Many people are waking up to the concept of hidden costs attached to everything they wear, play with, and eat. A backlash is inevitable, when the corporate pseudo-states feel themselves sufficiently threatened. It will probably not go so far as John Brunner predicted , with the arrest of anyone suspected of buying health food or belonging to an ecological interest group. Very few Democrats of the new administration are willing to challenge laissez-faire capitalism as a philosophy, so we should not imagine that it will fade away with the change of regime. Free marketism is based on the old Adam Smith model of economics, in which the invisible hand of competition in a free marketplace will result in maximum prosperity, freedom, and happiness for everyone .
Corporate values are, as never before, American values.
Many people identify more strongly with the products they buy than with the church or neighbourhood they belong to. Groups which once identified themselves with a belief or ideology now are more easily identified by their consumption patterns than by their public speech or action. The personal is political has been opportunistically interpreted by petty and grand capitalists to convince wannabe radicals and good-hearted liberals that the best way to express their beliefs is by purchase power. The idea of voting with your dollars has gained currency far outside the circles in which it was first coined. Any interference by government in the free marketplace is totally unacceptable to them.