The thrust of business (free market or otherwise) is to make the greatest number of people buy the greatest number of the same things. The business system is also deigned to ensure we keep buying by depriving people of the means to grow their own food (which it seems to me most people are reluctant to do these days anyway) and making the ‘things’ we buy of a quality that always breaks down.
In a way that is like nature because we break down and are replaced too but the old burger restaurant in the Amazon quote haunts me: why are we all doing so many of the same things? Do we think we are vying with each other to be able to wear jeans better, look smarter with our brand of mobile phone, be on the mark with a new car. What is also odd is how we treat people who don’t want or have these things – they are outside, old fashion, a bit strange.
Is it really about freedoms? I wonder if we are not comforted that other people do what we do. A state which reinforces our idea of ourselves by being mirrored by millions of other people. Not a matter of keeping up with the Joneses but being a Jones.
The artist as an ‘outsider’ is becoming an ever more important point of reference. There is a certain blindness in uniformity that is always to be held in high suspicion.