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

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