The Bath Towel Boycott – How I Put Tyranny on Mute
I needed new bath towels.
Noticing that my once-luxurious bath towels had grown old and a bit used up, I decided it was time for a refresh. I may be a single man living the life of Riley in Free Florida, but that doesn’t mean I’m uncivilized, does it?
Yup. It’s gonna be one of those essays…
Now, in a pre-2020 world, I normally would have made the mundane trek to my local Target to pick up a set of decently priced, mid-range bath towels and call it a day; Target was everyone’s go-to store. Target used to be situated at the intersection of Quality, Price and Convenience and political considerations were just not part of our thinking for something so mundane.
But, we don’t live in that framework anymore, do we? Just a few short years later, we find ourselves living in a world where every action we take, either implicitly or explicitly, has to be some political declaration for a viewpoint, cause or ideology. Even something as mundane as buying a few household goods like underwear, a toaster or bath towels now must pass through a prism of political ideals. I think we can all agree it’s exhausting.
Feed Liberty, Starve Tyranny
Do you remember as children when we became sick, our mothers would reach into the medicine cabinet to grab some oozy cough syrup and a spoon? Regardless if it worked or not, as children we all knew that that thick neon red liquid was going to taste just god-awful. Robitussen was 8-year old kryptonite.
What’s the old adage? Feed a cold, starve a fever? Could someone please ask the Old Wives what cures corrupt government, human trafficking and pedophilia? I’m pretty sure they’ll tell us that we must starve the corruption virus of what it craves: money.
Unfortunately, there is no Robitussen for what cures the state of our world. So until they come out with a Robitussen for Tyranny, we’re gonna have to come up with our own chicken soup cure.
Here’s How
If you’ll remember, before social media, boycotts were typically a hyper-local affair. A single customer vowing to ‘take my business elsewhere’ was definitely not what a business wanted but the impact of such an action was contained and typically blew over after a short time. Turns out that Target, Disney, InBev and others are learning that those halcyon days are long gone.
And our latest boycotts on the wokest of the woke speak for themselves; we are kicking ass and taking names. Most recent estimates show that:
- Bud Light has lost 27 Billion
- Target has lost 15 Billion
- Disney has lost .9 Billion
Boycotts have become an international phenomenon now and our power is measured in billions.
Debt and Business
Did you know that in many cases, businesses take out loans to purchase inventory just to stay in business or expand? What this means is that the ability to stay in business is not 100% reliant on the quality of a product or how wonderful the customer service is, but instead, on their credit rating.
By now, you will have heard of Blackrock as a major source of funding for businesses around the world. And, by now, you will have also heard of Blackrock’s CEO, Larry Fink (can there be a better name?) declare,
“Behaviors are going to have to change. This is one thing we’re asking companies. You have to force behaviors.
At BlackRock we are forcing behaviors.”
How do you suppose Mr. Fink intends to ‘force behaviors?’ Business credit, of course.
This is the reason for the ESG scores that so many companies are adopting. And given what we have learned how business relies on debt to fund their businesses, this provides Fink unprecedented leverage over a wide swath of the corporate world. ESG scores are not about fighting for gay rights. ESG scores aren’t about ensuring ‘diversity’ on corporate boards. ESG scores are about control. And Mr. Fink and those who think like him believe they have a tiger by the tail and have found the ultimate cudgel to control a planet’s entire economy.
You see, because businesses many times must borrow against future revenues to remain in business, Blackrock financial support forces them to now make a choice:
Enter the political realm as Blackrock demands and support a political ideology in exchange for business credit (whether they agreed with it or not) or
Refuse the political ideology (and its funding) and go out of business in a matter of months.
The Power of the Boycott in the 21st Century
Here’s the dirty little secret ‘they’ don’t want you to know: Boycotts don’t need to eliminate 100% of a company’s sales in order for it to be effective. It only has to be impactful enough and last long enough to make the company unpalatable to institutional lenders and stock traders. This is because, in general, a significant portion of a company’s ‘value’ is in its stock price and its ability to obtain credit.
Because dollars entering a business is a blend of sales and debt, when a company prioritizes their ESG score instead of their customers, customers will cease buying those products. This throws the revenue/debt mix out of whack and makes the company even MORE reliant on debt to stay afloat. The company is forced to take drastic measures (layoffs, closing stores, etc.) and take on yet more debt to fill a hole that the hiccup in predictable sales created.
But here’s the catch: as sales decrease and sales forecasts look gloomier and gloomier, the company’s outlook looks more and more pessimistic. Because of this pessimism, it loses its ability to attract investors (sell stock) or take on new debt; eventually the bank itself will cease funding the sinking ship.
And this is the ultimate irony of the whole scenario. The company will, in the end, be killed by the very snake they accepted into their bosom in the first place.
The company, in order to maintain its access to capital agreed to champion woman-face, ‘tuck-friendly’ bathing suits for children and other political stances contrary to their customers’ core beliefs. And in so doing, they alienated a not insignificant proportion of that customer base.
This causes the company to rely more and more on debt to ‘ride out the boycott storm.’ But when that storm lasts longer than anticipated, the bank itself begins to wonder if they can continue throwing good money after bad. Prudence requires that they cease lending to the troubled business.
And just like that, Target goes out of business.
Buycotts, the Natural Brother of Boycotts
The boycott/buycott dualism is natural and self-organizing. A boycotting customer doesn’t even have to think about it because it is in our nature to find a substitute for the boycotted business. We saw this happen in real time regarding the Bud Light boycott. Nobody expected we would all become teetotalers when Bud Lite decided to hype a transvestite and call it normal. We’re still gonna have a beer, just not one that has become its own meme.
Bud Light lost an unimaginable amount of business for partnering with a man in woman-face. Without much prompting, Americans from all over the country simply stopped buying that beer. InBev can’t GIVE the stuff away (literally).
But Americans didn’t stop drinking, of course. They simply switched to a brand that didn’t spit on their values. Modelo picked up nearly all of Bud Lite’s lost sales and became the natural replacement for Bud Lite.
In our interconnected world, it becomes easier and easier to boycott woke companies and buycott their replacements. And it is here where the BreathEasy app is your tool to hasten the demise of woke businesses. The BreathEasy app helps you, the consumer, to replace woke companies with patriot ones.
An Ending to my Bath Towel Quest
So how did I solve my bath towel problem, you ask? I whipped out the BreathEasy app, of course.
True Story. I opened the BreathEasy app today and simply entered the search term ‘towels.’ The BreathEasy app immediately provided an entire list of businesses that sold towels within 20 miles.
And, as you might expect, I got numerous results for Target, some for Bed, Bath and Beyond (another company that hates our friend Mike Lindell), a few for Walmart and a couple entries for Kohl’s.
Sorting by score, I landed on Kohl’s. I used the BreathEasy app to find an alternativeto Target to specifically avoidgiving Target. This small action meant that I was taking part in a worldwide boycott of a company that wholly deserves the disdain it has wrought.
Now its your turn. Download the BreathEasy app today and use it to search out businesses that share our values.
Sincerely,
R. Altomare
Founder, BreathEasy
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