What big businesses should we patronize?

10 March 2025

Source

I believe we should continue to patronize big businesses that:

• Treat their employees, customers and community well.

• Do not abuse their corporate power and wealth to the detriment of society.

• Do not pay their executives an excessive amount ($2 million pay package or less, CEO pay is not more than 25 times average employee pay).

In my opinion and others, the rise in authoritarianism in the United States and worldwide, which will take decades to repair, is due to the increasing wealth divide, “rigging of the system” and the abuse of wealth and power caused by the greed of big businesses. It is our obligation and worth our time to fight back and one way is to change our spending habits away from big businesses.

This is what I am doing:

• Buying from local grocery and hardware stores instead of the big national chains.

• Using cash instead of credit cards for small purchases (credit cards are owned by large banks).

• Using credit unions and smaller banks instead of the megabanks.

• Avoiding Amazon and buying from the manufacturer directly.

• Using a driver instead of Uber / Lyft when possible.

• Avoiding any interaction with businesses owned by Trump or Musk (most of us have none except possibly for Twitter / X and Tesla).

• Thinking about my purchases and whether there is a small business alternative.

These changes will take time - we have to get things done and cannot agonize over every spending decision. But we can think a little bit more about them and try to make one change per week.

There are some big companies we probably cannot avoid when purchasing cars, large appliances or flying. I am not sure what we can do about that.

We may also have business relationships with big businesses that we cannot or do not want to change.

Sometimes, we may have to choose the best choice even though none are optimal. I think that Costco does a pretty good job but their CEO has stock options that raise the pay package to $17 million. But they treat their employees well and are resisting Trump’s threats against diversity.

Let me know what big businesses you think we should support and what other changes you are making to reduce wealth inequality.

Note: I don’t have any lists of “preferred businesses” or businesses to avoid but will post any lists that visitors send me, without their name unless they want it posted.

---

The index to my prior essays (mostly post 5 November 2024) is here.

I have another blog on Cancer and Medicine.

You can also follow me at https://www.linkedin.com/in/nat-pernick-8967765/ (LinkedIn), npernickmich (Threads and Instagram), natpernick.bsky.social (Bluesky) or @nat385440b (Tribel).

Email me at Nat@PathologyOutlines.com.

I also publish Notes at https://substack.com/note. Subscribers will automatically see my notes.