"To be politically relevant, liberty in our era must be experienced as positive rather than negative, must be public rather than private. Citizens cannot be understood as mere consumers because individual desire is not the same thing as common ground and public goods are always something more than an aggregation of private wants."
— Benjamin R. Barber, “Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole.” The book overall so far is hyperbolic, repetitive and rather condescending (the subtitle should make that clear), but there are a few nuggets of nice material in it.
