Vote with your wallet

Target recently apologized for giving money to an right-leaning candidate after boycotts were discussed.  Although the term vote with your wallet is nothing new and readily visible in politics today, now companies are starting to directly target a politically divided group.

Enter Creedo mobile, a cell phone company that takes pleasure in pointing out AT&T has given millions more to Republicans than Democrats.  AT&T has been tacitly advertising for Creedo since its not hard to find ways in which AT&T is a morally compromised company, but how far does this go?  Should I buy "lefty" toothpaste and carrots?

Although its nice to be able to use more than a ballot box to vote, one danger is that if consensus and goodwill are achieved politically, this could be bad for business.  A group or company born of conflict seems to disappear if that conflict ever goes away, so those companies have a vested interest in stoking the flame.  While the fire doesn't appear to be going out anytime soon, its disturbing to imagine a group whose bottom line is impacted by how much people hate each other.  C.S. Lewis wrote a book about this sort of thing.