WAPO OP Ed: The consequences of America's moral drift: Consumerism and the addiction economy are undermining the republi

[lindysalsagal]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/10/26/america-moral-crisis-attention-economy/

Consumerism and the addiction economy are undermining the republic. By Spencer Cox and Ian Marcus Corbin

October 26, 2025 at 7:00 a.m. Yesterday at 7:00 a.m. EDT

(Disclaimer: I would replace the instances of the word "moral" with "Ethical", but that's just me. I also don't trust the overwhelming religiousness of Utah in this endeavor.) By Spencer Cox and Ian Marcus Corbin
Spencer Cox is governor of Utah. Ian Marcus Corbin directs the Public Culture Project at Harvard and serves as a senior fellow at the think tank Capita.

“In a simpler time, advertising merely called attention to the product and extolled its advantages. Now it manufactures a product of its own: the consumer, perpetually unsatisfied, restless, anxious, and bored. Advertising serves not so much to advertise products as to promote consumption as a way of life.”

It’s one thing to buy well-made shoes because they protect your feet and look attractive. It’s another to buy yet one more pair of shoes because advertisers have convinced you that your present life is shabby, but this next purchase will finally make you happy.

The online attention economy, especially social media, has intensified the reality Lasch described. Practically every aspect, down to the shade of red that alerts you to a new comment or like, has been calibrated not to make you wiser or happier but to get you hooked. Other examples of the addiction economy include the destructive rise of buy-now-pay-later financing, mobile sports betting, online pornography and vaping."

So, although I agree that we are no longer citizens, we are "the american consumer", the remedy surely isn't religious: That's just an emptier promise and more ruthless addiction.

But it's inescapable that our desperate attempts at material fulfillment are undermining the republic. If the orange menace hasn't proven that, nothing else will.