Most people vote every 2 or 4 years, and consider that to be a completed civic duty. But they vote every day with their choices as consumers. And they endorse industries or companies when they choose to work for them. And because one single vote doesn’t seem to matter and being a more conscious consumer doesn’t have an immediate visible impact, most people choose to feel powerless. But the reality is that for every truly immoral person in the world running a business or ruining politics, there are hundreds and thousands of well intentioned individuals working for them or even working for competitors who feel the need to sacrifice their own values in order to compete. And by participating in that business ecosystem, even by working for companies that “aren’t the worst”, they allow the truly rotten businesses to continue without their behaviour being obviously aberrant.
So start voting with your career choices, start voting with the brands you support, and also start looking for allies with people who may vary from you politically but who also want to make changes to make the world a better place. The majority of the people in the world actually want a better world, but it serves our leaders, both public and private, to keep us focused on our differences; that way we never stop to look at the truly rotten system we keep participating in.
An additional note about voting is that in many cases you face what seems like a binary choice; support either candidate A or candidate B. But each time you also face the choice of not voting at all. If neither candidate is one you can believe in, then voting for either is also endorsing the system which gave you those poor choices.
In binary elections, you should always consider voting for a 3rd choice. Although many people say this is throwing your vote away, the reality is that until enough people make the 3rd choice, nothing will change so the reason for voting for a 3rd choice is the same reason why personal environmentalism also makes sense.
