The Age of Consumer & Legalized Barbarism

How low a person's intelligence really has to be to genuinely believe that the customer is always right?! We now live in a time and most places where a clever and determined customer can almost certainly exploit and take advantage of the goodwill of any serious business in getting far more than what can be expected from a fair deal.

Never mind what is stated clearly in the terms and conditions of any purchase agreement, as long as the customer is not happy about anything, he can conveniently and readily ignore or even twist facts to suit his agenda and, in the name of consumer right and with the threat of media exposure, the supplier is expected to bend over and backward to subside and suck it up. The more renowned a brand is, the higher is the customer's expectation on its quality - which is fine - but also the more barbarous his behavior will become when the reality falls short of expectation - however unrealistic it is in the first place.

It is true that we want to live in a society where we see the consumer rights protected as well as the worker rights. But since the age of industrial revolution, and in most advanced economies if not the world over, it seems that the pendulum has fully swung from exploitation of the proletariat to hostility against business. The sources of antagonism, for right or wrong, come not only from customers with unfulfilled expectation, but workers' unions who each wants a larger slice of the cake, government agents or authorities who see the needs for whatever causes to regulate and tax in one way or another, the NGOs who seize any opportunities to hijack the business agenda to push their own and, probably worst of all, those so-called anti-trust agents who impose ludicrously hefty fines in the noble name of business competition - while the world watches on the blatant and untouchable cartel cooperation in influencing if not directly determining oil prices.

But I am not speaking up for the loaded capitalists. As a salary man, my heart certainly goes to the well-being of the wage-earners, though aspiring to creating value in the magnitude of those achieved by the likes of Warren Buffet. As a consumer, I certainly want to get the best value from no less than a fair deal for any purchase I have to make. Indeed I would consider myself a mild liberal if I lived in the West.

I simply respect decent enterprises and value the friendly environment for innovation and investment - what clearly counts most for job creation and, in the scenario of success, economic growth. All stakeholders to a business should be treated fairly. But the balance can only be upheld if fairness is reciprocated. It's too hard!