CNN reported on the February 28, 2025 “economic blackout. In Today’s ‘economic blackout’ began from an unlikely source. But it’s tapped into Americans’ anger, CNN’s Nathaniel Meyersohn reports:
In early February, John Schwarz, a self-described “mindfulness and meditation facilitator,” proposed a 24-hour nationwide “economic blackout” of major chains on the last day of the month.
Schwarz urged people to forgo spending at Amazon, Walmart, and all other major retailers and fast-food companies for a day. He called on them to spend money only at small businesses and on essential needs.
“The system has been designed to exploit us,” said Schwarz, who goes by “TheOneCalledJai” on social media, in a video to his roughly 250,000 followers on Instagram and TikTok. “On February 28, we are going to remind them who really holds the power. For one day, we turn it off.”
I posted this article to Facebook, with this commentary, slightly edited for clarity:
John Schwarz, the architect of the recent “economic blackout” of major retailers and fast-food companies, says the purpose is to protest “the system [that] has been designed to exploit us.” Are these the same companies growing big by successfully “exploiting” us by providing mass market products that improve our lives and that we willingly buy? Is this the same system, called Capitalism, that grew out of the Founding principles of unalienable individual rights that make America great and moral and our lives so rich and free?
Schwarz demands that we “spend money only at small businesses and on essential needs.” Are these the same small businesses many of whom started the bait-&-switch practice of greeting us with a welcome sign for credit cards, only to then charge us a penalty for using them? And why only “essential needs?” Is poverty the goal of this guy? What makes our lives worth living is that we can afford much more than essential needs.
Schwarz’s ignorant crusade is, of course, Marxist nonsense. Companies no more exploit us than consumers exploit them. Companies engage in voluntary trade with their customers. Trade is win-win and thus non-exploitative. Count me out of this and other such idiotic, anti-American charades. I won’t join the army of useful idiots who blindly fall for it. Business—especially big business—is today’s most persecuted minority. We should be thankful for big business and instead be protesting the encroachment of big government on our lives and freedoms.
The article puts MAGA as the inspiration for the protest. But undoubtedly it was probably inspired, at least in part, by Joe Biden’s Big Lie of blaming private enterprise for the inflation the Federal Government's own policies caused. Remember “shrinkflation,” “greedflation,” and “corporate Greed?”
Related Listening:
America’s Persecuted Minority: Big Business by Ayn Rand, Recorded live at Chicago’s McCormick Place. [This talk was also published as an essay in Rand’s book Capitalism, The Unknown Ideal.]
Obama’s Fascist “Partnership” With Big Business
B of A's Debit Charges: It's About More Than Fees
Big Government vs. Big Business; or, Political Power vs. Economic Power
The Dollar and the Gun by Harry Binswanger
The Star-Ledger Exploits a Workers Death to Attack Big Business
Quora: ‘Is capitalism based on the exploitation of others?’
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