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When (and why) did the US start calling its citizens consumers? · Ridiculous History

0:24
Speaker 1: Welcome to the show, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Ben.
0:27
Speaker 1: My name is Noel, citizen Null, that is Citizennal. Yes,
0:31
Speaker 1: not a consumer. Well, you know, I do consume quite
0:34
Speaker 1: a bit of things, but I like to think of
0:36
Speaker 1: myself more as a conscientious citizen of these here United States.
0:42
Speaker 1: Noel and I just for peek behind the curtain. We
0:45
Speaker 1: have been in the studio for a while today, working
0:48
Speaker 1: on working on a couple of different projects. Right. Yeah,
0:52
Speaker 1: we have another show called Stuff They Don't Want You
0:53
Speaker 1: to Know, and we just spent an hour and a
0:55
Speaker 1: half talking about John F. Kennedy. So we're both a
0:57
Speaker 1: little punchy, but hopefully that will translate into an entertaining
1:00
Speaker 1: episode of ridiculous history. That's right, that's our show. Here
1:04
Speaker 1: we are. So we've had a crazy time, you know,
1:09
Speaker 1: starting this show and looking at not just single historical
1:16
Speaker 1: episodes in isolation, we've been exploring the context in which
1:20
Speaker 1: these events occur. Yeah, I hope so. Yeah, And one
1:24
Speaker 1: thing that I think fascinates both of us is how
1:29
Speaker 1: stuff that would seem on the surface really small has
1:33
Speaker 1: these universal, ubiquitous and important, uh implications. Absolutely, and that
1:41
Speaker 1: is absolutely the case today with our topic of when
1:45
Speaker 1: and why did America start calling its citizens consumers? Which
1:52
Speaker 1: is such a good question. And before you brought this
1:55
Speaker 1: to me, I had never thought about this. Like I
1:59
Speaker 1: it just slid by my mind, and I was reading
2:03
Speaker 1: so many different stories, you know, news stories, essays, creative
2:07
Speaker 1: nonfiction where people, pundits, experts, authors used these phrases interchangeably,
2:14
Speaker 1: which is kind of weird when you think about it,
2:16
Speaker 1: you know. Uh So, there was a recent opinion piece
2:21
Speaker 1: that was published in a political newspaper called The Hill.
2:25
Speaker 1: And in this piece, which is titled how Trump's immigration
2:29
Speaker 1: plans hurt American Citizens Pocketbooks, the author Maurice Goldman criticized
2:35
Speaker 1: the Trump administration's plans for crackdown on immigration by pointing
2:40
Speaker 1: to the cost of building the infamous border wall, the
2:45
Speaker 1: cost of hiring enforcement agents, the cost of reducing legal
2:48
Speaker 1: immigration channels, but a particular interest for our purposes today.
2:56
Speaker 1: Goldman used the phrase consumer in in the body of
3:04
Speaker 1: the text in the title it's citizen, but he notes
3:09
Speaker 1: you the consumer will pay for you know, the the plans,
3:14
Speaker 1: the political plans if this wall and stuff goes through.
3:16
Speaker 1: And like you just said, I mean, is this an
3:18
Speaker 1: issue of semantics or was this intentional? Um? And the
3:24
Speaker 1: answer to that is pretty interesting. Um, it's hard to
3:28
Speaker 1: say quite when this took place, but in the last
3:31
Speaker 1: handful of years there has been an increasing tendency to
3:35
Speaker 1: use the term consumer interchangeably with citizen. And that's even
3:41
Speaker 1: when the conversation has to do with the economy. Yeah,
3:45
Speaker 1: and again it's it seems like on the surface a
3:48
Speaker 1: small thing, but political experts, growing numbers of political experts
3:54
Speaker 1: are concerned with this, and they're arguing that the choice
3:56
Speaker 1: of words signals a shift in how we uh see
4:02
Speaker 1: ourselves as individuals participating in the United States, right, and
4:07
Speaker 1: what our role is in American society. So the people
4:12
Speaker 1: who are concerned are saying that this is moving the
4:16
Speaker 1: individual away from this idea of citizenship working with others
4:21
Speaker 1: in collaboration towards some common, greater good right, and toward
4:26
Speaker 1: something else. Yes, I mean that's much more selfish and
4:29
Speaker 1: an individualistic and based on the acquisition of things that
4:35
Speaker 1: can also be turned around and applied to ideas. Or
4:39
Speaker 1: the way our vote is almost equivalent to the way
4:44
Speaker 1: we spend money exactly. And there's a professor named Jathan
4:49
Speaker 1: Sadowski Jathan, Jathan j developed a list just now no
4:53
Speaker 1: Jathan like Nathan, but with a J. I know, I've
4:56
Speaker 1: never seen that one before. I know that's a new one.
4:59
Speaker 1: Uh Here argues that using the term consumer interchangeably with
5:03
Speaker 1: the term citizen has quote become part of our default discourse,
5:08
Speaker 1: the normal way we view society and people, and he says,
5:13
Speaker 1: just look at the recent presidential election. The consumer versus
5:16
Speaker 1: citizen language is often used with analysts and pundits talk
5:20
Speaker 1: about elections, and this goes to the point that that
5:24
Speaker 1: Noel highlighted voters are just consumers with preferences, and the
5:29
Speaker 1: election is a marketplace of products to choose from. To
5:34
Speaker 1: continue to quote, in the store, we vote with our dollar.
