The Mendacious Market

An American “John” living abroad (in Sweden) commented to a previous blog listing four failures of the American economy.

(1) Education, where the number of dropouts is too high , and the produced literacy rate is less than in Cuba;

(2) Health care, where costs are out of sight and services inferior;

(3) The homeless population, too large in the richest nation on earth; and

(4) Violence among the population.

In the same comment “John Sweden” observed that the American market environment has become so completely dominated by psychologically persuasive advertising that the consuming public, apparently powerless to resist, has amassed a level of personal debt higher than any recorded in previous times. The Mouse holds to the notion that all causes and effects are connected, so today I would like to open up the discussion to the possibility (indeed, the probability) that the failures John enumerated relate, more-or-less directly, to what has come to be called “consumerism.”

It is simply a fact that money spent for frivolous products cannot be spent for more essential things, like education and medical care. If huge numbers of us choose to buy three-and-a-half baths and a “Florida room” (whatever that is) we might expect some of our society’s more pressing needs to go wanting. The connection between widespread decisions to buy such extravagances clearly relates – at least morally – to the homelessness of others. In an appeal to “reason” we may declare that we cannot see how the funds saved by simplified home-buying can be redeployed to solve the problems of the street people. But by the same sort of rationale, we also cannot see the working of the invisible hand of economic dynamism as it feeds our desire for frippery. A way of living geared to the satisfaction of unconscious desires produces a different set of effects than would a more rational matrix of decisions.

Economic fundamentalists may claim that a more rational array of market decisions would vibrate through the entire system, reducing the public’s overall purchasing power. That is, unless we continue to purchase at high levels, recession will set in and the failures of education, healthcare, and housing would multiply. But it does not follow that decisions to purchase wisely rather than foolishly would lead to anything other than a reshuffling of the products flowing through the economy. Expenditures for education represent national product just as clearly as expenditures for $1400 rotisserie-equipped barbeque grills. It may be that the latter satisfies some sort of genuine need, but it does not follow that funds spent for better education rather than the grill would depress the economy. The fact that we have chosen to spend for the one in lieu of the other can only be regarded as a measure of our personal values. We want automated backscratchers more than we want effective education.

That advertisers have created “a continuous total marketing environment,” as “John Sweden” also suggests, has not only redirected our buying decisions; it has reduced us to a herd of thoughtless consumers. We are so completely immersed in unconscious appeals to our senses we have lost the habit of thinking. We confront life in its immediacy, acting on impulse rather than on considered judgment. We have become the inventions of others, marionettes controlled by invisible strings to sacrifice the good for the wanted.

Another commenter, Miss Robin, in a private communication, said she had just completed Emerson’s Self Reliance and wondered if she had gotten the straight of it in concluding that his ideas were essentially libertarian. Yes, I suppose so, if by “libertarian” we mean a person devoted to liberty, “especially with regard to thought or conduct.” [Webster’s Online Dictionary] Modern libertarians have, however, identified themselves with capitalism, the idea being that capitalism is the only economic system that can be implemented without major restrictions of personal liberty. [See F. A. Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom] But given the extent to which the best and brightest capitalists among us have been able to enslave the hearts and minds of the rest of us with hidden persuaders, we are led to agree with Emerson to the extent that with his book, Self Reliance, he meant to charge us individually to use our minds, not as passive actuators of mechanical reaction, but as active instruments by which we judge of the ultimate effects of our actions. Emerson’s contemporary. Henry David Thoreau, from whom I got the word “frippery,” demonstrated that life can be lived more simply than the minions of the market would have us live. His book, Walden, appeals not so much to prudent spending as to the core of our being, that rational kernel of the mind that can be brought to bear on the attainment of our ultimate concerns. If Thoreau exaggerated the extent to which budgetary prudence can be realized, he did so out of an intent to bring our minds into focus on the basics of living. That he has not succeeded, despite hundreds of printings and re-printings of his book, must speak to that mental inertia I spoke of in a previous blog. It is far easier to go with impulse than to expend the energy to think-out the effects of unreasoned action.

The failures “John Sweden” referred to fall back on us “self-reliant” individuals. We find ourselves challenged to think, especially in a democracy, where the people are ultimately responsible for the acts of government. That we have not taken that responsibility seriously – and no other reason – explains illiteracy, healthcare costs, homeless people, and certainly the outrageous levels of violence we are forced to live with in our society. If the likes of Emerson, Thoreau, and Jesus of Nazareth have not taught us to live as responsible people, the fault is not theirs, for they have spoken in relatively clear words. The fault is ours, we who have permitted ourselves to be bamboozled.