With shopping at the top of the social activity ladder, with corporations penetrating at every level, human community suffers and our society fails.
Bill Moyers is discussing consumer society with Benjamin Barber, Fellow at the USC Center on Public Diplomacy.
“Democracy means pluralism.
“If everything’s religion, we rightly distrust it.
“If everything’s politics, even in good politics, we rightly distrust it.
“But when everything’s marketing and everything’s retail and everything’s shopping, we somehow think that enhances our freedom. Well, it doesn’t. It has the same corrupting effect on the fundamental diversity and variety that are our lives, that make us human, that make us happy. And, in that sense, focusing on shopping and the fulfillment of private consumer desires actually undermines our happiness.”