"Stop spending money" strategy can apply only to luxuries, not necessities. That can't be a motto of a campaign that does any good. For example, I already don't go to any restaurant or bar where I can't smoke. At present in my state MA, that means I don't go to any such place (and haven't been last 5-6 years). But, with my wife staying at home and five kids (from 6 to 18; my oldest daughter started going to college, the pricey Tufts) all the money I make goes out as fast as it comes in. I posted a related but a bit different idea at the SYO forum thread, after a member there suggested that we write our Congressmen:
quote:
Posted by Warren on Tuesday, 25-Oct-2005 What would make the politicians take us into their calculations would be a smokers organization that keeps detailed score for each of them, at state and federal levels, based on their anti-smoker actions. As a swing vote, 20-25 percent of voting and pissed off adults (plus their families) is more than decisive.
Anyone doing us harm would know that's their last term in any elective office or any good job anywhere. And if their buddies give them jobs as bureaucrats or in private business, the buddies and their companies get minus points of the offender. The same kind of scoring would go for corporations -- any company or its managment and owners harming us could count on getting 20% of adults, plus their families, hating their guts and dead set from now on until they perish, to hurt them economically in any legal way possible. Individual loud mouth crusadors out to harm us would get the same treatment.
The threat of unyielding revenge that sees through and follows them through any changes of jobs and uniforms, associations and friendships, and that sticks to anyone taking their side or aiding them, does work. After all, ten times smaller minorities, but known by almost everyone to have a long memory, to keep scorecards and to consistently follow 'an eye for an eye' strategy have much more power than we do.
It is absurd and a disgrace that with our raw numbers (plus the families and relatives) and economic leverage we are being pushed around and spat on like this, day after day, by a small well connected gang of parasites.
Briefly, we keep the score for individuals and we make sure they know we mean it. Obviously, we would have to go after the most visible enemies first, hound them, as individuals, till they lose their elective or other government office and shut up, and then some more, till they become pariahs that no one wants to get near lest they get tarred themselves. The key to the strategy is that it is the individual who is held responsible for harming us. Whoever sticks their neck against us, pays.
This message has been edited. Last edited by: nightlight,
The altruism as a life strategy works only when it is mutual. In the presence of parasites, tit-for-tat works much better. I would rather spend the thirty bucks a week per carton they steal, on my kids than for the thieves to tell them at school their father is a jerk and an idiot for being a heterosexual and a smoker.
