A boycott is not an individual shopping decision - it's a collective action by a large group of people. It costs money, because you have to find alternatives.

When they boycotted the buses, they had to manage carpools to keep people off the bus. Those carpools cost money. They had to figure out their impact, and if it was working, tell the boycotters -- it's war, and they needed to know if they were winning. They had pickets, to inform people of the boycott.

The inconvenience of the boycott is directly related to its impact. The viability of a business usually hinges on how well it fulfills its niche, by lowering costs to, and increasing the satisfaction of, its customers. The business becomes nearly indispensible to the customer. When you can convince these customers to bear extra burdens, and suffer using another business, then, you're going to have a real impact.

The Southern Cal supermarket strikes of 2003 were very inconvenient, but effective. Hundreds of thousands of sympathetic people suffered, went along with the boycott, and cost the supermarkets billions of dollars. The contract they got back then wasn't that good -- but the one they got recently is pretty close to pre-strike levels, and across the country, I think it's been easier for their union to negotiate. That inconvenient boycott has gained millions of dollars for supermarket workers. This is money that gets spent on consumer goods, and invested in families.

If the people hadn't gone along with that boycott, we'd have more jobs in the supermarket that pay $7.50 an hour, and more turnover because of the crappy wages. Last week, I overheard a cashier discussing with a bagger about how to invest the $600 stimulus check in their retirement fund. That's proof to me that boycotts work!