I feel like your questions are a little leading. Admiral Ackbar's voice is sounding an alarm. If I'm wrong, please let me know.
Short answer: you are wrong, but I admit I'm being unusually a) laconic and b) interrogatory today, because I'm busy at work (but still want to participate in this thread because it's interesting).
The only control consumers have is what they choose to spend their money on.
Right. "How to be an ethical consumer?" is an important question. My wife and I think about it a lot. It's also a terrifically complicated question in a contemporary consumer economy. I don't have a good answer for how to do it (merely the answers I'm using
for now). Which is why I asked you questions. I'm curious how other people answer them. Maybe I can improve/refine my answers, or at least come to a better understanding of how I go about answering the question.
Let me switch gears and make a statement: participation in a contemporary consumer economy involves an unavoidable amount of complicity in actions I find unethical. Leaving art aside, I own Apple products. I know where they're made, but own them anyway. I still purchase things from Amazon, despite believing many of their labor practices are atrocious. But I've sworn off Chik-fil-A for good...
I'm trying to figure out where I draw the line, or perhaps just make peace with the fact the line is arbitrary.
Not buying anything affiliated with OSC sends a message to the publishers and movie studios and such that I don't want what OSC makes.
That's fair.
OSC himself also gets the message and may choose to act or not act accordingly.
I doubt he will. He's stating, in the most hateful way possible, what sure look like deeply-held religious beliefs. Which raises another troubling question: let's say I boycott Card's books (which I effectively have), on the grounds he supports policies/positions I find immoral, am I also ethically bound to boycott
his church, which makes far larger monetary contributions to political action groups I think are evil, and, then, by extension, businesses
owned by members of his church, whose contributions provide the money?