Re: market forces, political processes
"With a lot of companies [Jo/Joe Public has] no market leverage over their behavior at all."
Exactly. How does JoJoe Public express their dissatisfaction with (e.g.) Crapita? Or with ATOS?
"Market forces" don't work in lots of places where perhaps they should; the days when a lawful public boycott allegedly contributed to e.g, changes in apartheid-era South Africa are long gone.
Now, back to how "testing on animals" became a Bad Thing. At least in the UK, it wasn't initially via politicians, or lawful protest groups. And that's the point I was trying (apparently failing) to make.
It wasn't market forces or the legacy political process or even peaceful lawful civil disobedience that really changed things. In this instance it was, in part at least, direct action (sometimes of dubious legality) by animal rights activists against players directly or indirectly involved in alleged animal cruelty, e.g. ferry companies involved in live animal exports. And more specifically and maybe more understandably, direct action against the companies doing the animal testing, and their employees and management and associates.
Huntingdon Life Sciences (now inevitably renamed) for example was central to those activities.
Maybe the UK's Poll Tax riots would have been a better example of where direct action outside the usual political process caused Our Glorious Leaders to promise change and to an extent something was delivered, but that example didn't come to mind at the time of my earlier post. Sorry about that. And the effect in that example has largely been lost anyway; Heseltine's actions in Liverpool have been superceded by the Northern Poorhouse for the foreseeable future.
Other alternative campaigners to mention might have included the early incarnations of Farmers For Action, or Fathers For Justice, or the Gilets Jaunes, or other organisations and special interest groups that have decided that the "legitimate political process" isn't for them.
So let's not focus exclusively on the "animal testing" stuff too much, if you please.
Have a great weekend, toodle pip, tally ho, see you down the Lodge shortly.