I had noticed before that he uses consumer and slave interchangeably. Just to confirm my suspicions I asked him, “What’s the difference between a slave, and a consumer?”
“There is no difference, Consumers are slaves. Workers, laborers, consumers, it is what we call them since the transformation of slavery from direct ownership to debt ownership. Consumer is the name given to them since debt became widespread. You can think of it as a form branding.”
“You see, slavery never really ended, it only transformed into more manageable forms. The slavery of the 18th century became unpopular. At the time we had two competing forms of slavery. Debt slavery and propertied slavery. Even though functionally there is not a difference, people got upset about the lifetime ownership of people as property. Turns out, people work best when they have some hope of freeing themselves. The resistance to slavery was growing, but the resistance to it was not the same for indentured servants. People didn’t like capturing people for slaves, but they had no problem with people being forced into slavery through debt. This form of slavery was seen as a result of their own choices, and not forced upon them. It was deemed socially palatable.
“So our people devised a plan to expand debt slavery to the rest of the population. Debt slavery was favored by the growing industrialism at the time. It was much easier to pay people a minimal wage and let them find food and shelter with their earnings than to provide all the necessities to keep slaves as property.”
“With debt slavery, we could also extract wealth through selling food and housing to slaves rather than their cost of living being part of our overhead. We paid them a wage, but their money just came back to us through rent, goods, and services.
“We set rent prices at a rate which people would be required to work and could not escape. In the 1940s, we found that people felt more free if they owned their own home, so, after the war, we created cheap housing and extracted their money through property taxes and bank loans. The rates were set to make home ownership popular, in order to establish a new cultural standard, the nuclear family. It also put them into long term debt.”
“The nuclear family also allowed us to further maximize profits from each family unit. It set up a competitive edge between families in order to sell more products and discourage sharing. It created a generational divide. People started putting their parents in retirement homes instead of taking care of them at home. It greatly expanded the number of homes, which we could sell and service.”
“Through the later half of the 20th century, we inflated the cost of housing, so that it required large bank loans to own a house. Credit cards were added to put people further into debt. During this time, we also inflated college tuition so that people went into debt to receive an education.
“We insured that consumers would have to take out loans to survive. Once an individual is in debt they must work to pay their debt. If they do not pay their debts, they lose everything and become homeless or go to prison. The debts then grow over time rather than diminish due to interest, inflation, and the cost of living.”
“So, effectively, slavery is the same as it always has been. People just think they are free because they are paid a wage and have choices, within defined limits, of how to spend their money.”
I asked, “can’t people still get out of debt? And be free?”
“Sure, they can get out of debt. It is possible. It is not likely. Consumer society is designed to keep them in debt. However, if they are smart enough and maximize their self interest, they will stay out of debt.”
“So you see, consumers are what we once called slaves. It’s a term marketing came up with to help people identify with their slavery in a way that uplifts them with thoughts of choices and freedom. The freedom to consume and go into further debt, that is what we sell them.” He was so happy with himself and what his people had achieved.
I started to understand consumerism in a whole new light. I had also identified as a consumer. I think of everyone in society as consumers. I think most people identify as consumers, living their lives and contributing to society. Of course now I could see that consumer society is a fantasy that people live in. It’s an identity, a cultural brand which people identify with and use to uphold the standards of their culture.
Of course, it is a manufactured culture. Everything we know about consumer culture has come from marketing, public relations, and entertainment. It is distributed through advertising, television, movies, word of mouth and internet memes. It is so strange how things become clear once we step outside a situation, and it is explained to us.
