Recent toy recalls have raised legitimate questions. While most of those questions focus on who is responsible for safeguarding our children, some irresponsible members of the media are questioning the validity of the public's expectations of product safety. The comments are, on their face, ludicrous. Unfortunately, they are also symptomatic of an increasingly disturbing trend of diminished American expectations. This battle, for higher expectations, is at the heart of the fight raging in America over Wal-Mart; product safety is perhaps the most glaring example.
During an interview last week, I was asked if I thought Americans accept that we live in a "buyer beware" culture. It caused me to reflect on the times I have spent living overseas in developing countries. When shopping in an open air market in Yemen, for example, there is a normal bartering that takes place over a product and, other than food, little expectation of product safety beyond what you ensure by what you pay. In other words, you get what you pay for.
At some point in America's past, however, we moved away from that kind of shopping experience, into one dominated by larger retailers, with national brands and government watchdogs. We came to expect that our wealth increasingly demanded a certain standard of safety in our products and we countenanced no less. Such expectations were about business and government.
And it was not just safety. We expected customer service and we expected decent wages and benefits - a job that paid a living. This was, I believe, a reflection of our national sense of self as the biggest, strongest, wealthiest power on the planet.
Times have changed. As Thomas Friedman constantly reminds us, we now live in a world which is flat. While we are still the wealthiest, income disparities mean that more and more of us feel the heat of global competition for jobs and livelihood. Just as Maslow theorized with his hierarchy of needs, fewer of us are able to move beyond the most basic need of safety to focus on a sense of belonging, esteem or self-actualization.
But there are holdouts even among those of us facing starker challenges that still want to fight for higher expectations. They recognize how Wal-Mart has driven down expectations, both for what a company's role is in our communities and for its basic responsibility of ensuring safe products for its customers. When people are forced to drop their expectations, it is the same as a trust being broken. The broken trust is particularly damaging in this case, because we entrusted retailers with our most precious asset - our children.
So, Wal-Mart cannot be trusted. It is a mark of how far we have fallen that not only does the public continue to shop there, but a few members of the media actually suggest we should simply accept the situation or accept a rise in prices.
Clearly, someone forgot to tell the American people when prices dropped, we were supposed to lower our expectations for safety. It may be the unfortunate result, but no one was warned. It is those expectations that separate us from a poor, developing country. And it was our ability to enforce them through consumer boycotts, labor strikes and government regulation that made the public powerful against the mighty corporation.
The American people should not lower our expectations, especially when it comes to the safety of our children. As parents and consumers, we have the right to ask many questions right now, but the media should focus its questions on what business and government should do to fulfill our expectations for product safety rather than challenge them. When I go to shop for my daughter's birthday gift, I don't expect to know for sure if she will like the toy, but I should expect that whatever I buy isn't going to harm her. As the world's largest retailer, Wal-Mart should at least be able to fulfill that expectation.
One of the inevitable effects of corporatizing commodities is that moral issues no longer enter into transactions. The man down the street knows you and your child, and he isn't going to poison your kids to make a better "return on dollars" when he carves a doll. Mattel doesn't know you, doesn't care about you, and never, ever will. It's time to fix that. Buy local products.
That why we have laws.