Today the Washington Post has a review I wrote of “The Support Economy” — a book by Harvard prof Shoshanna Zuboff and her husband, former Volvo CEO Mames Maxmin.

In essence, they argue that modern consumerism — which they think is a good thing — has created the high level of individualism in modern American culture. The problem now, they argue, is that consumers crave and demand a level of individualized, personalized service that corporations are not prepared to deliver:

The problem, Zuboff and Maxmin say, is that mass-production and “managerial capitalism” — the engines of the 20th century’s economic growth — succeed by ignoring the individual consumer’s desire. Economists normally assume that Henry Ford’s achievement was to standardize the car, making it cheap to mass-produce. But this isn’t entirely true: Ford’s true brilliance was to standardize the customers. They agreed to buy a Model T in any color, so long as it was black.

Ford’s production-line innovations unleashed a postwar boom in consumption. But this itself led to an unforeseen conflict: As Americans began to consume more, the authors argue, the act of consumption helped define them as individuals. Indeed, Zuboff and Maxmin believe that consumption is now completely central to identity: “Through consumption of experience — travel, culture, college — people achieve and express individual self-determination. No one can escape the centrality of consumption.” Regular Americans, they suggest, now crave the personalized service once accorded only to the rich. The two forces collide: Customers want the personal touch, but companies offer one-size-fits-all …

It’s an intriguing analysis. Could “individuality” — the very thing touted in Xtreme-life ads for Gatorade and dentures alike — actually be making consumers more dissatisfied and cranky?

I go on to say a bunch of more critical things about the book — i.e. “I’m not sure whether getting brilliant service from British Airways and Dell is really such a top-drawer concern for wage slaves making $12,000 a year at Costco” — but if you want to read the whole thing, it’s here.