The Anti-Consumer Lobby; G. McGath

Gary McGath the Anti-Consumer Lobby ~~Consumerism" is all around us. We can see its effects every time we get into a car that buzzes to demand that we put on seat belts. We can see it in legally mandated warnings and warranties. It also affects us in less obvious ways, such as the im possibility of buying goods that do not satisfy the requirements of ~~con sumer protection" laws, and the higher prices that we pay for the in clusion offeatures mandated by these laws. ~~Consumerism," according to Webster's New Collegiate Dictio nary, is ((the promotion of con sumers' interests (as against false advertising or shoddy goods)." But a definition such as this is too vague to be satisfactory. Consumers are not a separate class of people with Mr. McGath Is a computer programmer and freelance writer In Hollis, New Hampshire. distinct interests; everyone must consume in order to live. It is true, however, that certain conditions are necessary if people are to satisfy their own desires for consumption; and the advocacy of these conditions could be considered as ~~promotion of consumers' inter ests."

The necessary precondition of consumption is production. Any thing that is consumed must first be produced. The person who wishes to consume, if he is not a parasite, must produce either the goods he needs or something to trade for those goods. In order to benefit from his pro ductive activity, the individual must be free to make his own choices. A person should be free to produce what he wants, if he is able, or to trade for what he wants, if someone is willing to trade with him. No one 143 144 THE FREEMAN March may rightfully interfere with pro ductive activity, or with a trade to which both parties have consented, as long as such activity does not im pinge on anyone else's rights. Con versely, a person should not be re quired to produce or buy what he does not want. The consumer must be the ultimate judge of his own needs and desires. If he is prevented from exercising his own judgment on what he wants and doesn't want, he is prevented from obtaining what is most valuable to him.

The Conditions for Trade If trade is to exist, not only com pulsion but also deception must be excluded from people's dealings. If someone accepts a buyer's money in exchange for goods, and if the seller fails to deliver what he has prom ised, he has violated the buyer's rights and should at least be re quired to make restitution to him. Other legal penalties may be appro priate in the case of deliberate or habitual default. The buyer is not entitled to more than what the seller represents as to functionality or quality, but he has a right to hold the seller to an agreement that both have accepted. In brief, consumption depends on production and trade, and these in turn depend on individual rights. A person who wishes to help people to become more effective consumers should, therefore, be an advocate of individual rights. Yet what passes for ((consumerism" today does not follow such a principle. Rather than promoting a political-economic en vironment in which the consumer can make the best choices for him self, ((consumerists" take the view that the consumer is incapable of making intelligent choices and that the government must make his de cisions for him.

Susan B. King, the chairman of the Consumer Product Safety Com mission, was quoted in the August 20, 1979 issue of People as saying, ((Changing human behavior is a long term and difficult problem. That doesn't mean we shouldn't do all we can in the meantime to protect us from ourselves." In Unsafe at Any Speed, Ralph Nader declared that ((safety mea sures that do not require people's voluntary and repeated cooperation are more effective than those which do." John Kenneth Galbraith, in The Affluent Society, views the con sumer as the helpless puppet of the producer, claiming that ((it is the process of satisfying wants that cre ates the wants." But the consumer is simply the individual human being, making choices for himself. According to the consumerist view, as expressed by King, Nader, and Galbraith, the consumer as an individual is help less to make sound decisions for 1981 THE ANTI-CONSUMER LOBBY 145 himself. They believe that the gov-prived of freedom of choice in order ernment, or «society," must make to protect such people from their decisions for him. own irresponsibility.

A Doctrineof Contempt Consumerism, as the term is used today, means a specific view of the consumer and his interests: the vie~;v that the consumer is not the be8t judge of his own interests, that he must be protected from himself by having. his choices restricted. Only in the light of this view can consunl erism be regarded as ((promotion of consumers' interests." Whatever va lidity such a view might have, it is a doctrine of contempt for the con sumer. The consumerist view is not sinl ply that product choices are too conl plex for the consumer. They would not speak of protecting people froIn themselves, or bemoan the need for voluntary cooperation, if their COIl cern were the sheer difficulty of gathering a mass of information an.d digesting it. Rather, the consumer ists hold that even when a consumer is presented with a plain, rational explanation of what the best choi(~e is for him, he will not make that choice.

