Even more predictable than the post-Thanksgiving appearance of shopping-mall Santas is the inability of pundits at this time of year to say or to write “commercialism” without prefixing to it the word “crass” – as we encounter in your pages today in Tom Krattenmaker’s “The real meaning of Christmas.”
I challenge this notion. Commerce is peaceful. It involves sellers working hard and taking risks to bring to market goods and services that consumers want to buy. No one forces anyone to do anything; all is voluntary.
What truly is crass is politics – that sorry spectacle of power-seeking ego-maniacs who, when not pronouncing platitudes, are promising to help group A by picking the pockets of group B. While commerce is honest, politics is duplicitous. While commerce is peaceful, politics inevitably pits citizen against citizen. Far more enlightened and ethical behavior is on display during any one day in a shopping mall than the most intrepid observer will find in a century on Pennsylvania Avenue.
– A letter from Donald J. Boudreaux to USA Today. Amit Varma liked it too.
Great choice.
Commercialism is one of those words that can take two forms, commercialism to connote the market, the coming together freely of people to make trades and thusly allocate resources most effectively with the least amount amount of force, if any. Then there’s Commercialism, with a bog ol’ capital C. I have no idea how things are in the U.K. what with licenses and the BBC and whatever. With satellite I don’t know how much exposure there is to the modes of advertising we have in the US. There are some adverts that are amusing, well done sort selling quality wares. Then there those high saturation campaigns to sell crap that insult people’s intelligence. Unfortunately, in a white hat, black hat world we live in, many people impute that the shallow end of the advertising pool exemplifies the whole commercial/market process. But it stands that there are many insulting advertising campaigns, and in the US Madison Avenue connects into every aspect of transmitting entertainment. Again, some is humorous, but most is insulting to the intelligence. And dare I use a buzz word of the Dylanesque 60’s, there is a lot “phoney” about the commercial world, but at least it is free of the use of force to compel people.
I analyze the difference between commercialism and statism thusly – yes commercialism can bring you plastic crap, but it also brings you plenty of quality products too, meanwhile the State, and it’s force, can be used defensively to preserve people’s life and equity but it can be easily subverted to compel people to as they otherwise would wish. And as time goes on, it seems to be much less about its primary mission and more about selling a phoney dream that the State can make your life better, you just need to do what you are told.
A final thought, the root meaning of crass is thoughtlessness of action. While I can see the point that parts of the market will hold thoughtless consumption of crap products, Socialism is founded on, and demands, the thoughtless following the masses toward the value system of the Superiors. It boggles the mind how so many impute the whole of the market is bad because of specific disagreements about how others freely trade, and yet give a pass to a State system that squarely demands complete thoughtlessness to work. It’s along the lines of those who shudder in fear of Big Business X, but see the Leviathan 1,000 times bigger than any one business as perfectly fine.
Don strikes again!
Don’t hold back, Don; tell us what you really think.
So, when people get trampled at the door to the Wal-Mart, is that because of commercialism or something else? Brawling over the last Wii in the store?
Sorry…Christmas season brings out all of the nastiest aspects in some people: equating the price tag of the present with the moral quality of the giver, advertising that feeds same[1], and chicken wing domestics. Yay.
[1] The “HE went to JARED” ads on Denver TV being especially offensive to me.