5:37
Speaker 1: We are told that elections are functionally the same thing.
5:41
Speaker 1: You just use a ballot instead of a buck to
5:43
Speaker 1: cast your vote. This understanding of democratic processes as a
5:47
Speaker 1: marketplace is just one more place where the citizen is
5:50
Speaker 1: overtaken by the consumer. End quote. And both of these
5:55
Speaker 1: words have been around for centuries and centuries right. The
5:58
Speaker 1: word citizen dates back to the thirteen hundreds. Originally it
6:03
Speaker 1: meant the inhabitant of a city. Yeah, the entry and
6:08
Speaker 1: the online Etymology Dictionary for citizen um says from site
6:12
Speaker 1: citizen of the world translates in Greek to cosmopolites. Oh,
6:19
Speaker 1: that's cool, that's a good one. On the other side,
6:22
Speaker 1: the the evolution of citizen to mean what we take
6:27
Speaker 1: it to mean today, a person who has both rights
6:29
Speaker 1: in a society and responsibilities to that society. That didn't
6:33
Speaker 1: come around until around sixteen ten. The term consumer arose
6:40
Speaker 1: shortly after the original version of the term citizen. I
6:44
Speaker 1: love the entry for that one in the online Etymology Dictionary.
6:48
Speaker 1: It says quote one who squanders or wastes um agent
6:52
Speaker 1: noun from consume in economic sense one who uses up
6:56
Speaker 1: goods or articles opposite of producer, and that dates back
6:59
Speaker 1: to seventeen Uh. Then it also says consumer goods is
7:05
Speaker 1: attested from eighteen ninety um in consumers for a representative
7:09
Speaker 1: basket of goods and services. And that actually is from
7:13
Speaker 1: the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Yeah, so that's these are
7:17
Speaker 1: These are legit sources, and no one is saying that
7:20
Speaker 1: these words just suddenly emerged like in nineteen seventy or whatever,
7:25
Speaker 1: the like many words in English. This is an evolving language, right,
7:29
Speaker 1: and so a living language. So, like many other terms,
7:33
Speaker 1: the term citizen and consumer have undergone evolution over the years,
7:38
Speaker 1: and the question is what what these mean today? Right?
7:45
Speaker 1: According to Michael Munger, who is the director of the Philosophy,
7:50
Speaker 1: Politics and Economics Program at Duke University's Political Science Department,
7:55
Speaker 1: the word consumer, although it existed, as we had said
7:59
Speaker 1: for sent trees, it didn't really appear in print until
8:04
Speaker 1: ben have you ever used done in a Google Ingram search?
8:08
Speaker 1: I I only started because of this. Yeah, it's really interesting.
8:13
Speaker 1: So you can actually like search for a combination of
8:16
Speaker 1: words compared to words, and it will get all track
8:18
Speaker 1: it over time as it appears in this you know,
8:23
Speaker 1: vast online collection of books that Google has digitized. And
8:28
Speaker 1: starting in eighteen hundred and going to the year two thousand,
8:30
Speaker 1: this in gram search tracks the use of citizen versus consumer,
8:34
Speaker 1: and this is in fractions of so starting in eighteen hundred,
8:39
Speaker 1: citizen is a clear winner, with consumer very very low,
8:43
Speaker 1: just like a tiny fleck above zero percent. And then
8:47
Speaker 1: as time goes on, starting in around nineteen ten nine
8:51
Speaker 1: to be precise, there is a significant spike in citizen
8:57
Speaker 1: um and then and as this is going on, consumer
9:01
Speaker 1: is kind of rising. Then there's a crossover point in
9:04
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty six at which point consumer goes through the
9:08
Speaker 1: roof UM and ending in two thousand. Consumer well above
9:13
Speaker 1: citizen in terms of its use in literature. Right. Yeah.
9:18
Speaker 1: And it's fascinating to see this in laid out in
9:22
Speaker 1: an infographic form because Duel is absolutely correct. You can
9:27
Speaker 1: see the the direct correlation. You can see the switch
9:32
Speaker 1: point at which people from writers, authors at least started
9:37
Speaker 1: preferring the term consumer to the term citizen, and now
9:41
Speaker 1: it's used about three times as often. Uh. Monger theorizes
9:45
Speaker 1: that this happened this, this change in the usage had
9:49
Speaker 1: largely to do with the rise of progressive politics in
9:53
Speaker 1: the twentieth century. And here's a quote from Monger quote.
9:56
Speaker 1: The progressives primarily saw citizens as being helpless trapped by
10:00
Speaker 1: arge forces, especially corporations, that citizens couldn't deal with. UM
10:04
Speaker 1: and he attributes Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal social programs that
10:11
Speaker 1: came about in the thirties, as well as Lyndon Johnson's
10:14
Speaker 1: Great Society Effort in the sixties UM as reinforcing the
10:18
Speaker 1: idea that participation in politics was mostly a way to
10:23
Speaker 1: just get your share of the pie, you know, get
10:25
Speaker 1: a piece. So it's it's less of a civic duty,
10:29
Speaker 1: it's less of a what can I do for my
10:32
Speaker 1: country and more of a what can my country do
10:34
Speaker 1: for me? Exactly. And this increasing use of the term
10:40
Speaker 1: consumer doesn't just apply to people who are writing about politics.