But people do have the power to think. If someone refuses to face the facts and choose accordingly, it is not because he was helpless, but be cause he defaulted on his responsi bility to think. There is no reason why the rest of us should be dleThe ConsumerIs Injured Since only the individual can be the ultimate judge of what is of value to him, he is injured every time the consumerists act to ((protect" him. The consumer must make trade-offs based on his own values when he de cides what to buy. Consider, for ex ample, a choice among products with different levels of safety protection. The consumer may decide to buy the product with the most thorough protection against accidents. But he must then pay for this protection, ei ther through a higher price, or by giving up other features. (For ex ample, he might want to buy a lawn mower that shut itself off whenever he let go of the handle. But having suc,h a feature added would cost money, and it would deprive him of the convenience of being able to walk away from the mower and leave it running.) Alternatively, he may prefer to forgo some safety features, accepting an increased risk in order to save his money for something else.

Or he may regard the safety fea tures as unnecessary in the light of his own skill and prudence. Since the money he is spending is his own, the choice of how to spend it is rightfully his. By·forcing a par ticular choice on him, his ((protec tors" deprive him of the freedom to 146 THE FREEMAN March make his own selection. The result is a loss to him, if he cannot legally buy what he would prefer. There are, to be sure, people who benefit from consumerist legisla tion. The beneficiaries are the peo ple who want the goods mandated by that legislation. In a free market, there may not have been enough de mand for those goods to spur anyone to produce them. But once the law states that only those goods (e.g., only lawn mowers with automatic shutofl) may be produced, they will be produced and sold. Those who wanted those goods will indeed ben efit-but their advantage is gained at the cost of everyone else's free dom of choice.

This loss of freedom affects two groups of people-those who want to buy the forbidden goods, and those who had produced such goods for sale. While this article has focused on the fact that consumerism. pre vents people from buying what they want, it should not be forgotten that the most direct victims of consum erism are the people who are pre vented from selling what they had been producing. The laws that give the consumerists what they want of ten mean financial loss or worse to the businesses that had been pro ducing what the consumerists do not want, and unemployment to the em ployees of those businesses. In a free market, consumers ~ust compete for the time and resources of producers; the consumers whose willingness to pay offers the great est profit to the producers will have their desires met most readily. The consumerists, on the other hand, seek to corner the market by means of legalized compulsion, so that only what they want may be produced.

Most people would condemn a busi nessman who lobbied for laws forc ing people to buy only his products; but a consumerist who lobbies for laws forcing businessmen to sell only what he wants is no better. Those Gains Are III-Gotten that Rest on Compulsion There are businesses, as well as consumers, that benefit from con sumerist legislation. The businesses that are best able to adapt to such legislation may find their competi tors weakened or wiped out by the costs of compliance, allowing the survivors to gain a larger market. But this is an ill-gotten gain, won by means of compulsion. Consumerists use compulsion to influence consumers; but it is also possible to influence consumers by appealing to their minds. Consum erism should not be confused with the desire to provide consumers with better information and help them make better choices. Informing a person, and compelling him, are ac tions based on two very different es timates of his capacities. If he is in capable of making his own choices 1981 THE ANTI-CONSUMER LOBBY 147 intelligently, then there is no use in trying to inform him. At best, hE~ will only absorb recommendations without understanding the reason·· ing behind them; and the first glam·· orous ad he sees will probably makE~ him forget them altogether. If, on the other hand, he is capable of judging products when he is ade·· quately informed, then he has no need to be protected against his own judgment.

