Once upon a time, a “consumer” was someone who consumed/used physical goods and limited kinds of services provided by others. Today, especially in the United States, almost everything is viewed through the lens of consumerism and the old and misused mantra that “the consumer is always right.”
People used to listen to news broadcasts and read newspapers to find out the facts of what was happening. Now, they search for and “consume” the news that suits them, regardless of its accuracy or factual content.
Students now “consume” education, and to meet that consumer demand, the vast majority of colleges and universities are dumbing down curricula and providing a huge range of costly services, many of which are at best tangentially related to learning, while putting out the word to faculty not to upset the little darlings in order to keep numbers up, just like a business catering to consumers. Despite all the right-wing talk about left-wing elitism in higher education, what’s pushing the trend to coddle students isn’t primarily the faculty, but the students, assisted by well-meaning and misguided junior administrators. On the undergraduate level, education has become less and less about learning, especially learning to think, and more and more about “keeping the numbers up” and making students “comfortable.” Trigger warnings are everywhere, as if unsettling facts and theories were real bullets, instead of challenges to be faced and dealt with through thought and reason.
Politics has become consumerized as well, especially after the Citizens United Supreme Court decision that essentially declared that votes were consumer goods that could be bought by anyone who had enough money and clever advertising.
Although law has always been biased on the side of the affluent, simply because the poor never had the funds for the best advocates or legislators, it’s become even more consumerized in recent years.
One of the reasons why the US has regulatory agencies dealing with food and drug safety, product safety, and workplace safety is because manufacturers of consumer products proved that far too many of them could not be trusted to turn out a safe product under safe working conditions.
Just as physical products can’t use dangerous ingredients, or parts, and make wildly false claims, why shouldn’t we require similar standards for all the new consumables?
Maybe news outlets should face fines or suspension of their licenses for airing provable falsehoods, including “commentators,” who seem able to air dangerous and blatant falsehoods. Maybe universities should be subject to “truth in education” laws. Maybe politicians should be held personally liable, with damages, for blatant falsehoods.
But… I don’t see it happening, because the United States has become largely a nation of consumers addicted to their consumables, regardless of the effects on their health, their political system, and their ability to think.