10:46
Speaker 1: It applies to politicians themselves. And when we're talking about
10:51
Speaker 1: President Johnson's Great Society stuff in the nineties sixties, we
10:55
Speaker 1: are also examining the rise of something that would surprise
11:01
Speaker 1: the average voter. Marketing, right, marketing, Yes, marketing, which means
11:06
Speaker 1: that we are going to take a little bit of
11:10
Speaker 1: a side trail into a man named Edward Burnet's and
11:15
Speaker 1: Edward Bernez, as you know, is a is a guy
11:18
Speaker 1: that you and I have spent a lot of time
11:19
Speaker 1: on in the past. Yeah, he's sort of the big
11:21
Speaker 1: grand Pappy of marketing. And this idea of selling things
11:26
Speaker 1: to a mass audience including various methods from billboards, magazine
11:31
Speaker 1: articles to later television think mad Men, you know the
11:34
Speaker 1: television show, Um, the whole world that's depicted in that,
11:37
Speaker 1: the Madison Avenue, UM kind of ad agency universe, um.
11:43
Speaker 1: And it was for sellers of products like breakfast cereals
11:47
Speaker 1: and cars and anti perch prints, all of these modern
11:50
Speaker 1: things that everyone just had to have. Um. And today
11:55
Speaker 1: you know, we can micro target people's preferences, you know,
11:59
Speaker 1: using these campaigns in this massive amounts of data that
12:02
Speaker 1: can be analyzed much much much more quickly than in
12:05
Speaker 1: the past. Uh. And now it looks at individual voters
12:09
Speaker 1: attitudes and their corresponding behavior um and can kind of
12:15
Speaker 1: figure out what might be the best way to actually
12:18
Speaker 1: reach them in the same way as you know, appealing
12:21
Speaker 1: to somebody about a particular type of microwave meal. Right,
12:25
Speaker 1: And that that in itself is important for us to
12:28
Speaker 1: know that in itself is not inherently a bad thing. However,
12:34
Speaker 1: it is an important thing, and it is crucial that
12:37
Speaker 1: people be aware of what is happening. To tell me
12:44
Speaker 1: a little bit about Bernet's Oh man, I'm so glad
12:47
Speaker 1: you asked, Okay, so Edward Berne's get this nephew of
12:51
Speaker 1: Sigmund Freud, true story Ampia coincidence, coincidence? Right? Uh? Edward
12:58
Speaker 1: Edward Bernesee took a lot of psychological concepts and said, well,
13:04
Speaker 1: how can we I hesitate to use the word weaponize,
13:08
Speaker 1: but maybe maybe apply is a better word. He said,
13:11
Speaker 1: how how can we apply these concepts about how the
13:16
Speaker 1: workings of the human mind and translate them into quantifiable, predictable,
13:24
Speaker 1: real world results. How can we push people not only
13:28
Speaker 1: to make the decision we want them to make, but
13:31
Speaker 1: to make them feel that it is their decision, that
13:34
Speaker 1: they have agency in this choice. He has done so
13:39
Speaker 1: much stuff, So I really appreciate that you mentioned the
13:41
Speaker 1: concept of breakfast, right, so before Edward Burnet's the typical
13:49
Speaker 1: breakfast in the in the United States would be something
13:52
Speaker 1: like a cup of coffee and maybe a croissant or
13:56
Speaker 1: as yes, yes, or you know, a bagel, a couple
14:02
Speaker 1: of pieces of toast, maybe some butter. A bagel and toast.
14:05
Speaker 1: That's a lot of carbs, dude. Yeah, you put the toast,
14:08
Speaker 1: it's a it's a it's a toast sandwich. So you
14:10
Speaker 1: get the bagel if the toast in between, that doesn't
14:13
Speaker 1: sound very healthy. And that's actually kind of the point,
14:15
Speaker 1: because what ended up being foisted upon the American consumer
14:21
Speaker 1: was this idea of bacon for breakfast, right, yes, yeah,
14:25
Speaker 1: Edward Berns, make no bones about it. Is the reason
14:28
Speaker 1: that bacon became part of the American breakfast. Because without
14:33
Speaker 1: getting too deep into it, here's what happened. In the
14:36
Speaker 1: nineteen twenties, Edward Bernese was approached by a company called
14:40
Speaker 1: the beach Nut Packing Company. They're the people who made
14:44
Speaker 1: beech nut gum at the time, right, but they did
14:46
Speaker 1: a lot of other stuff, and they had a lot
14:48
Speaker 1: of other concerns. One of the big concerns was pork. Edward,
14:52
Speaker 1: they asked the guy, we need to increase demand. We
14:56
Speaker 1: have all this trash meat laying around, you know, how
14:58
Speaker 1: do we uh a and foisted on the American public
15:02
Speaker 1: right exactly just so. And he thought, well, we could
15:06
Speaker 1: do the typical sort of advertisement at the time, where
15:10
Speaker 1: we could just have somebody be like, hey, I'm cool
15:12
Speaker 1: and where does suit and get a nice tie and
15:15
Speaker 1: like bacon you should too, And that was, you know,
15:18
Speaker 1: that was the approach that advertising used. But he did
15:21
Speaker 1: something very different and he said, well, let me let
15:25
Speaker 1: me conduct a quote unquote poll of doctors medical experts,
15:31
Speaker 1: and let me let me twist the questions in such
15:34
Speaker 1: a way that they will all end up agreeing or
15:38
Speaker 1: appearing to agree that bacon is not only good for you,
15:43
Speaker 1: but should be eaten by any person with half a
15:47
Speaker 1: concern about their health early in the morning and give
15:50
Speaker 1: them energy and substantial And that's the thing. It worked.
