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… is from page 11 of Stanley Lebergott’s brilliant – and oh-so-much-fun-to-read – 1993 volume, Pursuing Happiness: American Consumers in the Twentieth Century [2]; note that when Lebergott here writes “consumer spending” he is not referring to any macroeconomic notion; instead, he means what is often called “consumer sovereignty” – the right of each consumer to spend his or her money as he or she sees fit and without such spending being superintended or otherwise second-guessed by elites; (footnote excluded; ellipses and bracketed remark original to Lebergott) :
Consumer spending may serve Humanity no more frequently than most other human activities. But how forbidding society would be if one man’s aesthetic/moral preferences decided what goods his fellow consumers select. In open societies, human consumption choices share only one characteristic – they are made in pursuit of happiness. The importance and finality of consumers’ freedom was italicized by William Penn. For he used it as a precedent to warrant equal freedom in religion: “Men have their liberty and choice in external matters; they are not compelled to … buy here and eat there, nor to sleep yonder…. That this liberty should be unquestioned, and that of the Mind destroyed [is, he said] the issue here.”
(The Penn reference is to Penn’s “The Great Case of Liberty of Conscience [3].”)
George Akerlof and Robert Shiller [4] (among others) should read, and consider carefully the wisdom in, Lebergott’s Pursuing Happiness. And everyone should be aware that if the state assumes the authority to second-guess people’s consumption choices, it is a short step to the state assuming the same authority over people’s political and religious choices. If you think me to be exaggerating, consider that Akerlof and Shiller already display a frightening desire to restrict freedom of speech [5].