Colleagues. I don’t feel like having to publish 20 disclaimers here to clarify exactly what I mean. People who want to understand my message will understand them. You should not look for too many “double-bottoms” or “hidden messages” in them. Do you have a problem with the “superficiality” of my post… so be it.
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Well, the thing is, when you stop buying coca cola and buy something like fritz cola instead, you’ll move money from one brand to the other. Coca Cola would ideally scale down while Fritz would have to scale up. I don’t see why this has to cost Europe fizzy drink making jobs.
Fritz is not made in the same locations, what good would a created job opening in North Germany do a factory worker in, let’s say, Spain? Downscaling is much easier and quicker than upscaling, so unfortunately I see plenty of opportunity for lost jobs. Even when it is temporary, depending on how good your local social safety net is, it can hurt people.
And there is the price aspect: in my local supermarket Coca-Cola costs € 2,39/l where Fritz costs € 4,52/l. Principles cost money, but not everybody is able to afford such a steep price difference.
Fortunately these are luxury products and I hardly drink the stuff anyway, but it does make the move a lot harder.
Fuck, when reading back I feel like I’m defending American interests. That’s absolutely not my intention btw. I do support the movement, but I think it is good to realise that stuff in real life isn’t as black and white as we’d perhaps like it to be.
That was just an example of a European brand over the top of my head. I’m sure there’s cheaper things, I’ve seen them everywhere, I just don’t remember any as I never go into the fizzy drink isle. And yeah, in the short term there’s gonna be issues, ofc. That’s unavoidable. But we shouldn’t put the blame on the European consumer, should we? We didn’t do this, and we shouldn’t be responsible for propping up mega corporations. We’re in a situation that we shouldn’t have been in the first place. There’s no easy way out.