Tomorrow is Blackout Day

Boycotts can certainly be effective, but only when they are targeted, prolonged, and advertised. My understanding about tomorrow is that it is a single-day event in which protesters don't spend any money anywhere. While I may agree with the sentiment of the protest (racial and socioeconomic inequalities), I don't see this amounting to even a footnote (or in baseball terms, an asterisk) of our economic history.

The same rolling boycott was attempted some time ago with gas prices. A plan was put in place so that no fuel was bought on this Thursday or that Tuesday. I didn't see any change in prices. Did you? A more effective boycott would be to not buy gas from Shell until they drop their prices. When they lower their rates by a dime in order to entice customers, buy from Shell and then boycott their competition at Exxon. Force them to piggie-back downwards. In this manner, a single company feels a prolonged hit and is forced to do something about it.

A single slow day spread across all retailers is simply going to be followed by a busy day afterwards when consumers return to make their postponed purchases. The only effect this has is some longer lines on Saturday when the registers get backed up.

The only exception to this (maybe!) would be if the boycott was planned for the Friday after Thanksgiving. This is the biggest shopping day of the year and is often used to gauge the season. A stagnant performance here would definitely impact Wall Street on the following Monday. Unfortunately, I don't think any organization would be able to prevent even five percent of the usual shoppers from staying home that day. Any homebodies would merely translate to someone else getting that cardigan from Barneys, or Elmo from Wal-Mart.