Are personal boycotts worth it? I'm conflicted about them. On the one hand, you get to keep the moral high ground and know that none of your money supports unethical behaviour. On the other hand, it doesn't matter one bit to, say, Wal-mart if I shop there or not. If it's part of an organized movement to shame the company into changing, then it's a different story. If it's just on an individual level, I'm not so sure.
As a side note, if you believe in personal boycotts, where should you draw the line? If you don't want to support, say, Mel Gibson, and don't want him to get any of your money, should you cancel your Netflix subscription? If you don't want to support Microsoft, should you also boycott any companies that rely on their software? Is there an organization too big to boycott? EDIT: On re-reading, I think this post sounds kind of dickish, though it's not meant to. I've always had kind of a strange approach to morality, and I've been through phases of my life where the cancelling Netflix example would have made perfect sense to me. The questions are genuine, because they're ones I've never been able to answer to my own satisfaction.
I tend to agree. But everyone's got their few causes. I can't think of anything I actively boycott. I am absolutely sure that everyone in this thread regularly uses products which come from companies who have done worse things than those mentioned (Coke, hey) -- so I think it's more a matter of a combination of convenience and morality. Which is great, no problem there. I avoid all sorts of things, but not for moral reasons; self-centered ones.