If Money Signals Power, Withhold Yours And Watch Who Listens

We challenge fourth-quarter autopilot and lay out a practical plan to withhold discretionary spending as a form of power. From the bystander effect to weekly steps, we explain how small choices can shake corporate assumptions and keep money local.

Transcript

A Call To Stop Spending

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Peace peace to all my good people out there. Alright, I need to talk to all everybody about something that's been um I've been thinking about for a little bit. Currently we're heading into the third and fourth quarters of the year.

How Holiday Projections Trap Us

SPEAKER_00 0:24

And I'm telling y'all right now, if we wanted to, we could bring this entire corporate system to its knees. Like we could literally cripple the machine just by doing one thing: stop spending. And I already know what you're saying, Shay. That's crazy. Everything costs uh to live, and we all need to live, but but hear what I'm saying, right? Corporations have been planning for this moment since last year. They know that every November and December, we go into autopilot pilot, right? Buying the gifts, the decorations, the whatever's right, and they count on that shit, they make projections based on this year, last year, not knowing anything that's going on in the collectiveness of society. So they make the projections for this stuff in advance. They count on our egos and our competition and our consumer habits. So they're not even looking presently at to and adjusting numbers, they're just looking at what they've what we've always done to make numbers for right now. They sit back and say, don't worry about it. They spend, they always do, and they fucking right because we always do, right? As soon as Halloween comes around, and Thanksgiving, and then the Christmases, and then the New Year's and the whatever's like we always do that because that's what you know society has always told us to do.

Why Withholding Dollars Sends Power

SPEAKER_00 2:13

But here's the truth: we have no business giving these corporations another dime, especially right here, right now in 2025. Not the toy companies that don't care no shit about our kids, not the foreign manufacturers that underpay workers and destroy the planet, not the billion-dollar brands that lobby against our interests and dodge taxes and buy our politicians for their own personal interests. Like, we we all have families, we can't even afford a fucking doctor's visit. And meanwhile, we're killing millions of fucking turkeys and cutting down millions of fucking trees just to keep the holiday economy running. Motherfucker, for what? All for a system that doesn't care if we make it to next year. You hear what I'm saying? So even if you don't vote, your money votes every single day. Every day you spend, well, every dollar you spend every day tells the system who has the power. They know what we're dealing with right now, with the inflation, with the tariffs, with the unemployment, with the job losses, with the prices. They know this shit, but they don't give a fuck because they have the power, because they know we are going to spend. We as a society, as a collective, as a community, as a culture, we are going to spend on the holidays because that's what the fuck we do.

Buy Needs Only, Skip The Extras

SPEAKER_00 4:03

So what I'm saying plainly is just stop feeding the fucking machine for the next few months. Buy only what you need: the food, the medicine, real fucking necessities. Skip the gifts, skip the status, skip the fucking nonsense of bullshit. I don't want people to think that, oh well, I'm gonna live my life. Live your life, do the things, but all the bullshit, you know exactly what bullshit I'm saying, and I don't have to point it out because everybody's individual bullshit is your own bullshit. You know what it is. I don't have to tell it to you. But for the months, for the third and fourth quarter, don't feed the machine of bullshit. You don't have to do the extras just to do the extras.

Collective Power And January Impact

SPEAKER_00 5:02

The companies and the the billion-dollar corporations, they have millions of dollars, they don't need my little 50 bucks for a brand new hoodie, or they don't need my thousands of dollars for a brand new car, or they don't need my hundreds of thousands of dollars for a brand new home, or they don't need my whatever for whatever right here, right now, they don't need it. If I don't need it to survive, they don't need it to thrive, and that's just me. So if enough of us stop spending even just for one season, this season, this 2025 season, we'll remind them who really holds the power in this country. And we really will let them know how we're really feeling in this moment. Not the CEOs, not the politicians, it's us. We hold the powers in this. So hold your wallet close. Think before you swipe, and this holiday season, let's starve the beast, let's not feed the fucking machine, let's not feed the bullshit. If we could do that as a collective, January 2026 could look a whole lot different. So, I don't know. I was thinking about this, and I've seen some videos and and read some blogs and looked at some links and stuff, and I look at it like this.

The Bystander Effect Analogy

SPEAKER_00 6:36

I read something called the bystander effect, and what that means is when someone collapsed, let's say somebody collapses in public, right? And they got a heart attack or they may have made it fallen down, the more people standing around watching, the less likely anyone is to help. Why is that? Because every person in that crowd assumes someone else will step in. So nobody does. And the person lying there doesn't get help. Not because nobody cared, but because everyone assumed somebody else would act. Well, in this instance right now in America, we there. Our country is on the ground screaming for help, and 340 million of us are standing around waiting for somebody else to fix it. And I get it, you know, life is a lot right now, and there's so much shit going on, and we're all looking at each other saying someone else should do something, but nobody moves, and that's why this shit has gone so far left, and that's why not that's why nothing's gonna change. So if you've heard about the whole November, the end of November to the beginning of December boycott, if you've heard about it, I don't know. I feel the way about boycotts. I mean, they work in the grand scheme of things, and like I said

A Step-By-Step Boycott Plan

SPEAKER_00 8:18

previously about the powers in the money, this particular boycott would move mountains and say a whole lot of shit to a whole bunch of people. And the idea is simple money, if money holds power, if money and power hold hands, then we take away their money. And watch how fast they lose their power. But we're not running a marathon on day one, we're training for it step by step. And and this is what they want to do. And you first week, cancel one subscription you don't need, whether it's Netflix, Spotify, Amazon Prime, pick one, they'll be fine. Week two, stop eating at a chain restaurant and only support local family-owned businesses. That way your money stays in the community that you live in. Each week after that, turn up the pressure slowly, intentionally, until the corporations, the billionaires, and the politicians who live off our spending start to really feel it. Cuz I'm I'm done being a bystander, I've decided to do something, not necessarily go out there on the front lines and do any fucking thing because I know what that looks like for me, and I'm not doing that, but I know what my dollar does, and I know how my dollar speaks in this kind of economy, in this capitalistic society.

Personal Stand And New Show Plug

SPEAKER_00 9:51

So I'm gonna do what I feel is best for me, and I'm not gonna spend, and I'm okay with that because I feel like a lot of these traditions and and shit that we have in our society is all money-driven anyway. And if you really are on the side of the people that look at the calendar and you really talk to those people who think about when Christmas actually is and what it actually stands for, those people might be right. Speaking of, I've created a new podcast called Offbeat Conversations and Casual Curiosities. That's the place where I will be having such off-beat conversations, and um where we can go there with certain things. So, but uh yeah, that's all I got for you today. Hope each and every one of you have a great rest of your day, rest of your evening, and I'll catch you next time. Peace.