In which I reclaim some of my activist street cred

Buy Nothing Day is November 25th.

Is there really any good reason to go shopping? Just sit back, hang with your friends and family, and boggle over the people who would risk death by trampleation just to get a DVD player for $30 at Wal-Mart. 'Cause, seriously, what the hell?

(Of course, I may be a corporate sellout and end up having to work a couple of days that day, I wonder how well saying "Y'know, I can't come in after all, I realized that encouraging pointless consumerism is against my religion, and this is one of our most sacred holidays." would fly with the managers.)

"Charity" as Marketing

With the holiday season bearing down on us like the proverbial train at the end of the tunnel, I figured I'd get a couple of rants out of the way early.

One of them is for the absolutely lame book drive they're running at work. Now, I love books, as you all surely know. And I'm all for getting books for kids. It's just the way it's run that torques me off. Here's how it works. There's a random cardboard stand, plus bookmarks with a kid's name and the kinds of books they like written on it. They're all kids at one of the local school districts. So the way this alleged charity works is a customer comes in, picks up one of the bookmarks, and buys the book, then gives it to the clerk, who puts it in a box with the others that all get donated to the schools at some specific date.

Okay, I'll let you think about that and see if you see the glaring problem with that idea. Don't worry, I'll wait.



All done? Well, for those of you who didn't guess, that's not charity. Oh, sure, on the part of the person buying the book it is, but for Barnes and Noble, it's just marketing. It's a way to get people to buy more books. There's no discounts or anything on the book drive books. Somebody comes in and buys a book at full price, then it gets given to the kid. What the hell? The company is using people's charitable urges this time of year to profit. That's lame. And pissant. And evil. Maybe not very high up on the scale of evils, but it's still evil. And to make it worse, it's inefficient. What the person paid for the book could probably buy two books, if the company were actually interested in helping kids and not just in making money. But instead, it's just a way to market more books to customers. And I find that sad, disturbing, and faintly disgusting.

And the same point applies to other things, too. Even the venerable Toys for Tots, or part of Child's Play. Or even food drives.

Now, I don't know the full details, maybe things like this where somebody donates a thing rather than just money get more response. Maybe it's a compromise because the only way to get companies to support charities in this climate is to say "And you can make money off it, too." Maybe there's a reason for it. But it just stinks of lame greed to me. And I didn't even mention the charities signed up for gift-wrapping who don't get anything other than what people donate. Nice work if you can get it, suckering other people into making money for you.

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