15:54
Speaker 1: It not only did it work, but it continues to
15:57
Speaker 1: work today. Edward Bernese, who could be the subject to
16:00
Speaker 1: his own show, right, he went on to uh tie
16:04
Speaker 1: smoking tobacco with women's suffrage. He went on to help
16:09
Speaker 1: support propaganda pushing the American public, citizens or consumers, whatever
16:14
Speaker 1: you want to call them, into supporting a coup in
16:18
Speaker 1: South America. And he continues to influence things today. This
16:25
Speaker 1: is one of the correlations, one of the one of
16:28
Speaker 1: the points at which people stopped thinking about the average
16:32
Speaker 1: voter as a citizen and started thinking about them as consumers. Well,
16:38
Speaker 1: it's the way, you know, politicians have to essentially market
16:41
Speaker 1: themselves uh and and and dress up their platforms in
16:46
Speaker 1: such a way that appeals to different voting bases. Uh
16:50
Speaker 1: and A lot of it is based on entirely based
16:53
Speaker 1: on rhetoric, which you could, you know, kind of equate
16:56
Speaker 1: to something like ad copy where it's like, sure, it's
16:59
Speaker 1: technically true, and it's it's backed up by science or
17:03
Speaker 1: like you know, fact, but at the end of the day,
17:06
Speaker 1: it's this like packaged, curated version of the truth, and
17:11
Speaker 1: that is the way things are today, and the government itself,
17:15
Speaker 1: in fact, is is actually judged as if it were
17:20
Speaker 1: a business, a consumer business. The American Customer Satisfaction Index
17:25
Speaker 1: actually rates the federal government on how people feel about
17:29
Speaker 1: their interactions with How am I how they feel? You
17:32
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying. So there's Bernet's at work right now,
17:35
Speaker 1: and it actually got a sixty percent positive rating in
17:38
Speaker 1: which was up from sixty the previous year. So, um,
17:42
Speaker 1: gonna'll be interested to know how how that ranks today, Yeah,
17:46
Speaker 1: and the methodology behind it. People who have a problem
17:49
Speaker 1: with this interchangeable use of citizen and consumer, uh, They
17:54
Speaker 1: argue that there are fundamental differences between the two roles
18:02
Speaker 1: in society and that they should not be confused. So
18:05
Speaker 1: how about this. I want to outline some of these
18:08
Speaker 1: proposed differences and see what you think. Sure, okay, So
18:12
Speaker 1: is there an issue of morality? You know, earlier we
18:17
Speaker 1: mentioned the concept of doing stuff for other people for
18:22
Speaker 1: the greater good versus doing something for one's self. So
18:27
Speaker 1: one of the proposed differences would be that the job
18:31
Speaker 1: of any consumer is to always choose what works best
18:34
Speaker 1: for them in the marketplace, regardless of any other considerations. Right,
18:40
Speaker 1: that's what I do. I think that's that's also the
18:44
Speaker 1: human condition, though, isn't it. You know? Yeah, But that
18:47
Speaker 1: that there in lies the issue with this whole notion
18:50
Speaker 1: of like being pulled away from the idea of being
18:53
Speaker 1: part of a whole or being a member of a
18:55
Speaker 1: team and going to a much more self serving attitude
18:59
Speaker 1: that's kind of codified and bolstered by the use of
19:02
Speaker 1: these these these words and the distinctions that they sort
19:04
Speaker 1: of imply, I guess, right. Yeah, So then if a
19:08
Speaker 1: by by this understanding, this difference is true, then by
19:11
Speaker 1: virtue of voting, a consumer is saying what will make
19:16
Speaker 1: me better directly now, whereas a citizen would be saying,
19:23
Speaker 1: what can I do to improve the world conditions for
19:29
Speaker 1: everyone from my neighbors? Yeah, yeah, like a rising tide
19:32
Speaker 1: carries all vest And a good citizen then would be,
19:36
Speaker 1: in their own way kind of kind of heroic or
19:39
Speaker 1: very moral, that's what it sounds like, right, And a
19:43
Speaker 1: good consumer would be getting the best deal. There's another difference,
19:48
Speaker 1: which is that citizens are comfortable with a degree of uncertainty.
19:53
Speaker 1: I'm doing my best to help the group, the community
19:56
Speaker 1: of the nation, et cetera. I'm not sure how it's
19:59
Speaker 1: going to work out, but I know my intentions are
20:03
Speaker 1: what I believe to be good. Whereas a consumer says,
20:06
Speaker 1: you know, if I'm if I'm paying for this service,
20:09
Speaker 1: whether that's through time, whether that's through money, whether that's
20:13
Speaker 1: through exchange of materials, then I need to be certain
20:17
Speaker 1: that this transaction occurs, you know. So with with this idea, um,
20:24
Speaker 1: there's the simplication that a citizen knows that society has
20:31
Speaker 1: what HR departments around the world called areas of opportunity.
