When I was in solitary, I came up with all sorts of ideas for shifting political activism towards corporations. It occurred to me that we need incentives as well as consequences, and I thought of a somewhat complicated, probably implausible, and possibly illegal idea that I wanted to pursue if I ever got back to the US.
As I mentioned, the idea was to organize activists along the lines of consumer demographic groups based on corporate market research; to identify which segments of the population were the most important customers for any particular company. Then, as an incentive, I thought we could sponsor these “parties” to basically go on shopping sprees to reward companies that cooperated with our demands. Like, “we can guarantee you the sale of x number of units this fiscal quarter if you do such and such”. The purchased goods could then be donated to charity thrift shops (which you would own) and sold back to others at a discounted price, with the revenues going to support further activism. The “activist shoppers” could claim a tax exemption for the donated goods which they had purchased without having to spend their own money, so they would benefit as well. Brand new items would be available at the thrift shop at reduced prices, so the community would benefit. Revenues from the shop would help fund the campaigns, so the work would benefit too. And of course, the companies would benefit from the sales.
You could even potentially solicit donations FROM the companies, enabling them to get tax exemptions too, while basically funding consumers to buy their products. That is the bit that might be illegal, but it would depend, I suppose on how the whole thing was structured…you would need legal advice on this, obviously. Ultimately, it would amount to publicly subsidized shopping. But it would give you a better bargaining position with companies.
When I was unable to return to the US, I didn’t bother to research the technical feasibility of building a system like this. But perhaps some version of it would be doable.