"Such private choices, though technically 'free,' are quite literally dysfunctional with respect to our values and norms. Privatization means the choices we make eventually determine the social outcomes we must suffer together, but which we never directly choose in common.
"This explains how a society without villains or conspirators, composed of good-willed but self-seeking individuals, can produce a culture that so many of its members despise. Consumer capitalism does not operate by fielding self-conscious advocates of duplicity. Rather, it generates thinking on the model of the narcissistic child, infantilizing consumers to the point where puerility is not simply an option; it is a mandate. If the attitudes and behaviors that result turn out to undermine cultural values extraneous to capitalism’s concerns — however deeply relevant they may be to moral and spiritual frameworks and to the shape of an ideal public culture — that is too bad. This ethos does not disdain civilization; it is merely indifferent to it. Consumer capitalism encourages individuals to indulge in behavior — however corrupting to civilization — that is useful to consumerism.
"Even as an ethos of limitless consumption encourages us to regress, privatization compels us to withdraw from our public selves, to secede from the public square and fence ourselves in behind gated communities, where we deploy private resources to turn what were once public goods, such as garbage collection, police protection, and schooling, into private commodities. What we fail to see is that when public goods are privatized, they are subverted. You cannot protect a few in the midst of general insecurity; you cannot educate a few in the midst of societal ignorance."
"This explains how a society without villains or conspirators, composed of good-willed but self-seeking individuals, can produce a culture that so many of its members despise. Consumer capitalism does not operate by fielding self-conscious advocates of duplicity. Rather, it generates thinking on the model of the narcissistic child, infantilizing consumers to the point where puerility is not simply an option; it is a mandate. If the attitudes and behaviors that result turn out to undermine cultural values extraneous to capitalism’s concerns — however deeply relevant they may be to moral and spiritual frameworks and to the shape of an ideal public culture — that is too bad. This ethos does not disdain civilization; it is merely indifferent to it. Consumer capitalism encourages individuals to indulge in behavior — however corrupting to civilization — that is useful to consumerism.
"Even as an ethos of limitless consumption encourages us to regress, privatization compels us to withdraw from our public selves, to secede from the public square and fence ourselves in behind gated communities, where we deploy private resources to turn what were once public goods, such as garbage collection, police protection, and schooling, into private commodities. What we fail to see is that when public goods are privatized, they are subverted. You cannot protect a few in the midst of general insecurity; you cannot educate a few in the midst of societal ignorance."
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