To think that we should all boycott the businesses of billionaires until they sort the situation of kids starving to death due to famine and war?

Thanks very much for sharing that, @pawws I found the summary very interesting. There's still some hope!

This was co-authored by Thomas Piketty, economist similar to Gabriel Zucman mentioned by PP
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jun/04/world-inequality-lab-equality-academics-planetary-survival

Full report https://globaljusticeproject.wid.world/

@guinnessguzzler It's fine to try, I don't see why it's a problem.
I don't find Amazon as cheap anymore, plus the search is not as good, it comes up with products you didn't ask for and it didn't used to do that.

I use Amazon prime. Great fast delivery that gives me the stuff I want.

Good points.

I actually just bought some garden furniture I saw on B&Q directly from the manufacturer. Got wooden table with 6 chairs for less than the price of the b&q with 4

Amazon are good at leaving where I want it some just take it away or leave it with our crazy trolley lady neighbour!

This. It's politics that is the problem.

Thanks @Anarchy99 and @NeverLookInTheMirror and I agree AWS is difficult to avoid, that's the sort of thing I was meaning by IT infrastructure (that may not be the right terminology), I just thought people were also suggesting Amazon was also difficult to avoid in terms of online shopping but perhaps I have misinterpreted that. This is why noone has got into the good place for the last 521 years (or thereabouts), but to my mind it doesn't mean we shouldn't try, and is another reason why these companies shouldn't be allowed to dominate so much; it shouldn't be this hard for consumers to make choices about what to do with their money.

Approximately half to two thirds of the internet are run on amazon web services.

Most call centres for instance use AWS for their infrastructure. If I boycotted amazon I’d have to give up my job.

MN is run on AWS, and yet you’re still here. That’s not a criticism FWIW, it just indicates how few companies are responsible for so much.

Nestle for instance is pretty much impossible to boycott, because even though you can boycott actual nestle products, even own brand products of the same type are still manufactured by nestle. And they have a hand in pretty much everything.

It is because it’s not just their shopping site. AWS provides services to many other businesses.

When people are saying it is hard to avoid Amazon (not singling you out @ukathleticscoach2012 , quite a few people have said something along these lines), what is it that is so difficult? Is it you can't match the price elsewhere? The speed of delivery? Convenience? I haven't used Amazon for years and am genuinely interested to know, what makes people still shop there? I know lots of other things are difficult to avoid, particularly when it comes to IT infrastructure and especially when a few massive companies seem to own most of the rest of them, but I find it fairly easy to avoid shopping on Amazon itself. If there's something I can only find there, I just look up the supplier and go direct to them instead.

Agree now way would I buy a Tesla.

Others like Amazon harder to avoid

The law needs changing taxing uk turnover so its charged the same wherever they locate their office for tax purposes. Change it for say Amazon they're not going to stop doing businesses in the uk

Billionaires should also be taxed more. The argument about them leaving is ridiculous, not of them are registered for tax here any more anyway

There’s one big, unavoidable fact that makes this idea unworkable.
All the world’s billionaires are not rich enough to achieve what you want.
Sure, ‘a billion’ sounds like a lot of money, and to a degree it is, but global finance operates in the hundreds of trillions. Compared to the economy of a developed country, a billionaire is just someone with a bit more loose change in their pocket.
A billion will not solve the current oil crisis. Did you know that one VLCC, the very largest type of oil tanker ship, costs $130 mil? There’s around 900 of those globally of which a third are older ‘shadow fleet’ embargo busters operated by countries such as Russia and Iran. A billion would buy you about 8 of these ships.
The combined wealth of the world’s billionaires would barely make a small dent in the world’s problems, and thinking it would shows you have no concept of scale.

Lord Sugar is council estate to billionaire through his sheer hard work and determination.

Wishing they paid more attention at school

We grew up poor, and in India so worse than how things are here. DH and I both worked very hard and moved here. We are Tory.

And what did you do with your life then? Did you work hard at school? Make any effort?

You’re flattering them with ‘6th Form’. More like Year 9.

Oh FFS you're a Corbynista.

Explains the 6th form Politics and Worldview.

🙄

Yeah I mean there’s always going to a mix isn’t there - for example in the cities, where people both have better access and better education and better employment opportunities you do see a lot of families deciding to perhaps only have one / two children.

but then in rural communities, for example one displacement camp in the south (of families who came from the North) we were running programmes in we mapped education level and over 90% had no formal schooling, and the remaining 10% was some primary level. People have grown up in poverty and famine so it’s a daily reality.

Yes quite a few Christian faith based charities do not offer contraception and/ or access to safe abortion as part of their programming and promote natural family planning. A lot of faith based charities do have really strong programming in other areas though.

There’s also lots of research done about how persistent malnutrition seriously affects brain development so under nourished children are likely to have poor brain function which doesn’t help the world.

It just blows my mind that they are making their situations worse deliberately by their actions.

I get it’s cultural but they aren’t stupid - having children and not being able to feed them and hoping they will grow to adulthood and support them is counter productive. So everyone has less because the aid has to stretch further.

is it true that a lot of the aid charities are Catholic and won’t provide condoms etc or is that one of those myths.