However crowded the menu placed before us, how free are we if we can have no say in the kitchen or in the rules of the table? Purchasing power is not decision-making power.
In daily life we feel our freedom most visibly while shopping. We wander among hundreds of products on a phone screen, compare prices, and choose the music, the meal and the series we want with a few taps. This variety is wider than most previous generations ever had. The market therefore sells us not only goods and services but an experience of being free. Yet does the abundance of our options as consumers mean we truly have a say in the decisions that shape our lives? To put it more sharply: however crowded the menu placed before us, how free are we if we can have no say in the kitchen or in the rules of the table?
Crowded shelves, few owners
Seeing dozens of brands on a supermarket shelf creates a sense of competition and variety. Yet behind the different packages may stand the same handful of large companies. Digital platforms hold countless items of content, but the infrastructure that makes them visible is controlled by a small number of firms. Ordering food, we choose among hundreds of businesses; still, the relationship between the restaurant, the courier and the customer is set by the platform’s commission and ranking system. As options multiply, decision-making power can grow more central.
This distinction is not only a matter of ownership. The order in which options appear, which is marked “recommended,” which review is brought forward, and whether the price varies by person all shape the choice. The list before us is not a neutral shop window. A product appearing at the top has to do with many commercial decisions, from stock to advertising. While we think we are choosing, what we may see has been chosen first. Consumer freedom remains incomplete when it leaves invisible the power that prepares the menu.
Are we choosing needs, or are desires being produced?
Advertising’s old task was to introduce a product; today’s data-based system tries to reach the right person at the right moment with the right feeling. Systems that estimate the hour at which we are sleepless, our budget, our relationships, where we are standing and what we are looking at do not merely find our desires; they can shape them. The more often we see something, the more familiar we find it; the more familiar, the more we trust it. Then we take the resulting wish to have come entirely from within.
This does not mean people are will-less puppets. We do not buy every product we see advertised. But it is equally unrealistic to claim that behaviour design costing enormous sums has no effect. The timing of a notification, the warning of limited stock, the personalised discount, the free trial and the automatic renewal are not accidental. Choice architecture makes a particular behaviour easier and more habit-forming without coercing us. The sentence “the user accepted” is not enough to close the account of this design power.
Purchasing power is not decision-making power
It is said that as consumers we vote with our wallets. We buy the good product, boycott the bad company, and so steer the market. The effect of individual preferences is not wholly absent; some campaigns can force companies to change their conduct. But not every wallet carries an equal vote. A person with a high income can reach the more expensive, more ethical option, while someone on a low income must buy the cheapest product. Necessity is presented as a moral failing.
Moreover, in some areas there is no real exit. Electricity, communication, banking, transport and housing are not ordinary consumption preferences; they are conditions for taking part in modern life. Refusing the service can mean partially withdrawing from society. It is possible to dislike a platform’s terms and close the account, but if your work, your circle and years of accumulated connections are there, the price is heavy. Reducing basic needs to a consumer contract turns the relation of citizenship and rights into customer satisfaction.
Forgetting the worker while being a consumer
Behind cheap, fast and effortless service there is usually someone else’s invisible labour. Same-day delivery saves our time while raising the pace of the worker in the warehouse. Cheap clothing offers us options while suppressing the wage of a worker in the production chain. The car we summon easily from an app can leave the driver dependent on ratings and variable fares. Our freedom as consumers is sometimes built upon the insecurity we ourselves live through as workers.
When we separate these roles, the contradiction becomes invisible. Someone who complains about performance pressure during the day may grow angry in the evening when an order arrives a few minutes late. The system shows us the interface, not the relation behind the service. Real choice requires knowing not only a product’s price and colour but the conditions under which it was produced, who earns what, and who bears the cost. Yet it is impossible for an individual to research every product; transparency and fair working conditions are shared arrangements that cannot be left to personal conscience.
Beyond choosing from the menu
Consumer choice is not wholly false. Different products, services and cultural works enrich our lives; the existence of options against a single imposed pattern is valuable. The problem is that this limited field of preference is presented as the whole of freedom. If, while deciding which phone to buy, we cannot take part in deciding under what conditions phones are produced, how our data is used and how communication infrastructure is governed, then a significant part of the choice lies in other hands.
Real choice demands more than a crowded menu. It requires being able to see how the menu was prepared, being able to say no in basic needs, holding a shared say over conditions of production, and being able to build alternatives. Structures such as cooperatives, unions, public services and open technology can move a person from being merely a customer to being a party to the decision. Freedom is not limited to choosing among the things we can buy. When we can debate together what will be produced, how it will be produced and according to whose needs shared life will be arranged, we take a real step from consumerism towards citizenship, and from spectating towards participation.