REFLECTIONS

...Her notion of the "sovereign consumer" is widely shared and deserves close attention, for the purchase of a product is not merely a personal transaction between buyer John Buell is assistant editor of The Progressive and seller...

...The first problem with "dollar voting" is that it is by no means a one-person-one-vote arrangement: A few voters have most of the dollars and, therefore, most of the votes...

...But industry leaders resist every attempt to compel them to provide such information...

...To say that the interests of consumers are the only interests that count in the production of these and many other goods is both callous and shortsighted...

...We are told that consumers, voting with their dollars, determine which enterprises will succeed or fail, which products or services will flourish and which will, like the Ford Edsel, fade away...

...In the United States, the top 20 per cent of the population receives about 40 per cent of the national income, and there is even greater disproportion in the distribution of wealth...

...Specifically, she cites our constant criticism of corporate power and of useless or dangerous corporate products...

...The freedom to choose among consumer goods is a real freedom, and one that provides important satisfaction...

...The average ounce of potato chips has 450 times the salt content of an average ounce of nature's potatoes...

...The aim of that political process would not be the imposition of a new set of consumer choices...

...Such a process will be difficult to devise, and will require profound changes in the distribution of economic and political power...

...Efron is a great believer in "the marketplace...

...Some consumers are obviously much more sovereign than others...

...It will certainly be imperfect...

...She is, apparently, a persistent (though not devoted) reader of The Progressive...

...what is purchased and why, how and by whom, help shape the nature of our society...

...Or consider the social consequences that can flow from production and consumption of such products as asbestos and textiles, where the health of workers is at risk...

...Consumer sovereignty — some economists call it "dollar voting" — is often depicted as the highest form of democracy — the dividing line between East and West, between freedom and socialism...

...Consider, for instance, that tiny minority of consumers who deem it important to save a few hours in a trans-Atlantic flight, and who therefore impose the noise and pollution of supersonic jetliners on urban residents who have never had occasion to fly...

...it would be the subjection of all goods and services to continuing scrutiny by a public equipped with the information to make intelligent choices and the means of implementing those choices...

...Ever since the food processors discovered that fact, they have spent huge sums producing, packaging, marketing, and advertising highly salted food...

...whale oil and seal skins, where rare species are in danger of extinction...

...And by the time the year is out, food marketing specialists will have designed, packaged, and tested dozens of new edibles you never knew you were going to want...

...Any initiative to restrain "the marketplace," therefore — to ban carcinogenic substances from foods, for example — is, in her view, an intolerable assault on the rights of all Americans...

...The food conglomerates maintain that low-salt foods do not sell well, but there is more to it than that...

...Even if dollars were distributed much more equally, however, "dollar voting" would be inadequate as a mechanism of choice, for "the marketplace" of Edith Efron's dreams — in which consumers can choose from a wide selection of goods produced by many competing firms — is a myth...

...If The Progressive's commitment to the search for such a process constitutes a conspiracy — well, let Edith Efron make the most of it...

...coffee and bananas, where profits are wrung from the labor of exploited Third World populations...

...The market produces winners and losers, and the winners call the tune...

...The conspiracy Efron imputes to what she calls "the socialist journal The Progressive" is no trivial matter: We stand accused of nothing less than participation in an elitist plot to undermine basic American freedoms...

...Such pressure is denounced by Edith Efron as "a massive assault...

...The food industry recently gained the right to add "finely" ground bone to such meat products as sausage and salami, and only fierce pressure by consumer groups has forced producers to acknowledge the presence of bone on the label...

...Consider the common substance, salt...

...I was blissfully unaware of my conspiratorial role until it was forcefully called to my attention by Edith Efron, a conservative writer whose columns appear in TV Guide and sundry other publications...

...To persuade you to buy their products," The Wall Street Journal recently reported, "food makers will spend about $4 billion on advertising alone this year...

...Power must be shifted instead to a broader base — one that reflects a wider range of social interests and that can take account of the full impact of consumption on the society...

...Suppose we managed, somehow, to achieve a more equal distribution of dollars and to compel manufacturers to provide all the information consumers require if they are to exercise intelligent choices...

...To challenge that arrangement is not to suggest that the only alternative is to shift the power to some other elite motivated by some other ethic...

...to trust the marketplace to protect the public from the social consequences is both naive and stupid...

...Billions of cents-off coupons will be offered as added inducement...

...If "dollar voting" is to have any meaning, the political process must be invoked to provide consumers with the full information they are now denied so that they can arrive at rational choices...

...Who can buy a simple, durable, relatively inexpensive automobile, when the giants who dominate that monopoly industry have decided that such a car, while technologically feasible, is not profitable...

...A choice cannot be considered a free choice when relevant information is deliberately withheld...

...electricity generated by nuclear power, where incalculable costs are likely to be borne by future generations...

...A show may attract a mass audience among older persons, for example, or in rural areas, and still be pulled off the air, for these are "markets" without much purchasing power...

...But she has not yet plumbed the depths of our conspiracy...

...on reason, science, technology, industry, mass production, economic growth, and free individual choice...

...The ambience in this magazine's cluttered offices is occasionally murky but never sinister...

...That kind of "marketplace" would certainly afford more freedom than our current system does — but it would still fall short of the democratic ideal...

...The food industry (and Efron) would doubtless say that consumers who don't want hypertension are under no compulsion to buy potato chips...

...More than half a century ago, physicians established a clear connection between high salt intake and hypertension, but since then the food processing industry has steadily increased the quantities of salt added to its products...

...One way or another, consumer choices are restricted and will continue to be restricted by political forces...

...Today, in America, power over the consumer is exercised by a corporate elite motivated primarily by the pursuit of profits...

...Historically, consumers have managed to obtain something approaching a balanced view about the products they consume by insisting, through the political process, that producers provide facts on ingredients, test procedures, side-effects, and other pertinent data...

...It is a seductive doctrine, and one that should not lightly be dismissed...

...But it will offer us a greater degree of protection — and freedom — than our present "marketplace...

...Salt is an addictive substance...

...But as one who has tried to buy relatively unprocessed, unsalted foods, I can testify that it isn't easy...

...We get used to it, even crave it...

...she regards it, in fact, as synonymous with liberty...

...Efron renders a useful service by raising the issue — and not just because in doing so she gives The Progressive some much-needed publicity...

...Media critics like to refer to the audience ratings which determine whether a given program lives or dies as "the tyranny of numbers," but it would be more accurate to talk about the tyranny of dollars...

...In that environment of slick promotion and outright deception, how free is the "sovereign consumer...

...This inequality has widespread and important effects — on television programming, for example...

...Advertisers want to reach the young, upper-middle-class "voter" who has dollars in his pockets and the urge to spend...

...Though corporate mythology stresses consumption as a private act, it can have far-reaching social consequences...

...But how free are we to choose under our (or Edith Efron's) "free enterprise" system...