Our Most Powerful Vote

Consumer product companies spend millions of dollars every year on market research. The purpose of their existence is simple: to make a profit by figuring out what we want and putting that in front of us so that we can buy it. To be fair, companies also use advertising to influence our purchasing choices by exploiting our insecurities. They don’t just cater to our wants; they also help form our desires. As powerful as marketing can be, we are still ultimately in control of what we purchase.

When we buy something, we are actively voting for more of a particular product to be made. On the other hand, when we don’t buy something, we are voting for less of that good to be produced, and the vote we cast is exceptionally powerful. Just imagine if we all stopped buying chewing gum altogether for just a month or two. First, retailers that sell gum would stop carrying it—they are in the business of carrying only what sells. With no retailers displaying their wares, it wouldn’t take long before the entire gum industry collapsed on itself. Perhaps we’d have worse breath as a result, but we would no longer see the ugly black dots that littered chewing gum leaves on sidewalks.

It’s true—as a result of the gum industry collapse, thousands of employees would find themselves unemployed. But this quandary begs the most important questions in all of this. What is more important: the growth of our economy or a sustainable existence? How many humans should the planet support? Is more always better?

The consumer vote, unlike the votes we cast in elections, is one that you make daily with your hard-earned dollars. It is profound, and it fundamentally controls what is made and what is not—what ends up as garbage, and what doesn’t.