The political ethics of consumption
Here in the West, at least, we didn't really begin moralizing consumption choices as a kind of ideological political profile until the civil rights and anti-war movements of the 1960s and 1970s. Then, neoliberal deregulation successfully depoliticized society as the post-WW2 socioeconomic consensus eroded and it became clear the Cold War was ending in total Western hegemony; free market politics around the world came to be known as neutral, a given, amoral rule of nature of which the responsibility to manage was given to the individual. The salience of the collective politics of parties and unions began to fade away, and so political consumption remained, standing paramount.
What trips people up about this paradigm shift is that the neoliberal state never actually retreated from politics, nor does it or any of its ruling parties intend to, it just changed its orientation from the responsibility for people to the responsibility for markets. Prioritizing contracts over people (pay attention to that one Kpop fans), enforcing austerity on the people as needed to balance the budget, not advancing democratic institutions but protecting corporations and the elite from what few and weak democratic institutions we have.
I want to make clear that the idea that ethics and consumption are linked is not wrong, and acting on that link as a kind of political agency isn't useless - it's just that we're disempowering ourselves to not account for consumption being quite possibly a more rigged game now than ever before due to corporate consolidation and domination, to say nothing of the fundamental nature of the supply chain being extraction from the global south. You can play the game, but 90% of it has been played before you're handed the controller, and you, playing the "consumer" role, aren't in the room where those decisions happen - but you can play other roles as well.
You see outrage about consumption online because people, especially online people, are more aware than ever about political injustice and are desperate to be seen and heard as political actors, but they can never grasp it. Contemporary politics has been captured and naturalized by elites that intentionally obfuscate the true purpose of our political system - not to serve the people but to take advantage of people as numbers on a report to maintain the elite. The wealthiest of society are in all the right rooms to be making decisions that we've lost the ability to make as collectives.
I don't have all the answers. I look at the dire political state of the world and how little it moves and I would like to believe we're starting from scratch at the beginning of what's to become a new political epoch. It's painful to think I might never live long enough to have confidence in this idea, but it's part of accepting my small role in grand, decades- or cenuries-long shifts in political history. The least I can do is make sure my small part is well-intentioned and well-formed and support others in doing the same.