Keep in mind that as long as you're driving the economy (by production or consumption), you're enabling whatever pre-existing incentive-structures the economy supports. $5 of vegan bread gives the grocery store five more dollars, which it will then use to pay that loss-leader butchery that brings in the saturday shoppers, etc. Putting $1.50 in a vending machine to buy a Nestle-competitor's product, results in the vending machine company renewing Nestle's contract either way (because they're the draw), that competitor paying Nestle $0.40 for pre-processed milk-chocolate product, and Nestle spending $0.40 more not to market their products to you (they assume you a lost cause), but rather to your children directly.
...Or, in micro-econ terms, if you pay me $5 for vegan bread, I'll spend that $5 on several kit-kats (I am, after all, craving them now), and put some away to save up for a new phone. You've effectively multiplied the harm you're doing!
It's the same general argument as "a portion of every tax dollar goes to killing brown people", but escaping the economy entirely is actually harder than plain-old tax evasion. Basically, voting with your wallet only sways sole proprietors; anything larger may be externally capitalist, but is internally more socialist/syndicalist, driven by long-term contracts, quotas, "consumer confidence" ratings, futures, government certifications, and insurance-risk-purchases more than hard revenue. All that is opaque to you as a consumer, so there's really no way to influence any entrenched player by purposefully tugging on money-strings. They've purchased entire portfolios to hedge against precisely that effect!
Those are good points, but I disagree that individuals cannot influence entrenched players by changing their purchasing decisions. Here's how it can happen:
1. A large chunk of people buy the Fairphone. Let's pretend it's 500,000.
2. Samsung notices this. Of course they don't care about that tiny amount of competition, but they do care about competing with Apple.
3. Samsung commissions a study. They find that of the respondents, 0.5% answer "yes" to "Have you bought, or do you plan to buy a Fairphone or other specialty phone which uses conflict-free materials". When asked "If not, which of the following reasons describes why?", 25% answer "I don't want to take a chance with an unknown manufacturer."
4. From this, they conclude that they can expect to sell roughly 20 million additional phones if they (and they alone among major manufacturers) if they switch to conflict-free materials. That is NSFPMS/HB = 20 million, where
NS = non-Samsung marketshare ~= 75%
FF = Fairphone sales = 500,000
MS = % who would buy a mainstream conflict-free phone = 25%
HB = % who have already bought/will buy a Fairphone = 0.5%
5. Every other major manufacturer does the same calculation, and suddenly conflict-free materials are a standard feature.
Now obviously this is an oversimplification. The numbers are made up, Samsung would also add in some uncertainty about customers doing what they say they will do, I haven't taken into account the cost difference for the materials, those survey questions are atrociously designed, etc. But you get the point.
...Or, in micro-econ terms, if you pay me $5 for vegan bread, I'll spend that $5 on several kit-kats (I am, after all, craving them now), and put some away to save up for a new phone. You've effectively multiplied the harm you're doing!
It's the same general argument as "a portion of every tax dollar goes to killing brown people", but escaping the economy entirely is actually harder than plain-old tax evasion. Basically, voting with your wallet only sways sole proprietors; anything larger may be externally capitalist, but is internally more socialist/syndicalist, driven by long-term contracts, quotas, "consumer confidence" ratings, futures, government certifications, and insurance-risk-purchases more than hard revenue. All that is opaque to you as a consumer, so there's really no way to influence any entrenched player by purposefully tugging on money-strings. They've purchased entire portfolios to hedge against precisely that effect!