...but that was MY line....

Reason Online has published an article bearing a passing resemblance to one of my own from last year.

In mine, I discuss what I chose to label a "Consumer Revolution," tying together an increase in personal contributions to campaigns via the Internet with consumer efforts to spend their money on companies and products more in line with their political beliefs:

For many who believe our current political system has sharply limited individual choice at the polls, the opportunity to express political and social beliefs through consumer choice has gained considerable appeal. This quest for greater personal responsibility has been met by a combination of savvier marketing and (occasionally...) genuine social consciousness (although the two can be hard to distinguish at times...) among politicians, producers, and retailers.

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This past election year, politicians from across the spectrum stumbled upon a new funding source that showed surprisingly deep pockets and little of the political backlash associated with large donations from interest groups or corporations. Instant web transactions, available for anyone with a credit card, and sharp advertising by web-savvy political campaigns created a surge in individual political contributions. Grass roots supporters, looking to back their candidate with more than a single vote, began taking advantage of the e-commerce revolution....

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Outside of traditional politics, Amanda Paulson wrote of her "quest to enjoy her dinner without guilt" in the Christian Science Monitor.... She described these consumers' choices as "a market-based way of expressing" their beliefs.

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The crowds of consumers willfully paying $3000 above average vehicle costs for hybrid cars such as the Toyota Prius have received much more media coverage than ethical eaters. Even with current high gasoline prices and tax credits, few of these buyers expect to recover those three thousand dollars. They are paying that price to satisfy their conscience....

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In all of the above cases, one trend predominates: the free market has, ironically, often shown greater flexibility in meeting the demands of progressive-minded citizens than government action. Are you sick of watching special interest groups dominate campaign fund-raising? Fire off an Internet contribution to your favorite candidate. Do you think the minimum wage is unlivable? Shop at Costco. Are you concerned with government catering to the auto and oil industries? Buy a hybrid vehicle. While many of these choices may seem small in the grand scheme, this new breed of consumer feels strongly that Americans can best express their beliefs every day through what can best be called consumer democracy.

The Reason article takes a somewhat different approach, but arrives at a similar conclusion:

Even more unsettling than the creeping tide of political engagement, however, is the growing taste for hyper-suffrage. It's completely understandable, of course. This is the era of cultural proliferation, where every year brings a new strain of Pepsi, another NBA franchise, additional cable channels. We want more choices. We tire of our favorites quicker. When the People's Choice Awards allows us to vote for something as trivial as "Favorite Celebrity Hair" on an annual basis, does it make sense that we only get to choose our Commander-in-Chief once every four years?

Hardcore balloteers aren't waiting for Congress to correct this flaw in the system: Having spent their only opportunity to vote with their vote until 2006, they're going to vote…and vote…and vote with their pocketbooks in the interim. Thanks to sites like Choosetheblue.com and Buyblue.org, you can now determine the ideological bent of sports teams, bedsheet manufacturers, airlines, grocery stores—and "vote" accordingly....

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Voting with your pocketbook is hardly a new phenomenon, of course, but in the past, the practice tended to have a narrower focus. Colonists in New England didn't like the tax on tea, so they didn't buy tea. Farm-worker supporters in the 1970s didn't like the grape-growers' resistance to unionization, so they didn't buy grapes. Certainly there's an upside to upgrading the most trivial instances of commerce to principled acts of political engagement: It's a lot more fun to splurge on a Carribean cruise or a new computer than it is to finance some professional hand-shaker's latest deployment of state-of-the-art yard signs. Even better, the FEC has no power to squelch this form of political expression—you can spend as much as you want. You also don't have to worry about voting roll purges, provisional ballot challenges, or any of the other inconveniences of modern voting. Making your voice heard is as simple as whipping out your Visa card and charging up a little democracy.

At this point, Mr. Beato and I strike somewhat divergent paths. He chooses to highlight the limitations of applying political beliefs to consumer choice by exposing the "Us or them" mentality of organizations such as Choosetheblue.com and Buyblue.org:

Extending the calcifaction of contemporary politics to commerce is a stroke of genius—if you happen to be a voluntary simplicity advocate. If we can make shopping as unsatisfying as choosing between the top two candidates in just about any election, then maybe 78 million Americans will stop going to the mall too. But even if that doesn't come to pass, you have to marvel at the irony on display here: Instead of critiquing our oppressive corporate monoculture, these grassroots activists are doing their best to turn consumer choice into a strictly binary phenomenon.

And, thus, an effort to bring political expression to commerce actually inhibits it. The marketplace doesn't just offer more opportunities to vote; it also offers more issues to vote on, and more candidates from which to choose. Every day, you can cast your ballot for the bank that has the strongest ties with the community it serves, the discount retailer that treats its employees most fairly, the Christ-centered locksmith. Not every consumer is so engaged, of course—price, service, and convenience still win most of the elections where money changes hands. But why cede the power we consumers already have to make finer distinctions than contemporary politics typically allows?

Which isn't to say that Buyblue.org and Choosetheblue.com aren't perfectly calibrated for these times. The rise of the Internet has meant the death of plausible deniability: It's nearly impossible now to insist you had no idea that, say, your favorite fast-food chain was such a terrible corporate citizen, because the evidence is never more than a click or two away. Still, who's got time for a click or two? We want to be well-informed consumers, yes, but we're also really busy. A truly useful website would track the environmental records of companies, their affirmative action policies, their stances on same-sex unions—everything, in short, that might influence your vote at the cash register. But staying informed like that would take a lot of time, which means there's a huge opportunity for infomediaries willing to dumb down the process....

I would call Mr. Beato's article a critique of top-down efforts to control what should, instead, be a bottom-up, grass-roots movement among consumers. As he says, the information to make wiser consumer choices is available to a much larger audience than ever before. Now it's just a matter of that audience seeking answers for themselves. Having visited both Buyblue and Choosetheblue, I understand the concern he expresses. Choosing to purchase a product based solely on how much money its manufacturer (or marketer) contributed to a political campaign is, indeed, turning "consumer choice into a strictly binary phenomenon."