297 The citizen customer is king

It is now becoming politically correct to say that the resentment that feeds current populist revolt has legitimate grounds. It arises among people who have lost out in globalization, in loss of jobs and work conditions. Low-educated, locally rooted people with traditional values feel loss of recognition, disdain and ridicule of their values, views, and ways of life, from a cosmopolitan elite. They feel unattended to, by a distant politics that has lost contact with ‘ordinary’ people, betrayed by liberal politics of globalization, with a surrender of society to markets, and a surrender of national, cultural and racial identity.

All that seems true and valid. However, there is another way to look at this. For many years, market ideology, aiming at privatization of public services, has cast the citizen as a ‘customer’ for the ‘product’ of public service. At the same time business schools developed a marketing aimed at ‘customer value’ and consumer sovereignty, where ‘the customer is always right’ and ‘is king’. Customers have no duties to producers or to each other.

No wonder, then, that the citizen demands its customer rights towards government. Government needs to cater to citizen demands unconditionally and immediately. Democracy means doing what the customer demands. Producers provide goods, do not make demands on customers. If dissatisfied, the customer citizen takes its custom to the next best salesman.

Civilization has become consumption. Civil servants are producers and salesmen. Politics is a market, where politicians maximise their visibility and popularity, to increase their share in the market for popular vote. Consumers don’t elect representatives to deliberate for them on the planning of production, they take direct action in consumer societies that demand their rights. In populist parties. Policemen, firemen, ambulance personnel have no say, no authority. They are waiters that dish up the service. If it is not to the liking of citizens, or just for fun, they throw cobblestones.

Like consumers, citizens demand instant gratification. In business the short term reigns supreme, in demands from shareholders, which jeopardizes long term interests and investments in innovation and preservation of the environment. The citizen consumer also has no business with the long term, such as future financial interests of the young, the environment, and the seeds that culture sows.

Parents put their children to school to receive a diploma, they expect to be served, and it is not up to teachers to judge and decline. In some families, children are customers to be served by parents, a nanny, and day-care, and grow up into lack of resilience, lack of experience with adversity, and are out of their depth when their environment fails to serve.

Culture, in theatre, art, music, literature, news reporting, and science have become entertainment. Celebrities rule, selling vicarious fame. Scientific research becomes a shop for useful knowledge. Researchers have to outsell their competitors, with publications priced by popularity, called impact. With citations like the likes on Facebook. In media and politics intellect is trumped by emotion. Truth is a matter of perspective, and that can be crafted and pimped to outshine the competition.

Is all this over the top? Perhaps. It is the nightmare I currently have. A glimpse of truth, perhaps?