In fact, the popularity and useful-· ness of consumer-information pub·· lications gives the lie to the consum·· erist claim that people are incapablE~ of making sound choices on their own. A person does not have to be an expert on every product he buye; in order to choose intelligently; the consumer-information publications provide him with the advice of ex·· perts at a low price. By taking thie; advice into account, along with hie; own observations of the product and his knowledge of the manufacturer'e; reputation, he can choose what ie; best for his own needs. Critics of consumerism often try to attack it by debating the merits of specific product proposals-for ex ample, the degree of risk and protec tion entq,iled in putting air bags into cars. But the point on which the con sumerists should be challenged is not their preference for certain fea tures, but their desire to make such preferences compulsory. This re quires challenging their political premise that the government should use compulsion to prevent people from making allegedly bad choices.

Challenging their politics, in turn, requires challenging their psycho logical premise that people are in capable of choosing rationally for themselves. The society in which people have the greatest opportunity to obtain what they properly desire is not one that places their actions under the rule of authority, but one in which they are free to make their own choices. The principle on which such a society is based is not «consumer ism," but individualism. , IDEAS ON LIBERTY Competition and Choice IF producers can't produce what they please-and if you and I can't patronize whom we chooSE~-obviously we have all been. deprived of freedom of choice. When you get right down to it, there are only two ways we can ever be deprived of freedom. And both of them involve government in one way or another-either positively by laws against freedom of choice, or negatively by the government's refusal to' stop gangsters who interfere with our freedom to choose.

DEAN RUSSELL FrankChodoroY THE DOGMA OF OUR TIMES WHAT history will think of our times ery branch of thought and, as ideas is something that only history will have a way of doing, has become in reveal. But, it is a good guess that it stitutionalized. Perhaps the most will select collectivism as the iden-glaring example is the modem ori tifying characteristic of the twen-entation. of the philosophy of educa tieth century. For even a quick sur-tion. Many of the professionals in vey of the developing pattern of this field frankly assert that the pri thought during the past fifty years mary purpose of education is not to shows up the dominance of one cen-develop the individual's capacity for tral idea: that society is a transcen-I learning, as was held in the past, dent entity, something apart and' but.to prepare him for a fruitful and greater than the sum of its parts, CChappy" place in society; his incli possessing a suprahuman character nations must be turned away from and endowed with like capacities. It himself, so that he can adjust him operates in a field of its own, ethi-self to the mores of his age group cally and philosophically, and is and beyond that to the social milieu guided by stars unknown to mor-in which he will live out his life. He tals. Hence, the individual, the unit is not an end in himself.

of society, cannot judge it by his own Jurisprudence has come around to limitations or apply to it· standards the same idea, holding more and by which he measures his own more that human behavior is not a thinking and behavior. He is neces-matter of personal responsibility as sary to it, of course, but only as a much as it is a reflection of the social replaceable part of a machine. It fol-forces working on the individual; the lows, therefore, that society, which tendency is to shift onto society the may concern itself paternalistically blame for crimes committed by its with individuals, is in no way de-members. This, too, is a pendent on them. tenet of sociology, the increasing In one way or another, this idea popularity of which, and its eleva has insinuated itself into almost ev-tion to a science, attest to the hold 148 THE DOGMA OF OUR TIMES 149 collectivism has on our times. ThE~ scientist is no longer honored as a bold adventurer into the unknown:, in search of nature's principles, but has become a servant of society, to which he owes his training and hiB keep. Heroes and heroic exploits are being demoted to accidental out·· croppings of mass thought and movement. The superior person, thE~ self-starting ctcaptain of industry,"

the inherent genius-these are fic·· tions; all are but robots made by so·· ciety. Economics is the study of ho\\r society makes a living, under its own techniques and· prescriptions, not how individuals, in pursuit of hap·· piness, go about the making of a liv·· ing. And philosophy, or what goeB by that name,has made truth itself an attribute of society. Activating the State Collectivism is more than an idea" In itself, an idea is nothing but a toy of speculation, a mental idol. Since:, as the myth holds, the supraper·· sonal society is replete with possi·· bilities, the profitable thing to do is to put the myth to work, to energizE! its virtue. The instrument at hand is the state, throbbing with political energy and quite willing to expend it on this glorious adventure. Statism is not a· modern inven·· tiona Even before Plato, political philosophy concerned itself with th€~ nature, origin, and justification of the state. But, while the thinkers Frank Chodorov (1887-1966) aptly titled his last book Outof Step: The Autobiogra phy of an Individualist.By way of the Henry George School of. Social Science in New York City, then editor of his own journal, analysis, before its merger with Human Events, Chodorov came to Irvington as ed itor of The Freemanin 1954 and 1955.

