Does 'voting with your wallet' actually work?

Yes, on a macroeconomic scale, 'voting with your wallet' works, obviously; but like voting, each individual instance of 'voting with your wallet' does not, and is anti-consumer as well.

Just like the 'supporting the developer' logical-flaw, 'voting with your wallet' usually comes in the context of a place where you do not really want to spend your money 100%. Maybe it's a late port of a game, the game is missing DLC, or costs more but it's on your favorite platform. There is almost always something wrong that is preventing you from saying 'Shut up and take my money."

When you are in a predominantly Democratic or Republican state in the US, it really doesn't matter if you vote. This is why I stopped voting after 2004. Unless you can muster a million people to vote with their wallets, it will also be meaningless.

Even if you could vote with your wallets, what does that really accomplish? Usually voting with your wallets is done so that we may influence how companies act in the future. For example, say that a western, AAA game came out on Nintendo Switch. People would preach to the heavens saying "Vote with your wallets and buy the damn game." Why? We want to send a message to the developer or publisher to release future, western, AAA games on NS as well.

This is all just a statement we send, if they are even listening. There is no guarantee that the outcome that we desire will ever happen.

'Voting with your wallet' only works when done unconsciously. When millions of people watch the latest Transformers-movie, they are not consciously thinking that they're voting with their wallets. They just want to see action and special-effects, and that's why these kind of movies keep getting made; they make money.

When 'voting with your wallet' becomes a conscious thing, it is far less effective, because it is usually done against the grain, and is done in such small numbers.

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