The ethics and pragmatics of boycotts

We’ve done almost no World Cup coverage here at LGM, but what little has appeared has led to various comments about how it’s wrong to even watch the games sorry matches I mean fixtures on TV, given the atrocious Qatari human rights record, the hundreds of imported workers who have been killed building stadia for the event, and even — a relatively minor factor to be sure — the openly corrupt bidding process, in which the government of Qatar simply bribed FIFA officials for the right to hold the World Cup final.

In reaction to those comments I did a bit of digging around, and found that while calls to boycott the World Cup have been pretty common, actual boycotting behavior, especially by anyone in a position to have some sort of real effect on the event, has been almost non-existent. I haven’t been able to find a single player, team, major soccer organization, major media outlet, major advertiser, etc., that has actually boycotted the World Cup. The most prominent person who has done so may be Rod Stewart, who apparently turned down a one million dollar paycheck to perform at the event.

It’s true that some individual fans certainly have boycotted, both in the sense that they didn’t travel to an event they otherwise would have attended, or haven’t watched it, despite an overwhelming desire to do so (The most impressive story I found was of a fanatical devotee of the Welsh national team, which qualified for the final for the first time since 1958, but who nevertheless refused to watch). And a few cities have refused to hold the usual public open air broadcasts of the games. But that’s it.

Given this, the rationale for fans who choose to watch some or all of the tournament on TV is pretty straightforward: Doing so will have zero effect on a boycott which isn’t really happening anyway, so why deprive yourself of this for many people very intense pleasure just to engage in behavior whose practical efficacy is nil?

The response is also straightforward: Participating in the Qatar World Cup in any way is simply wrong, whether that participation has any practical effect or not.

In the end, a huge number of boycotts are going to fall into this category: Individuals who choose to participate in them are aware that their choices to do so have no pragmatic effect on the course of events, but the boycott can still be justified or even arguably ethically required as a matter of pure principle, without reference to any consequentialist rationale.

Here I want to throw out a number of possible examples of boycotts that liberal/left/progressive people might choose to engage in, for the purposes of discussing both the ethics and pragmatics of such individual and collective action.

Sports: The World Cup is the obvious example of the moment, but what about the ethics of participating in any way in the sport of American football, especially given what’s been learned about CTE? It is OK to watch the NFL but not college ball? Is this shifting now that that college players are getting openly paid? Is high school football defensible — it’s clear that the effects of the collisions that cause CTE are very much cumulative — but nothing beyond that? Is it all just a gladiatorial spectacle that progressives should reject? If not why not? Plenty of other examples from the world of sports could be adduced as well. (Soccer and hockey have their own CTE issues, for one thing).

Tesla: For me this one is extremely straightforward. I can’t possibly imagine what justification any progressive person could have at this point for buying any Tesla product, given that doing so represents a major investment at the individual level, and also involves highly public advertising for Elon Musk’s firm. When you throw in that there are plenty of other choices available to anyone who wants an EV, boycotting Tesla seems like the kind of thing that should be possible to do in an actually effective way, that hits Musk in the pocketbook.

Twitter: This one isn’t nearly as straightforward as Tesla I don’t think. Twitter remains an enormously useful site, although here a boycott clearly ought to be combined with some organized collective attempt to create an alternative network. My understanding is that the value of Twitter is almost solely a product of the network effects, as the intellectual property involved is not really proprietary to Twitter in any significant way, so creating a viable alternative should be very feasible if you can get past the collective action issues (Other than that how was the play Mrs. Lincoln).

Art: Is it OK to watch Chinatown? Is it OK to watch a DVD of the film you’ve owned for a long time, but not OK to watch it on a streaming service that continues to generate income for Roman Polanski? How monstrous does an artist have to get before enjoying the products of the artist’s labors becomes indefensible? A lot of art and entertainment more generally is obviously “problematic” in this way.

Trump supporters: How much voluntary social interaction with Trump supporters is defensible at this point? If you walk into a Brakes Plus and they have Fox News on the TV in the customer waiting area, do you cancel your appointment? If your spouse goes Trumpist do you have to divorce them? Is it OK to give the progressive point of view on a Federalist Society panel (No it isn’t if you’re still wondering). And so forth.

Food: Why aren’t we all vegans, or at least vegetarians, or at least non-meat eaters? I continue to eat everything, but I do feel bad about it from time to time, which should count for something, at least according to Louis CK, who I probably shouldn’t watch any more. It’s hard to be good.

Jet travel: We just had a presentation at the law school that laid out how annual faculty travel for at least putatively professional purposes creates as much negative climate impact as the average American does via all that person’s activity in a typical year. And the average American creates four times as much negative climate impact as the average human on the planet.

Of course this is just a striking subset of the ethics of behavior that affects climate change. Lots of people would say, with considerable justification at this point, that anybody who is serious about climate change shouldn’t be traveling by jet or eating meat. But how many liberal/left/progressives can claim to eschew one of these activities let alone both? (Probably the principal attraction of political conservatism at this point is that it allows one to transform grotesque selfishness into a kind of Kantian categorical imperative).

Again, a big underlying question in all these areas is, to what if any extent does a boycott need to have some or any prospect of real world efficacy for it to begin to become ethically imperative in some collective sense that goes beyond individual preferences? The areas I’ve listed are of course the tip of the iceberg, and I look forward to the conversation in the comments.