This essay first appeared in the June 1956 issue of The Freeman, later as the introduction to The Riseand Fallof Society and now included in Fugitive Essays, se lected writings of Frank Chodorov com piled, edited and with an introduction by Charles H. Hamilton. (Liberty Press, 7440 North Shadeland, Indianapolis, Indiana 46250), 1980. 430 pages; $9.00 hard bound; $4.00 paperback. This 1956 commentary is well worth re considering twenty-five years later. speculated on it, the general public accepted political authority as a fact to be lived with and let it go at that. It ·is only within recent times (ex cept, perhaps, during periods when church and state were one, thus en dowing political coercion with di vine sanction) that the mass of peo ple has consciously or implicitly accepted the Hegelian dictum that ((the state is the general substance, whereof individuals are but the ac cidents." It is this acceptance of the state as ((substance," as a supraper sonal reality, and its investment with a competence no individual can lay claim to, that is the special charac teristic of the twentieth century.

In times past, the disposition was 150 THE FREEMAN March to look upon the state as something one had to reckon with, but as a complete outsider. One got along with the state as best one could, feared or admired it, hoped to be taken in by it and to enjoy its per quisites, or held it at arm's length as an untouchable thing; one hardly thought of the state as the integral of society. One had to support the state-there was no way of avoiding taxes-and one tolerated its inter ventions as interventions, not as the warp and woof of life. And the state itself was proud of its position apart from, and above, society. The present disposition is to liq uidate any distinction between state and society, conceptually or institu tionally. The state is society; the so cial order is indeed an appendage of the political establishment, depend ing on it for sustenance, health, ed ucation, communications, and all things coming under the head of (<<the pursuit of happiness." In theory, taking college textbooks on econom ics and political science for author ity, the integration is about as com plete as words can make it. In the operation of human affairs, despite the fact that lip service is rendered to the concept of inherent personal rights, the tendency to call upon the state for the solution of all the prob lems of life shows how far we have abandoned the doctrine of rights, with its correlative of self-reliance, and have accepted the state as the reality of society. It is this actual integration, rather than the theory, that marks the twentieth century off from its predecessors.

No Questions Asked One indication of how far the in tegration has gone is the disappear ance of any discussion of the state as state-a discussion that engaged the best minds of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The inade quacies of a particular regime, or its personnel, are under constant at tack, but there is no faultfinding with the institution itself. The state is all right, by common agreement, and it would work perfectly if the «right" people were at its helm. It does not occur to most critics of the New Deal that all its deficiencies .are inherent in any state, under anybody's guidance, or that when the political establishment garners enough power a demagogue will sprout. The idea that this power ap paratus is indeed the enemy of soci ety, that the interests of these insti tutions are in opposition, is simply unthinkable. If it is brought up, it is dismissed as «old-fashioned," which it is; until the modern era, it was an axiom that the state bears constant watching, that pernicious proclivi ties are built into it.

A few illustrations of the temper of our times come to mind. The oft-used statement that «we owe it to ourselves," in relation to 1981 THE DOGMA OF OUR TIMES 151 the debts incurred in the name of the state, is indicative of the ten dency to obliterate from our· COIll sciousness the line of demarcation between governed and governors. It not only is a stock phrase in econom ics textbooks, but is tacitly accepted in many financial circles as sound in principle. To many modern bankers a government bond is at least a.s sound as an obligation of a private citizen, since the bond is in fact· an obligation of the citizen to pay taxes. Those bankers make no distinction between. a debt backed by produc tion or productive ability and a debt secured by political power; in the fil nal analysis a government bond is a lien on production, so what's the dif ference? By such reasoning, the in terests of the public, which are al ways centered in the production of goods, are equated with the preda tory interests of the state.

