There is an attack on the customer by its anti-market enemies. These enemies dislike market economies and private property and wish to see these institutions destroyed. The enemies want to see a new “king” to the throne—one that dislikes the customer. These enemies want to install a “king” that does not care about what you want to consume, but what they want you to consume.
Too often, the caricature of a customer is negative but, in reality, the customer is our benefactor and, ultimately, the boss. Why are customers benefactors? In one real sense, customers shape and mold the development of the economy and fuel jobs. Do people hold jobs to buy only the necessary things? We have a price system that does that for us, so why are the customer-surrogates swarming in to take down the customer when the market signals to customers what’s in their best interest? As Thomas Sowell said in the book Basic Economics:
The self-rationing created by prices not only tends to mean less social and political friction but also more economic efficiency, since each individual knows his or her own preferences better than any third party can.
Therefore, prices signal people what not to buy better than a surrogate decision-maker.
As a customer, when I make a voluntary purchase and pay the cooperative seller, I am not just buying goods. I am making a claim on those goods—a legal claim that I did something for someone else and they paid me for the work they performed at some past date. This act of purchasing and consumption, using money to exchange, entitles me to a legal claim on economic goods of my choice through exchange. However, more importantly, my consumption, and yours, signals the producer to produce more of those goods the consumers have demanded. So, when we consider the economic roles of customers—not what third party surrogates say—we realize the importance of being a customer. The customers or consumers are economic influencers with legal claims on private property by homesteading, exchange, or gift. So, then, we must ask, who truly holds the power in the marketplace?
Some assume that the customer should be subordinate to third-party surrogates or that the customer is somehow a negative actor. This is demonstrated in the national customer service ratings, according to The Wall Street Journal. This report shows that, even in service-dominated industries, the businesses are treating the customer badly—even with contempt—and this is becoming a trend to subordinate the customer. The customer is steadily being dethroned and—in the future—may no longer be “king” of the marketplace. The enemies of the customer do not care about your legal claim on exchanges and how legal claims represent the harmonious acquisition and the exchange of private property. The enemy’s disdain for private property, self-reliance, and individual restraint should not be a surprise. Enemies of the customer genuinely believe that, somehow, economic life can exist without the customers making purchases and consuming.
What is extremely surprising is how the anti-customer advocates are necessarily customers themselves. Go figure. This proposition is even more thought-provoking, considering that people must purchase goods whether or not they are considered needs or wants. The needs and wants of vast amounts of people have never lined up perfectly. That is precisely why our individual differences make an economy work, not our commonalities. Basically, customer status and consumption are claims on goods based on what you did for others! Customer spending, subjectively speaking, is the engine that fuels all economic differences—as one does for his fellow man is reciprocated in money terms.
Whose right is it to say who is “overconsuming” and who is not, when you can buy and should not? People work and produce to purchase and consume—to make their voluntary and cooperative legal claims on goods. No one in their right mind would pay themselves to work and to work only for themselves. People work for the betterment of themselves and, consequently, for others, especially those who reciprocate their efforts in the marketplace. As simple and rational as that sounds, there is a no-buy pledge movement pushing against the role of the customer, where you not only restrict buying and consumption but—when you decide to buy something—you can pay it back later.
A Business Insider article explained the anti-customer movement called “No Spend 2024.” This no-spend movement calls customers “to drastically cut spending in the new year and hold themselves accountable.” Holding oneself accountable and refraining from spending are two different things but, instead of hashing out the distinctions between the two terms, they call for no expenditure because they are indeed enemies of customers.
An article titled “The Rise of Careless Consumerism among Young People” by Harbingers’ Magazine went a step further, but again, in the wrong direction. This author said, “ increasingly clothing companies are manufacturing clothes for cheaper, using low-cost labor and inexpensive materials.” This statement is very telling about how much is understood and why products can be made cheaply. It is misleading and needs to be more economically accurate as to why producers can produce at lower prices. Will AI and robotics make the cheap labor argument obsolete, being that manufacturers are using greater technology and robotic systems to manufacture goods? Normally prices fall when technology is applied to the production of products that are mass-produced. Another hit to the customer was an article titled “Too Much Stuff: Can We Solve Our Addiction to Consumerism?” by Chip Colwell. These articles are only the few that are chipping away at the role and property rights of the customer. Ironically, these anti-consumption groups often implicitly say “no consumption for you,” but not for themselves.
There are so many problems that the enemy of the customer ought to realize the impossibility of a functioning economy without the presence of customers: Without a customer, there is no need to produce goods, no need for prices to give entrepreneurs calculations, no need to decide what is and what is not needed in our society; one person’s needs are another person’s wants since economic value is subjective. If they were to eradicate the customer from the economic picture, then what would happen? Then, we go from a market economy to a controlled economy. In a controlled economy, there are still consumers and consumption, but they are not treated as voluntary customers. The customer has enemies waiting to wrestle market power away and substitute it with their own brand of surrogate decision-making.
