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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 6354043" data-attributes="member: 177">That would depend upon the relationship between the artist and the agent.  Generally speaking, if the artist is a significant portion of the agent's business, then choosing to not support that agent may be a reasonable ethical choice.  If, however, the agent's business is very large compared to the artist, the ethical value of not supporting the agent becomes smaller.Let us say you don't like Orson Scott Card, and don't want to support him.  You have one small movie theater in town - it shows two movies, and one of them is Ender's Game.  With only two films, you can imagine that the two screens are highly economically interdependent, so that sales for one screen may effectively subsidize the other.  It might make sense to boycott the theater.  But for Amazon, the same tactic makes little sense.  Amazon is so large, that individual products are not effectively interdependent.  No measurable amount of your purchase of the 5e PHB from Amazon goes to support Card's work, so boycotting Amazon on account of Card seems pretty silly.  Also, we have the issue that the undesired artist may not be the whole story for the agent.  You must beware unintended consequences.Amazon sells countless items of positive ethical value - hurting Amazon enough so that you effectively remove support of Card means you *also* remove equal support of those good products.  If your local theater is small, and running on a shoestring budget, a large boycott might sink them, and leave their employees without income.  What's more ethically important - not giving Card some tiny amount of support, or having folks in your home community lose their jobs?  If you must throw out the bathwater, you really want to consider carefully how you do it, so as to not toss out the baby!</blockquote>

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