No Mercy / No Malice: Resistance Infrastructure

What It Covers

Scott Galloway launches Resist and Unsubscribe, a consumer boycott campaign targeting tech companies enabling authoritarianism. The initiative aims to build infrastructure for pro-democracy movements by leveraging consumer spending power against Amazon and other subscription services supporting ICE operations.

Key Questions Answered

• •Consumer Economic Power: Consumer spending represents over two thirds of US economy, making subscription cancellations a surgical strike against concentrated tech power. Seven tech companies comprise one third of S&P 500, with subscription valuations at eight to twenty times revenue, creating unique vulnerability to boycotts.
• •Boycott Effectiveness Metrics: Research analyzing 342 boycotts between 1962 and 1990 shows media attention, not participant numbers, predicts success. Netflix lost 200,000 subscribers in one quarter during 2022, erasing fifty billion dollars in market cap overnight, demonstrating how small subscriber losses create outsized financial impact.
• •Movement Threshold Requirements: Political scientist Erica Chenoweth's analysis of 323 mobilizations between 1900 and 2006 reveals that when 3.5 percent of a population actively engages in peaceful protest, it always results in political change. Montgomery bus boycott sustained thirteen months using 200 cars and 100 pickup locations as infrastructure.
• •Protest Function Beyond Outcomes: Protests serve two purposes beyond immediate results: signaling abnormality to observers and creating gateways to further organizing. Action absorbs anxiety while building resilience muscles, transforming performative gestures into infrastructure that sustains longer campaigns and demonstrates consequences for authoritarian overreach.