In many economics textbooks, government borrowing from citil zens, whether done openly or by pressure brought upon the banks to lend their depositors' savings, is ex plained as a transaction equivalent to the transfer of money from one pocket to another, of the same pants; the citizen lends to himself what he lends to the government. The ratio nale of this absurdity is that the ef fect on·the nation's economy is the same whether the citizen spends his money or the government does it for him. He has simply given up his negligible right of choice. The fact that he has no desire for what the government spends his money on, that he would not of his own free will contribute to the buying of it, is blithely overlooked. The H same pants" notion rests on the identifi cation of the amorphous ttnational economy" with the well-being of the individual; he is thus merged into the mass and loses his personality.

"We Are the Government" Of a piece with this kind of think ing is a companion phrase, ttWe are the government." Its use and accep tance are most illustrative of the hold collectivism has taken on the American mind in this century, to the exclusion of the basic American tradition. When the Union was founded, the overriding fear of Americans was that the new.gov ernment .might become a threat to their freedom, and the framers of the Constitution were hard put to allay this fear. Now it is held that freedom is. a gift from government in return for subservience. The re versal has been accomplished by a neat trick in semantics. The word «democracy" is the key to this trick. When one looks for a definition of this word, one finds that it is not a clearly defined form of government but rather the rule by «social atti tudes." But, what is a ttsocial atti tude"? Putting aside the wordy ex planations of this slippery concept, 152 THE FREEMAN it turns out to be in practice good old majoritarianism; what fifty-one percent of the people deem right is right, and the minority is perforce wrong. It is the general-will fiction under a new name. There is no place in this concept for the doctrine of in herent rights; the only right left to the minority, even the minority of one, is conformity with the domi nant usocial attitude."

If ((we are the government," then it follows that the man who finds himself in jail must blame himself for his plight, and the man who takes all the tax deduction the law allows is really cheating himself. While this may seem to be a farfetched reductio ad absurdum, the fact is that many a conscript consoles himself with that kind of logic. This country was largely populated by escapees from conscription-called ((czarism" a generation or two ago, and held to be the lowest form of involuntary servitude. Now it has come to pass that a conscript army is in fact a ((democratic"army, composed of men who have made adjustment with the ((socialattitude" of the times. So does the run-of-the-mill draftee console himself when compelled to interrupt his dream of a career. Acceptance of compulsory military service has reached the point of unconscious resignation of personality. The in dividual, as individual, simply does not exist; he is of the mass.

This is the fulfillment of statism. It is a state of mind that does not recognize any ego but that of the col lective. For analogy one must go to the pagan practice of human sacri fice: when the gods called for it, when the medicine man so insisted, as a condition for prospering the clan, it was incumbent on the individual to throw himself into the sacrificial fire. In point of fact, statism is a form of paganism, for it is worship of an idol, something made by man. Its base is pure dogma. Like all dogmas this one is subject to interpretations and rationales, each with its coterie of devotees. But, whether one calls himself a communist,socialist, New Dealer, or just plain ((democrat,"each begins wit~ the premise that the in dividual is of consequence only as a servant of the mass-idol. Its will be done. There are stalwart souls, even in this twentieth century. There are some who in the privacy of their personality hold that collectivism is a denial of a higher order of things.

There are nonconformists who reject the Hegelian notion that ((the state incarnates the divine idea on earth." There are some who firmly main tain that only man is made in the image of God. As this remnant these indi vid uals-gains under standing and improves its explana tions, the myth that happiness is to be found under collective authority must fade away in the light of lib ~~ , Roger Ream I am convinced that the freedom-of· choiceprinciple is so woven into hu man existence that any effort to·cur tail it is an attempt to curtail life it self. To lose our freedom to choose is to lose our humanity. -Bertel Sparks PERSONAL freedom of choice is an important aspect of the case for lim ited government. To the extent that responsibility for self is surrendered to or usurped by government-to the extent that one loses freedom of choice-the individual is thereby di minished. The freedom to choose i8 part of the very essence of man.