20:35
Speaker 1: God do you remember that one? Do you know how
20:38
Speaker 1: much I love these corporate terms? Yes? Yes, synergy Synergy
20:42
Speaker 1: is their synergy and uh and cadence that's a new one,
20:47
Speaker 1: making the rounds. Well, you know, the idea holds up though,
20:50
Speaker 1: because the concept then would be that you and I
20:54
Speaker 1: and everyone who has a vote understands that we can
20:59
Speaker 1: play a part in improving society in whatever way we
21:02
Speaker 1: think it should be improved, right, and that these problems
21:06
Speaker 1: will not be fixed themselves. And then the on the
21:10
Speaker 1: other side, the concept of a consumer would be that
21:14
Speaker 1: someone expects to purchase essentially a product or a service,
21:21
Speaker 1: and that the people providing that product or service, it's
21:25
Speaker 1: on them to fix stuff. Right. So I voted for
21:28
Speaker 1: you just do the thing, you know what I mean?
21:32
Speaker 1: And uh, we we know that this is a very
21:35
Speaker 1: very contentious thing. Well let's go through a little business.
21:39
Speaker 1: This is a ridiculous history. Um, let's just talk a
21:42
Speaker 1: little bit about the history of the idea of humans
21:45
Speaker 1: as consumers. There's a fantastic article by Frank Trentman in
21:49
Speaker 1: the Atlantic that has a couple of great quotes from
21:52
Speaker 1: the famous American thinker Adam Smith, one of which is
21:55
Speaker 1: a consumption is the soul, end and purpose of all production,
21:59
Speaker 1: which was m his treatise, I guess you could call
22:01
Speaker 1: it The Wealth of Nations from seventeen seventy six. That's
22:04
Speaker 1: a pretty famous quote. A lesser known quote from him
22:08
Speaker 1: that really sums up this whole idea comes from seventeen
22:11
Speaker 1: fifty nine The Theory of Moral Sentiments, UM, where he
22:14
Speaker 1: kind of really hones in on the as Trentman puts it,
22:20
Speaker 1: the social and psychological impulses that cause us to want
22:25
Speaker 1: to get a bunch of stuff, knickknacks, patty wax, gadgets, um.
22:33
Speaker 1: And this quote again from Smith does a really good
22:38
Speaker 1: job of summing all that up. He observed that people
22:41
Speaker 1: wanted to quote stuff their pockets with little conveniences and
22:46
Speaker 1: then buying coats with more pockets to carry even more
22:50
Speaker 1: by themselves. Tweezer cases, elaborate snuff boxes, and other bobbles
22:54
Speaker 1: might not have much use, but Smith pointed out what
22:57
Speaker 1: mattered was that people looked at them as means of happiness. Um.
23:02
Speaker 1: And he goes on to say that it was in
23:04
Speaker 1: people's imaginations that these objects became part of a harmonious
23:08
Speaker 1: system and made the pleasures of wealth grand and beautiful
23:13
Speaker 1: and noble. And even you know, ancient Greek thinkers philosophers
23:19
Speaker 1: from you know, Plato to St. Augustine Um, they kind
23:24
Speaker 1: of condemned the pursuit of of stuff as as being
23:28
Speaker 1: inherently wicked and self serving. Um. So there is this
23:33
Speaker 1: history of the idea of being a citizen as being
23:38
Speaker 1: much more important, and if it feels like throughout history,
23:41
Speaker 1: obviously there there is that selfish impulse. But as a whole,
23:45
Speaker 1: civilization and societies have largely maintained because of this notion
23:51
Speaker 1: of you know, the whole is more important than the
23:54
Speaker 1: individual parts and that we're all banding together to make
23:57
Speaker 1: a better life for everyone. Yeah. Right, And this leads
24:02
Speaker 1: us to something a pretty interesting theory that you've probably
24:06
Speaker 1: heard of, which is the tragedy of the commons. And
24:09
Speaker 1: the tragedy of the commons is this economic theory that says, uh,
24:13
Speaker 1: if you're in a shared resource system, right, so, you're
24:16
Speaker 1: in a community where everybody has like a common good
24:19
Speaker 1: it's called water, air, nine LPs. Who knows, just like
24:26
Speaker 1: it's something for the people, the way that you and
24:29
Speaker 1: I typically order fries. Yeah. Um. The idea is that
24:35
Speaker 1: when individual users are acting independently according to their own
24:40
Speaker 1: self interests, they will tend to behave in ways that
24:45
Speaker 1: deplete or spoil those common resources because everybody, everybody wants
24:52
Speaker 1: their piece of the pie and would prefer not to
24:56
Speaker 1: have to help create the pie, right And obviously, so
25:02
Speaker 1: many people have argued complex ideological questions based on how
25:09
Speaker 1: to address this dilemma of individuals trying to improve society,
25:16
Speaker 1: to take a line from the Simpsons to ambigen society
25:20
Speaker 1: or two improve themselves, even if such a thing might
25:25
Speaker 1: have dangerous consequences right or unforeseen consequences down the road,
25:31
Speaker 1: and it might sound. It might sound, folks, as if
25:36
Speaker 1: Noel and I are dwelling on semantics, but we are not,
25:40
Speaker 1: because it turns out that science backs this up. In
25:45
Speaker 1: a two thousand twelve study in the journal Psychological Science UH,
25:49
Speaker 1: they found that choice of words can exert a subtle
25:53
