Welcome to Cato Daily Podcast.

Today is Friday, April 6th.

I'm Anastasia Glova.

In today's podcast, Brink Lindsay and I cover Benjamin Barber's new book,

Consumed how markets corrupt children infantilize adults and swallow citizens whole.

Brink is Cato's Vice President for Research and author of the upcoming book, The Age of Abundance,

how prosperity transformed America's Politics and Culture.

Brings review of Barbara's book on Consumer Culture appeared in the April 3rd issue of the Wall

Street Journal, but the pith of his remarks is all here in this podcast.

What's Professor Benjamin Barber so peeved about in his new book?

Well, you can tell that he's in a testy mood from the book's title, Consumed, Markets Corrupt Children Infantilize Adults

Adults Whole. What Benjamin Barber is doing is following in a long tradition

of leftist intellectuals railing against the evils of consumerism and particularly

the evils of excessive materialism.

We have this amazing abundance of consumer riches and consumer choices and the response that

Barbara makes and many intellectuals before him have made is that this material

abundance really masks a kind of spiritual poverty that obsessing over stuff

and things is a paltry and shallow way to spend your life and that we ought to be devoting ourselves

to more profound pursuits than just money grubbing.

And further, that what looks like this proliferation of choices, you have umpteen thousand different products

in the typical grocery store these days.

What looks like this proliferation of choices is in fact a subtle kind of tyranny, that the

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