Born of competition and rooted in entrepreneurship, consumer markets today
have become monsters of monomania. With "everything for sale" (R. Kuttner, 1997)
rival spheres come under attack, and "Government stands impeached and impoverished,
along with democratic politics itself." There is only one paradigm--"unfettered
markets are deemed both the essence of human liberty, and the most expedient
route to prosperity"--and hence but one value (profit) one activity (shopping),
one identity (the consumer), one paradigm of behavior (market exchange), one
life world (commerce) that qualify as legitimate.
The challenge is to demonstrate that as consumers we can know what we want
and want only what we need; and that, with the rest of our lives we intend to
live as lovers or artists or learners or citizens in a plethora of life worlds
in which consumption need play no role. Once we resume our lives as complex
human beings with diverse wants, only some of which can be satisfied by material
consumption, capitalism will be compelled to resume its role as an efficient
respondent to real human needs, even if (as often happened in the early history
of markets) profits come only further down the road because so many of those who
have genuine needs are not in a position to pay in full for their satisfaction.
This kind of fundamental change is likely to come only when citizens reassert
their democratic sovereignty over the economy, requiring a revolution that is
more like a restoration of the situation under which capitalism has historically
been most successful.
Benjamin R. Barber,
Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantize
Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole 229, 292-293 (2007).
Facebook and Bebo
risk 'infantilising' the human mind
Social networking sites, such as Facebook, are putting attention span in jeopardy, says Baroness Susan Greenfield
(born 1 October 1950), a British scientist, writer, broadcaster, and member of the House of Lords. whose specialty is the
physiology of the brain. Photograph: Chris Jackson/Getty Images.
Forging a Hot Link to the Farmer Who Grows the Food
CHANGE YOU CAN BELIEVE IN
"We the People" Must Make it Happen
Barack Obama became the 44th President of the United States on Tuesday, Jan 20, 2009,
placing his left hand on the same Bible used by President Lincoln at his inauguration in 1861.
His wife Michelle held the Bible for him.
Courtesy Spiegal Online International
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