Speaker 1: influence upon how we see ourselves, which then you know,
25:57
Speaker 1: naturally influences how we behave. So in one part of
26:00
Speaker 1: the study, people who answered a quote consumer response survey
26:05
Speaker 1: tended to express more materialistic, self centered values. People who
26:11
Speaker 1: did a survey that was called a citizen survey tended
26:16
Speaker 1: to behave in a more a less selfish way. And
26:21
Speaker 1: another part of the same survey, the researchers looked at
26:24
Speaker 1: subjects with gave them a hypothetical situation where people um
26:29
Speaker 1: had to join together and share water from a well,
26:33
Speaker 1: and they were labeled as either consumers or citizens. And
26:36
Speaker 1: the members of the study that got the consumer label
26:40
Speaker 1: tended to be completely distrustful of their cohorts and just
26:45
Speaker 1: didn't want to share the water. They just were a
26:47
Speaker 1: little crotchety about it, and they did not feel as
26:50
Speaker 1: though they were on a team or in partnership with
26:53
Speaker 1: the other subjects, and just felt overall less tied to
26:57
Speaker 1: or responsible for the experience, and you know well being
27:01
Speaker 1: honestly of their compatriots, as opposed to those who were
27:06
Speaker 1: labeled citizens, who felt just the opposite, right, right, And
27:09
Speaker 1: now we we if we are called one name or another,
27:14
Speaker 1: it tends to affect our behavior. Now we see this
27:18
Speaker 1: article by Maurice Goldman becomes even more important. I don't
27:22
Speaker 1: want to say insidious, but I do want to say important,
27:26
Speaker 1: because you know, on some level it might feel I
27:29
Speaker 1: don't know, condescending or dominutive to say, oh, you are
27:35
Speaker 1: not so smart, right, you are easily influenced, right if somebody,
27:39
Speaker 1: if somebody calls me a name, that shouldn't influence my
27:44
Speaker 1: behavior already, but apparently it does. Apparently we are a
27:48
Speaker 1: little bit easier to steer than we would like to think.
27:52
Speaker 1: And this goes back to the Bernese thing, right, the
27:56
Speaker 1: idea of a of a citizen versus a consumer in
28:01
Speaker 1: terms of active versus passive rules. Did you know that
28:06
Speaker 1: the I'm sure you've heard the use of the term
28:08
Speaker 1: consumption um to refer to tuberculosis, you know, so, I
28:13
Speaker 1: mean it was definitely had very very negative connotations of
28:17
Speaker 1: going back to The Atlantic article from Frank treatmanny as
28:20
Speaker 1: a section where he talks about some of the history
28:23
Speaker 1: of the term consumption uh and the as he calls it,
28:26
Speaker 1: the heavy burden that it carried. And it was originally
28:28
Speaker 1: from the term the Latin term consumer, which first presented
28:31
Speaker 1: itself in French in the twelfth century and then into
28:34
Speaker 1: English and other European languages later. And of course it
28:38
Speaker 1: meant as I said, with the etymological um origins earlier,
28:43
Speaker 1: using up wasting kind of implied of food or any
28:47
Speaker 1: other um consumables for lack of a better term um.
28:51
Speaker 1: But like I said, the idea of tuberculosis or wasting
28:55
Speaker 1: disease being called consumption because it had this inherently like
28:59
Speaker 1: it just eats you up. And that was very much
29:02
Speaker 1: a sign of being irresponsible and not looking out for
29:05
Speaker 1: the greater good of your community or family, what have you,
29:09
Speaker 1: not being a good citizen. And we would be remiss
29:13
Speaker 1: if we didn't just mention for a second everyone's favorite
29:16
Speaker 1: fictional consumptive, which is Val Kilmer playing Doc Holiday in
29:21
Speaker 1: Tombstone Bloody Rack. Yeah, man, what does he say? Who's who? Huckleberry?
29:28
Speaker 1: I'm your Huckleberty Oh Yeah, I'm your huck You're my Huckleberry,
29:32
Speaker 1: and Romance for the Ages, Romance for the Ages, and
29:38
Speaker 1: history for the Pages, which rhymes but doesn't really make
29:41
Speaker 1: sense if you think about it. So. Josh Passik is
29:48
Speaker 1: an assistant professor of Communications studies at the University of Michigan,
29:53
Speaker 1: and he he draws some conclusions based on this shift,
29:58
Speaker 1: and he says it seems to underscore a shift away
30:01
Speaker 1: from viewing Americans is having responsibility our political system and
30:05
Speaker 1: toward a more individualist view of what it means to
30:08
Speaker 1: be American. So, in his mind, the role of a
30:12
Speaker 1: citizen is more active and the role of a consumer
30:15
Speaker 1: is more passive. And in his mind, these are two
30:18
Speaker 1: different things, right, They're not synonyms. He says, your job
30:22
Speaker 1: as an American citizen requires that you fulfill key democratic
30:26
Speaker 1: norms such as being informed, deliberating about political issues, and
30:30
Speaker 1: participating in civic and political life. As an American consumer,
30:34
Speaker 1: he says, your actions are relevant only to the extent
30:38
Speaker 1: that they respond to economic incentives. The responsibility to be
30:41
Speaker 1: engaged and participatory is not your own, but instead depends
30:45
Speaker 1: upon a system that is oriented to bring you in.
