The Chik-fil-a situation was quite different in that the fuss was over what the owner was donating money towards. The issue was whether his donations were from his own money or the corporation's money and whether or not this actually reflected on Chik-fil-a as a whole. Honestly I thought the whole issue was silly provided that he was using personal funds and not corporate funds to donate to anti-gay groups. The company itself wasn't discriminating based on sexual orientation in their hiring practices or who they served food to so I really didn't care.ArcticFox wrote:
When all the screaming about Chik-fil-a was at its peak, there were two schools of thought. One was a statist approach; that the Government should impose some sort of sanctions on the company, while others wanted to take the market solution approach and have a massive boycott to punish it.
Chik-fil-a's sales skyrocketed.
This, of course, angered the left because their efforts to shame Chik-fil-a backfired.
Interestingly, I remember quite clearly how the right was angry about people protesting Firefox due to the then CEO's views on gay marriage. Even though the protests were similar in nature, I distinctly recall how the right was saying that the people had "no right" to "pressure" the company through protest and that their actions constituted a violation of "free speech". In reality they were doing the same thing that is being advocated here in this thread, but it seems that since the right didn't get the result they wanted, it went back to the tired old argument of the CEO's "rights" are being violated and that they should be protected by the government. The protests were not seen as valid by the right even though it was peaceful protest.ArcticFox wrote: So no, voting with your wallet means you control your own decisions, and that's not good for the statist philosophy. They'd rather have the Government, in its wisdom, decide for you.
I wager that the reason the right didn't say this for the Chik-fil-a situation was because they staged a counter-protest to the boycott and happened to "win" in that case. I'm willing to bet that had Chik-fil-a sales plummeted and the boycott was successful I'd be hearing the left saying that the people have spoken with their wallets and the right would be arguing along similar statist lines like they did with the Firefox case.
In my mind, this goes to show that for both sides, it seems that only when the people decide in their favor was it considered valid.