Boycotts and Political Economy

Ali Mills: What's wrong?
Daniel LaRusso: It's coming around!
The Karate Kid

A growing thread of political economy involves pleas to boycott sellers who act in ways deemed politically incorrect. These pleas come from politically active groups almost exclusively from the left.

Because sellers depend on economic resources from buyers in order to flourish, the idea of the political action groups is to starve those sellers into submission--i.e., change behavior to align with politically correct norms or risk going out of business.

As long as they involve no aggression, these boycotts are perfectly legitimate. Buyers should be free to do business with whomever they wish.

But the same holds for sellers. If a seller does not care to do business with a buyer, for whatever reason, then they should be free to do so.

Because leftists overwhelmingly support laws that force sellers into contracts with buyers, I doubt they see the hypocrisy of their boycott strategy.