30:49
Speaker 1: Unpack that for us ben Okay, sure, I would love to.
30:53
Speaker 1: Uh so again. The idea, the idea of citizenship as
30:58
Speaker 1: a responsibility, right, Like, I don't if you're a citizen,
31:01
Speaker 1: you're not just supposed to show up and vote. You're
31:05
Speaker 1: supposed to put some research time into it, right, and
31:08
Speaker 1: be be aware. And you know, let's I mean not
31:12
Speaker 1: for nothing, It's true that most people don't know their
31:15
Speaker 1: congressional district. Yeah, I mean, if I'm being honest, I
31:17
Speaker 1: voted the other day and there were a whole lot
31:20
Speaker 1: of names on the ballot that I was not familiar with.
31:23
Speaker 1: There were some races that I had followed very closely,
31:25
Speaker 1: and I knew what I was signing up for. But
31:28
Speaker 1: you know, it's very difficult to be completely informed about
31:30
Speaker 1: every aspect of the political process. But I guess what
31:34
Speaker 1: the takeaway here is is that you know, just you
31:36
Speaker 1: got to try to do your homework and consider beyond
31:39
Speaker 1: just you know, your personal stake, what might be good
31:43
Speaker 1: for your entire community. Because you know, with names that
31:47
Speaker 1: can recognize on the ballot, if I had voted for
31:49
Speaker 1: somebody just out of sheer, you know, randomness, What if
31:52
Speaker 1: I accidentally voted for a monster or voted to keep
31:55
Speaker 1: an incumbent in power that had done bad things for
31:59
Speaker 1: the community that needed to be replaced. You know. So, uh,
32:02
Speaker 1: if if I had gone in with that consumer mentality
32:05
Speaker 1: about what's good for me, you know, and and maybe
32:09
Speaker 1: I'm guilty of that in a certain sense, I would
32:11
Speaker 1: only know what directly impacted me, Whereas if I had
32:14
Speaker 1: gone in with much more of a you know, citizen,
32:17
Speaker 1: good citizen attitude, then maybe I would have thought about
32:20
Speaker 1: more what would affect areas that don't even affect me directly.
32:24
Speaker 1: You know. It's a it's a dilemma, and we are
32:27
Speaker 1: we are talking about the influence of behavior. We want
32:31
Speaker 1: to be very clear that we're not We're not a
32:34
Speaker 1: show that's going to like lecture people about politics. Yeah
32:38
Speaker 1: for us, this is for us. This is a dilemma. Though.
32:40
Speaker 1: It's a dilemma, and it's kind of a thought experiment too. Yeah. Yeah, Yeah,
32:43
Speaker 1: that's a good way to see it, because the question
32:46
Speaker 1: and becomes you know, is one somehow better than the
32:50
Speaker 1: other or they just different? I would say that they're different.
32:54
Speaker 1: I would say that everybody has played the part of
32:57
Speaker 1: a citizen. Everybody's played the part of it can sumer
33:00
Speaker 1: at the same time, you know, you're not going into
33:02
Speaker 1: uh Arby's for instance, who is not a sponsor of
33:06
Speaker 1: the show of just thinking like different is good that
33:08
Speaker 1: you're still around. Yeah, they're still getting funny commercials, but like,
33:11
Speaker 1: you know, nobody's walking into Arby's and saying, you know,
33:15
Speaker 1: at the at the soda fountain or at the little
33:18
Speaker 1: ketchup stand, no one's saying like, what can I do
33:21
Speaker 1: to make this ketchup stand better for everyone who comes
33:25
Speaker 1: after me? Yeah? And you know, speaking to uh pass
33:28
Speaker 1: ex quote about you know, as an American consumer, your
33:31
Speaker 1: actions are relevant only to the extent they respond to
33:33
Speaker 1: economic incentives, meaning and sometimes those incentives are just personal
33:39
Speaker 1: fulfillment and you know pleasure. Uh and your jobs not
33:43
Speaker 1: to read state you already said, Ben, but your job
33:45
Speaker 1: as an American citizen requires you fulfill key democratic norms
33:48
Speaker 1: just being informed and deliberating about political issues. So the
33:51
Speaker 1: idea that uh, there is this gray area or this
33:54
Speaker 1: kind of like fusion between the notion of a citizen
33:57
Speaker 1: and a consumer is potentially problematic for people making choices
34:02
Speaker 1: in in elections that actually help others or that if
34:08
Speaker 1: that affect the greater good, If everyone's just voting for
34:11
Speaker 1: you know what, we'll do good for themselves. And that
34:13
Speaker 1: also plays into how politicians market themselves, you know, right right,
34:18
Speaker 1: the same the same techniques that Edward Bernese pioneered are
34:23
Speaker 1: now present not only in advertising, but are present in
34:28
Speaker 1: a very real way in the political sphere. I gotta
34:31
Speaker 1: tell you, man, did you ever did you did you
34:35
Speaker 1: ever watch c SPAN? I mean, if if there's something
34:40
Speaker 1: really crucial on, um, But now I have not not
34:43
Speaker 1: just watch it like my grandpapa used to them. Yeah,
34:46
Speaker 1: I used I used to. UM. I used to watch
34:49
Speaker 1: c SPAN with my grandmother as well. Um, when Golden
34:53
Speaker 1: Girls wasn't on. She loved Golden Girls. Hehaw and c
34:56
Speaker 1: SPAN beautiful woman. You know it seems like a good mix.
