We are continually exhorted to boycott this product or that, urged to refrain from lending financial support to one company or another, warned to vote with our dollars, or our pounds sterling, or our euros.

I, myself, have asked others to participate in boycotts. And like others, I have seen our efforts sputter and fail.

We are trying to impact systemic problems by acting individually.

We individually become vegan. We individually avoid products tested on animals or are made by child laborers. We individually refrain from traveling to ag-gag states or countries that practice bullfighting or consume dogs or permit female circumcision.

Yet all the horrors we are attempting to end are continuing despite our individual actions. We are vegan, but slaughter continues. We don’t buy L’Oreal, but they continue to torture animals. Walmart still buys goods from child labor factories. Koreans still eat dogs, Utah and Iowa still have…