Did Your Suppliers Order You to Do Something for Christmas?

People living in capitalist countries, even if less than perfectly free, don’t think about it. As customers, they place orders with their suppliers. As producers, they satisfy the orders of their customers. Consumers are the bosses, producers are at their service. And producers happily accept this role because they want money to, in their turn, order goods as consumers on markets. A free rather than less free economy naturally organizes itself around this principle because we produce in order to consume and not the other way around.

For Christmas, you gave orders to your suppliers, not the other way around. A producer could not order you to buy from him. Only public producers—governments or suppliers backed by governments—can do this. French philosopher Raymond Ruyer, in his 1969 book Éloge de la société de consommation (In Praise of the Consumer Society), described the difference between a market economy, where the consumer is sovereign, and a planned economy, where the producer runs the show (under government’s control):

In a market economy, demand is imperative and supply is supplicant … In a planned economy, supply is imperative and demand is supplicant.

« Dans l’économie de marché, la demande est impérieuse, et l’offre suppliante … Dans l’économie planifiée, l’offre est impérieuse, et la demande suppliante. »

This is why, if you have the chance to live in a more-rather-than-less free society (and if you are not a hermit), you can have a happy Christmas.

Merry Christmas!

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