35:00
Speaker 1: And uh and uh. One of the things that got
35:03
Speaker 1: me was years ago we were watching c SPAN at
35:07
Speaker 1: her house and uh, a congress person was referring to
35:13
Speaker 1: a a bill they were trying to pass as a product.
35:19
Speaker 1: And then they said, we're going to get this product
35:21
Speaker 1: out at the end of this time frame, and this
35:25
Speaker 1: product is going to you know, be great for companies,
35:29
Speaker 1: all interests of parties, stakeholders. And I didn't understand the
35:33
Speaker 1: term because why would you call something like that a product.
35:39
Speaker 1: You're selling it, You're selling it to your constituents. And
35:43
Speaker 1: this guy, Frank Tripman, who wrote the article from the
35:45
Speaker 1: Atlantic that I was talking about a little bit UM
35:47
Speaker 1: is a professor of history at the University of London,
35:50
Speaker 1: and he wrote a fantastic book called Empire of Things
35:52
Speaker 1: How he became a world of consumers from the fifteenth
35:54
Speaker 1: century to the one UM and he thinks that the
35:59
Speaker 1: blurred jinction between these two UH cohorts, which ultimately have
36:03
Speaker 1: become kind of the same thing, consumer and citizen, make
36:06
Speaker 1: it really hard for people to come together to solve problems,
36:09
Speaker 1: which is essentially what I was trying to get out.
36:12
Speaker 1: We're both trying to get at ben Uh. And this quote,
36:14
Speaker 1: I think really sums it all up nicely. Quote not
36:16
Speaker 1: all consumers see the world in the same way, and
36:19
Speaker 1: hence concerted action is very difficult. That's what I was
36:22
Speaker 1: trying to get at. Where you know, when you have
36:24
Speaker 1: a politician that's marketing themselves to a particular voter base,
36:28
Speaker 1: and the um the desires of that voter base are
36:32
Speaker 1: kind of a conflagration of like different UH sort of
36:37
Speaker 1: self serving desires. So it's very difficult to like pick
36:39
Speaker 1: out a platform or a thing or like to appeal
36:42
Speaker 1: to all of these different you know angles and get
36:45
Speaker 1: elected kind of requires some weird backwards logic and convoluted thinking,
36:51
Speaker 1: you know, especially when so many of those interests might
36:55
Speaker 1: be contradictory. Exactly right here we are seen here, we here,
37:01
Speaker 1: we are. But history doesn't stop here. I have to
37:04
Speaker 1: wonder know what future historians will make of this shift,
37:09
Speaker 1: which again occurred without my knowledge at all. Like I
37:16
Speaker 1: I did not notice other than my spider sense tingling
37:20
Speaker 1: when I heard things laws referred to as products. Is
37:24
Speaker 1: totally whooshed over my head. Man, I don't know. It's
37:28
Speaker 1: a little insidious though, right, it kind of happens. It
37:30
Speaker 1: just sort of kind of creeps in, you know, without
37:32
Speaker 1: you even realize. Again, so are we citizens? Are we consumers?
37:36
Speaker 1: I think it's a it's a choice we have to make.
37:38
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously we're consumers when it comes to like,
37:40
Speaker 1: you know, I like buying stuff. I like, you know,
37:44
Speaker 1: nice clothes and things like that. But when you start
37:47
Speaker 1: integrating that into the political process and how you vote,
37:51
Speaker 1: as though it we're spending money and as though you're
37:54
Speaker 1: being marketed to. That's problematic, I think, and it's an
37:57
Speaker 1: interesting shift in history, and it's more than a little ridiculous.
38:02
Speaker 1: It is, it is more than a bit ridiculous. We
38:06
Speaker 1: hope that you find this dilemma or this this interesting
38:10
Speaker 1: differentiation as fascinating as we do, and we'd like to
38:15
Speaker 1: hear your thoughts. So please write into us and let
38:18
Speaker 1: us know if you think this is a big deal,
38:23
Speaker 1: if you think this is just relative, relatively small matter
38:27
Speaker 1: of semantics. Uh, And most importantly, let us know if
38:31
Speaker 1: you have found other linguistic shifts in your own experience,
38:37
Speaker 1: and let us know what you think the implications of
38:39
Speaker 1: those might be. You can write to Noel and I
38:42
Speaker 1: at ridiculous at how stuff works dot com. But that's all.
38:46
Speaker 1: You can find us on the internet to. Yeah, we're
38:48
Speaker 1: on the social media. We've got a Facebook page, Ridiculous History.
38:51
Speaker 1: Just google that and and give us a like. And also,
38:54
Speaker 1: if you dig the show, please check us out on
38:56
Speaker 1: iTunes and write us a nice review. That helps kind
39:00
Speaker 1: of boost the show and the algorithm and all that,
39:01
Speaker 1: and hopefully well people can discover it. Yeah, because we like,
39:04
Speaker 1: you know, we like doing the show and we'd like
39:05
Speaker 1: to continue doing it, so thanks for joining us for
39:07
Speaker 1: this episode and we hope to see you next time
39:10
Speaker 1: on Ridiculous History.