Overselling capitalism with consumerism

wallyburger · April 16th, 2007, 05:45 AM

An op/ed

Quote:

Overselling capitalism with consumerism
By Benjamin R. Barber
The Baltimore Sun

Originally published April 15, 2007
The crisis in subprime mortgages betrays a deeper predicament facing consumer capitalism triumphant: The "Protestant ethos" of hard work and deferred gratification has been replaced by an infantilist ethos of easy credit and impulsive consumption that puts democracy and the market system at risk.

Capitalism's core virtue is that it marries altruism and self-interest. In producing goods and services that answer real consumer needs, it secures a profit for producers. Doing good for others turns out to entail doing well for yourself.

Capitalism's success, however, has meant that core wants in the developed world are now mostly met and that too many goods are chasing too few needs. Yet capitalism requires us to "need" all that it produces in order to survive. So it busies itself manufacturing needs for the wealthy while ignoring the wants of the truly needy. Global inequality means that while the wealthy have too few needs, the needy have too little wealth.

Capitalism is stymied, courting long-term disaster. We still work hard, but only so that we can pay and play. In order to turn reluctant consumers with few unsatisfied core needs into permanent shoppers, producers must dumb down consumers, shape their wants, take over their life worlds, encourage impulse buying, cultivate shopoholism and invent new needs.

At the same time, they empower kids as shoppers by legitimizing their unformed tastes and mercurial wants and detaching them from their gatekeeper mothers and fathers and teachers and pastors. The kids include toddlers who recognize brand logos before they can talk and commodity-minded baby Einsteins who learn to shop before they can walk.

Consumerism needs this infantilist ethos because it favors laxity and leisure over discipline and denial, values childish impetuosity and juvenile narcissism over adult order and enlightened self-interest, and prefers consumption-directed play to spontaneous recreation. The ethos feeds a private-market logic and combats the public logic fashioned by democracy.

This is capitalism's all-too-logical way of solving the problem of too many goods chasing too few needs. It makes consuming ubiquitous and omnipresent, turning shopping into an addiction facilitated by easy credit.

Compare a traditional town square with a modern suburban mall. In the square, you'll likely find a school, town hall, library, general store, park, movie house, church, art gallery and homes - a true neighborhood exhibiting our human diversity as beings who do more than simply consume. But our new town malls are all shopping, all the time.

When we see politics permeate every sector of life, we call it totalitarianism. When religion rules all, we call it theocracy. But when commerce dominates everything, we call it liberty. Can we redirect capitalism to its proper end: the satisfaction of real human needs? Well, why not?

The world teems with elemental wants and is peopled by billions who are needy. They do not need iPods, but they do need potable water, not colas but inexpensive medicines, not MTV but their ABCs. They need mortgages they can afford, not funny-money easy credit.

To serve such needs, however, capitalism must once again learn to defer profits and empower the needy as customers. With microcredit, villagers can construct hand pumps and water filters from the clay under their feet. Pharmaceutical companies ought to be thinking about how to sell inexpensive retrovirals to Africans with HIV instead of pushing Botox to the "forever young" customers they are trying to manufacture here. And parents can refuse to relinquish their gatekeeping roles and let marketers know they won't allow their kids to be targeted anymore.

To do this, we will require the assistance of democratic institutions and an adult ethos. Public citizens must be restored to their proper place as masters of their private choices.

To sustain itself, capitalism once again will have to respond to real needs instead of trying to fabricate synthetic ones - or risk consuming itself.

Benjamin R. Barber is a professor at the University of Maryland and the author of "Jihad vs. McWorld" and "Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults and Swallow Citizens Whole." This article first appeared in the Los Angeles Times.

Kolo · April 16th, 2007, 06:59 AM

I got a C in Economics 101 abot 15 years ago, and am usually disinclined to argue points I'm not entirely versed in--so at the risk of sounding stupid, I see two fundamental problems in this essay:

It's not true that capitalism "needs" to have people "need" the products that are produced--the beauty of capitalism is that it leaves producers free not to produce things people won't buy. Capitalism naturally tends producers to profit margin, and if products aren't selling, they obviously won't be produced.

Second, capitalism is doing just fine where it exists (here), and will continue to do so. We're not at risk for not being benevolent do-gooders and sacrificing our own financial health for those outside our own market.

And most of all, capitalism isn't about altruism in the slightest. I think the author wishes it were, so he matter-of-factly lumps impoverished communities into our market, when they simply aren't. The fact that we so readily serve our own needs--such that people on welfare in the U.S. are far better off than the vast majority of the world's populace--is a sign of economic stability, not of impending disaster.

wallyburger · April 16th, 2007, 07:13 AM

"Our" brand of capitalism has always required markets for "our" manufactured goods. This philosophy led to the creation of overseas markets at any cost, politically. As the article points out, we have run out of most of those markets and the domestic market is propped up by easy credit. That is not healthy and quite detrimental to the American consumer. IMHO.

Can you say outsourcing?

CardLogic · April 16th, 2007, 09:21 AM

I will echo Kolo's comments, re: I respond at the risk of exposing my ignorance.

There is a inherent correction factor in capitalism. It's called recession. There hasn't been a recession in an unreasonable length of time, due to manipulation of the markets mainly through government intervention.

The overspending craze; individuals and government spending beyond their means, bouyed by easy credit has helped to prolong the period of growth. However, at some point the bill becomes due.

When the inevitable recession comes, and sooner or later it will, I wonder whether the American people will be strong and resiliant enough to bear up under the strain.

When it does happen it's going to be ugly!

Quote:

Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten
Where black is the color, where none is the number
And I'll tell and think it and speak it and breathe it
And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it
Then I'll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin'
But I'll know my songs well before I start singin'
And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, and it's a hard
It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

conraddobler · April 16th, 2007, 09:39 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by CardLogic

I will echo Kolo's comments, re: I respond at the risk of exposing my ignorance.

There is a inherent correction factor in capitalism. It's called recession. There hasn't been a recession in an unreasonable length of time, due to manipulation of the markets mainly through government intervention.

The overspending craze; individuals and government spending beyond their means, bouyed by easy credit has helped to prolong the period of growth. However, at some point the bill becomes due.

When the inevitable recession comes, and sooner or later it will, I wonder whether the American people will be strong and resiliant enough to bear up under the strain.

When it does happen it's going to be ugly!

You are correct sir!

The market isn't the problem, it's those that manage it to avoid the unpleasantness it brings from time to time that are the problem.

In the end we the people are the problem, we forget that life is hard, it has ups and downs and that the best leader you might ever elect could preside over bad economic times and thus look like a complete moron but in reality could be stunningly good and no one pays enough attention to know the difference.

The quickest way a politician will lose his job is to be caught looking like he dosen't care about the economy during a bad stretch, but our politicians don't control the economy or at least they shouldn't, but we always think we know better and in reality we don't, anyone that tells you they do is either a fool or a liar.