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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 22, 2023

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The Bud Light boycott continues. Anheuser-Busch is responding by sponsoring vet groups and commissioning ads that "will play heavily on themes such as football and country music". A glance at conservative comment sections reveals a few vocal consumers vowing that no amount of patriotic pandering will change their mind and that they will continue the boycott no matter what.

I am reminded of this apocryphical exchange between two Chinese officers late for battle:

What is the punishment for being late?

Death.

What is the punishment for rebellion?

Death.

Rebellion it is.

That is to say, a proper incentive structure should not only contain costs for injecting woke politics into business but also rewards for backpedalling.

On the other hand, the undisputed champions of pushing business and people around do not seem too keen on accepting apology. Or do they? The bottom line seems to be: If your public kowtow is more valuable for the propagation of the movement than the display of your head on a spike, you may get another chance (unless and untilyou even slightly step out of line again).

This seems ideal because the incentives for the victim thus contain an effectiveness criterion. Mouthing platitudes is not enough, you need to actually further the cause of your attackers. The uncertainty ups the ante for the victim.

On the other other hand, woke shaming campaigns might not be the ideal blue print for convervatives, given their lack of clout and high-brow media capture.

They've already committed rebellion in the minds of many, and it's too late for them to back off now.

and it's too late for them to back off now

If that were the case, the rational strategy for them would be to market themselves aggressively as the woke drink of choice, not to put out country music ads and camo cans. Which presumably is the opposite of what the anti-woke want.

Do you think woke urbanites are going to start drinking Bud Light now because of a marketing campaign?

Bud Light's move is absolutely the correct one here. True, they have already revealed themselves to hate their core audience. It's going to take a lot of grovelling to get them back. But that's still easier in the long run than getting wine snobs to start drinking Bud Light.

This might be the point you were making, just spelling it out...

Bud Light's move is absolutely the correct one here. It's true they have revealed themselves to hate their core audience. It's going to take a lot of grovelling to get them back. But it's possible. Whereas getting a wine snob to start drinking Bud Light is impossible.

That would require some of the boycotters to abandon their maximalist "never touching Bud again" stance. The viability of that stance is what I wanted to discuss here.

What you describe above only works if Bud abstinence is conditional.