Democracy and the Good Life Part 4: Consumer Packaged Ideology and Polarization

“The new Reich…has more need of enemies than friends: only in opposition does it feel itself necessary.” Twilight of the Idols. Nietzsche

Shifts in the way political marketplaces work have mirrored the hyper-efficiency and exploitation of modern digital marketplaces. If economic marketplaces have become the locus of desire-creation, political marketplaces are all about belief creation.

There are three ways to build market share in a democracy — patronage, indirect rewards and moral persuasion. Of these, only persuasion can be endlessly scaled without friction. It’s that ability to grow without friction that has made ideology the chief instrument of modern democratic marketplaces. Yet what we have traditionally considered to be political persuasion — convincing voters of the virtues of some particular policy — is not at all what sells. Instead, our marketplaces are dominated by giant lifestyle branding machines that have gradually built up a walled-garden of zealous consumers who define themselves by the ideology they attach to their identity, not the products they buy. Voters are sold a vast bundle of ideas packaged like rolls of Costco toilet Paper. This is Consumer Packaged Ideology.