Awkward Utopia

The popular gadget blog Gizmodo reports an update in the net neutrality saga. Another popular blog, The Consumerist, reports that the “Passenger’s bill of rights” has been shelved in Congress. In this article The Consumerist reports on further government encroachment on our private property.

This community typically decries laws extending the power of the government to invade individuals’ property, while they simultaneously support “consumer protection” laws and regulations of corporations. This behavior is pure hypocrisy.

I find this behavior especially ironic in The Consumerist’s case. This site’s primary purpose is providing cheap (free) information regarding consumer service practices of firms. Most posts discuss low quality service, but occasionally they praise firms for high quality practices. (A great related example is this post drawing attention to Target’s help in solving murders, rapes, and armed robberies.)

The irony is that The Consumerist is the very essence of the free market at work. Consumers demand both high quality and low quality products. Rather than placing blanket quality regulations on industry, consumers seek out infromation from sources like The Consumerist, and make their purchasing decisions.

But instead of realizing its true role, The Consumerist appears to think that it is pointing out problems with the market, places where the government should fix things. It’s a pity, really. This belief of theirs really shows in the passenger’s bill of rights article:

What protections have Senate Republicans stolen from you?

This statement embodies their primary error: a false conflict between consumers and firms, a belief that firms are a mystical creature designed to exploit consumers (silly them, we all know that this really describes the government). One reader commented:

“I’ve been reading your site daily for over a year and I get a pure kick when people expose the inner filth of corporate America.”

This hostility towards firms is a hostility towards consumers. Firms are not a mystical entity. They are owned by people. Regulations that invade firms’ property rights thus invade the owners’ property rights. Thus regulations necessarily hurt consumers. Now, you may argue that my logic is somewhat flawed, because I am not looking at subsets of consumers. You are correct. The firm owners likely are not the largest consumers of their firms’ products. Nonetheless, when considering such welfare aspects of policy, we must consider the effects on all consumers, not just a subset of them.

Firm regulations thus are encroachments into individual’s property rights–and it is no different from legislation directly allowing the government to encroach on your property rights (exemplified in the laptop search article linked above). One cannot support firm regulation and oppose laws reducing individual’s privacy “rights” (their property rights) without being hypocritical.