one fifth who might have gotten gas on this day, they probably have enough gas left to wait a day, so they wait until the next day. And guess what they do? They buy more gas the next day. Or they buy gas a day early. Where is the hurt to the oil companies?
And this is only if enough people got this email. Even in the U.S., this email will probably on reach less than half the people on your street. As far as I know, on my street, I'm one of only two people out of ten who are likely to look at email more than once a week.
But to understand this better, lets think about this idea, in terms of your own business, if this could be 100% effective...
Lets say you run a postal mailbox company.... Imagine if everyone boycotted the post office for a day or two during the Christmas season. What happens? They just mail more stuff when they come back the next day. But could consumers make much of a difference? Business would still be mailing their packages, etc. I think the post office might only barely notice.
Suppose you run a flower shop.... Everyone refuses to buy flowers from you and all the other growers one day of the week.... Would it make a lot of difference? It would probably hurt the smaller business, with a razor think profit margin, and employees standing around with nothing much to do other than clean the store. The big grower probably has relatively few people dedicated to directly handling the order.
Lets not go to the grocery store to protest the recent state mandated increases in the price of milk. Hmm, unless we don't eat all day, we'd just buy more groceries the next day. Or else we would all go to McDonalds , giving them a windfall profit for the day.
If any of these could make a difference, it probably impacts most the very middlemen it claims are most affected by the price rises: the truckers, the small gas stations, etc.
But it's fun to have a cause. Let's see, how can we do this....
Now here's an idea that would probably hurt only people we hate: Let's all boycott our lawyers for a day. Let's make May 19th a day that no one shows up for their lawyers visits. Schedule a visit now, just so you have a visit to not show up at. Lets throw in accountants, too, for good measure. No visits to lawyers, CPAs, tax people, etc. Would this make a difference? Would they lower their astronomical rates just a bit? Nah, they'd just spend the day getting caught up on paperwork. In fact, if enough of them thought enough of us weren't going to show up, they'd show us by not even going into their office because they thought we weren't going to show up, thus screwing the few people who didn't check their email to know about the thing the rest of us cooked up, and end up going in to keep their appointment.
And, ooops, I forgot to mention this: No one can show up for court either on that day, since the courts are run by lawyers. What would the lawyers and judges think about the empty courtrooms? Would they get just a little scared that maybe the rest of the world had been raptured, and they had been left behind? Or would they just have a good laugh, issue bench warrants for everyone who didn't show in court, and then go home and read their law journals, catch up on paper work, or just play golf the rest of the day. Hmmm, some punishment. Actually, it sounds like it will hurt a lot of us more than it will hurt them.
Darn, this is hard....
Hmmm.. OK... Let's boycott calling the police for a day... They'll just sit around and eat more donuts. Darn, that won't work.
Don't call the fire department for a day? No big impact on this one. Who ever sees them anyhow in a typical day? Besides everyone loves firemen, and they are called automatically....
Boycott Costco? Boycott Target? Boycott K-marts? Boycott all shopping malls? Stay home for a day, and spend that day taking a walk with our family or neighbors? Hmmm... Imagine filling the streets of our neighborhoods with aimless people who would rather be shopping. Might not be a good idea. They officials think we were getting ready to riot, it might get the governors to declare a state of emergency.
But wait... Maybe we're on to something. How about this: For a week, make a commitment to buy nothing that has sales tax added to it. Only buy foods, and items that have no sales tax. That’s probably the only tax that we have any voluntary say in. Would the government feel the pinch if we didn't feed it sales tax for a week? It sure is fun to fantasize about that possibility.
And while we're at it, lets take the cash we would have spent on taxable items that week, and use it to pay down our credit cards. That might reduce the money owed to the credit card companies enough to make them notice the loss in interest income. Imagine if that helped all of us, the entire nation, pay our bill on time for a month. They wouldn't get to charge any late fees, or over the limit fees for a month because everyone would be current. Oh wow, I can just see the panic on Wall o' Debt Street!
Sticking it to the government and the credit card companies, all in the same week! Could it get any sweeter than that?
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