...more rights than you may know!
When you think of “consumer rights,” what comes to mind is probably those rules shaped by media and regulation — a narrow interpretation of how business is supposed to behave towards consumers. Purchase and credit protection, product guarantees, assurances of safety and suitability.
Those are only a fraction of your real rights as a consumer... a buyer... an individual. We are all entitled to a great deal more, and on levels that are rarely, if ever considered.
Consumer rights
...go far beyond concessions of buyer protection and financial transparency.
Consumer rights
...don't end with business's notion of what constitutes a “fair deal.”
Consumer rights
...are not negated by smug statements of “buyer beware.”
The most important right of all, the base for nearly all others, has been forgotten—painted over by decades of marketing effort driven by a consumer-goods industry that puts profit ahead of every other goal. We've passively allowed this right to be taken away and been actively conditioned to believe that we have something better. We've been sold the illusion of freedom... freedom as defined by the sellers to suit their purposes.
What we've lost is that of genuine freedom: the right to individual economic self-determination.
We believe we have nearly unlimited choice and that it is made on an individual level, when the truth is almost wholly the opposite. We have been conditioned to believe we make our daily economic decisions as independent and uninfluenced minds, when that notion is a terrible combination of hilarious and tragic. We have traded one of our most important freedoms for the false comfort of consumerism.
As consumers we must take back that fundamental right.
As individuals we must learn to reject economic conditioning that benefits only an exploitative, predatory system.
As citizens we must build an economic system that puts our needs—and rights—first.
We can do all that... as Renegade Consumers. Because we don't buy it any more.
To find out how, keep reading the essays and commentary here.