The Conflicted Consumer (Great Read!)

[nosmokes]

This is a very interesting if *long* article.But I'm pretty sure Mr Reich's book just made it to the top of my reading list.
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original-alternet

The Conflicted Consumer

By Robert B. Reich, Alfred A. Knopf. Posted September 26, 2007.

The awkward truth is that most of us are two minds: As consumers and investors we want the great deals. As citizens we don't like many of the social consequences that flow from them.

The following is an excerpt from Robert Reich's new book Supercapitalism: The Transformation of Business, Democracy, and Everyday Life.

Of Two Minds

In recent years, the cheerleaders of American capitalism -- denizens of Wall Street, lobbyists on Washington's K Street, the inhabitants of top executive suites and New York penthouses, most Republicans, many economists, editorial writers for the Wall Street Journal, free-marketeers around the world -- have had difficulty containing their enthusiasm about the economy. America's gross national product has virtually tripled since the 1970s! The Dow Jones Industrial Average has risen from 1,000 to over 13,000 today! Behold the wondrous innovations and inventions, and the plethora of new products and services! The cheerleaders disdain what they consider to be constraints on further capitalist exuberance -- taxes and regulations, labor unions, "Old Europe's" inefficiencies, anything that retards consumer well-being and investor gain.

But other trends have worried labor leaders, community activists, most Democrats, some economists, many sociologists, editorial writers for the New York Times, trade protectionists, and left-wing populists. Look at all the workers falling behind! The widening inequalities of income and wealth! The instability of jobs! The loss of communities! The destruction of the environment! The trampling of human rights abroad! Conservatives will sometimes join this chorus, especially with regard to the so-called coarsening of American culture and the entertainment industry's seeming obsession with lurid and titillating sex and violence. For these critics, the villains are often greedy CEOs, immoral corporations, and a cabal of wealthy global elites.

The two stories -- Oh the wonder of it! Oh the shame of it! -- both describe aspects of 21st-century supercapitalism. But considered separately, each is seriously misleading. Each leaves out the other, which is actually its flip side. Each disdains or blames imaginary forces in opposition, when the qualms are actually inside almost every one of us.

The awkward truth is that most of us are two minds: As consumers and investors we want the great deals. As citizens we don't like many of the social consequences that flow from them. The system of democratic capitalism in the Not Quite Golden Age struck a very different balance. Then, as consumers and investors we didn't do nearly as well; as citizens we fared better.

What's the right balance? Are our gains as consumers and investors worth the price we're now paying for them? We have no real way to tell. The old institutions of democratic capitalism, and the negotiations that took place within them, are gone. But no new institutions have emerged to replace them. We have no means of balancing. Our desires as consumers and investors usually win out because our values as citizens have virtually no effective means of expression -- other than in heated rhetoric directed against the wrong targets. This is the real crisis of democracy in the age of supercapitalism.

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complete article here

[mediaman007]

1. I think that its a large pyramid scheme...

there will be only one winner eventually, and they will win a World of chaos and poverty.