Posing as a Bidder, Utah Student Disrupts Government Auction of 150,000 Acres of Wilderness for Oil & Gas Drilling --

... While many environmental groups launched campaigns to oppose the sale of the land, one student in Salt Lake City attempted to block the sale by disrupting the auction itself. Twenty-seven-year-old Tim DeChristopher posed as a potential bidder and bid hundreds of thousands of dollars on parcels of the land, driving up prices and winning some 22,000 acres for himself, without any intention of paying for them.

You've gotten the email, or heard about it in the checkout line, or around the water cooler. "Don't Buy Gas On May 15!!" it sez, with much ranting and pent-up fury and a, sadly, entirely fictitious claim that "this was done in 1977 and gas dropped 30 cents the next day!!" and the like.

Hey, I'm all for it. Not because it will bring down the price of gas though. Nothing will bring down the price of gas except a reduction in the consumption of gasoline in this country. But the call to arms for the Ides of May is still possessed of some merit if only because it gets people talking and thinking about the subject.

Boycotts are not as hopelessly eye-rollingly futile as people would like you to believe. Collective action is never wasted.