Quote:
Originally Posted by YOWetal
This ignores the importance of image for a vehicle. I know some of us don't care about that or at least tell us that but a lot of a vehicle purchase is how the world sees us and how we see ourselves in the world. Even the biggest zionist can scarf down a pint of Ben and Jerry's without judgement.
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It also ignores that basically nothing that most individual people do means much in the real world because there's millions of people in most major countries and billions of people in the world, most of whom don't really have much power or influence. So therefore voting also doesn't mean much in the real world because your vote is just one of millions, and in the first-pass-the-post system it may very well be irrelevant. So that would imply that nobody should bother voting. And also that volunteering or donating to charity doesn't mean much because your time or money is just a drop in the ocean of what's needed and you can't single-highhandedly fix the world's problems so you shouldn't bother doing that either.
That's a very common genre of semi-nihilism which implies that nothing one does really matters because each person is such a small piece of the whole. But the correct response is the old slogan "think globally and act locally." You don't have much say in the world as an individual but you do have some. If someone is starving then an individual grain of rice is basically irrelevant and will not save them. But that doesn't mean that combining many grains into a large bag of rice is irrelevant. But if everyone concludes that nothing anyone does is relevant then no one takes any responsibility and positive change never happens.
In the case of making a large purchase like a high or mid end new car, an individual actually has disproportionate influence. According to a quick Google search, Tesla sold just over 1.8 million cars in 2023. By comparison, there were about 17.2 million votes cast in the 2021 federal election. So each Tesla purchase is a much bigger piece of Tesla's profits than each vote is in the governments rise to power. Plus, the majority of people in the world cannot afford any new car let alone a new Tesla. So being able to afford one gives you more power and influence over what large corporations do than the vast majority of people on earth. Much more so with something like cars because compared to things like toilet paper, cell phones or t-shirts, there is a lot of profit on a relatively small number of sales. So each individual sale is much more significant to the company.
So it's true that it is a personal choice, but it's also a significant opportunity which does offer some the greatest ability to influence the real world that an individual can have. At least without say, becoming an influential celebrity, a wealthy business person, being elected to political office, or devoting one's life to charity.
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