Episode 95: The Hollow Vanity of Libertarian "Choice" Rhetoric
b"
\\u201c'Right-to-work' means freedom and choice,\\u201d a Boston Globe op-ed explains. \\u201cAs housing costs rise, some people are choosing to live on the road instead,\\u201d a Fox Business headline states. \\u201cIf your insurance company isn\\u2019t doing right by you, you should have another, better choice,\\u201d reads Joe Biden\\u2019s campaign platform.
We\\u2019re told repeatedly that \\u201cfreedom of choice\\u201d is essential to a robust economy and human happiness. Economists, executives, politicians, and pundits insist that, the same way consumers shop for TVs, workers can choose their healthcare plan, parents can choose their kids' school, and gig-economy workers can choose their own schedules and benefits.
While this language is superficially appealing, it\\u2019s also profoundly deceitful. The notion of \\u201cchoice\\u201d as a gateway to freedom and a sign of societal success isn\\u2019t a neutral call for people to exercise some abstract civic power; it\\u2019s free-market capitalist ideology manufactured by libertarian and neoliberal think tanks and their mercenary economists and media messaging nodes. Its purpose: to convince people that they have a choice while obscuring the economic factors that ensure they really don\\u2019t: People can\\u2019t \\u201cchoose\\u201d to keep their employer-provided insurance if they\\u2019re fired from their jobs or \\u201cchoose\\u201d to enroll their kids in private school if they can\\u2019t afford the tuition.
In this episode, we examine the rise of \\u201cchoice\\u201d rhetoric, how it cravenly appeals to our vanity, and how US media has uncritically adopted the framing--helping the right erode social services while atomizing us all into independent, self-interested collections of \\u201cchoices.\\u201d
We are joined by Jessica Stites, executive editor of In These Times.
"