A Nation Of Suckers

Once in a long while, you come across something in our culture--a book, a play, a news story, or some other artifact or event--that is the whole thing in microcosm.  And, by "whole thing," I mean the American culture, society, experience, or whatever you want to call it.  It's happened to me a few times in my life, and it happened again this morning, as I was watching CBS's "Sunday Morning" program.

The show presented a story about a small, independent airline called Spirit Airlines, which routinely ranks dead last in customer service surveys compared to its competitors, yet remains hugely profitable.  How is this possible?  Through bait-and-switch marketing that provides low air fairs, along with separate charges for services that are complementary on other air lines, such as overhead storage for luggage.  In fact, Spirit was the first airline to charge for checked luggage.

You might ask yourself how such a transparently sleazy operation manages to stay in business.  To quote Bob Dole out of context, where's the outrage?  There is none, for one very simple reason: we are, to a much larger extent than we should be, a nation of suckers.

Many Americans, out of a peculiar combination of optimism and laziness, are ready, willing and eager to believe that, as Ronald Reagan himself once said, "there are simple solutions to all of our problems."  If someone comes along and sells us--really, really, really sells us--on the idea that X is all you need to solve your problems, you'll see people fighting each other to be the first person on their block with X, or Y, or Z, or whatever the letter of the day is.  These cons work for a limited period of time--in fact, they often involved emotional appeals not to wait or delay--because they are set up to short-circuit the thought process.  If you give enough people in this country sufficient "bait," and a tiny window of time to snap it up, you avoid giving them an opportunity to think it through and realize that you're offering them nonsense.  This technique can even allow you to help people "solve" an imaginary problem, as Harold Hill does in "The Music Man" with his memorable tirade against the evils of a pool table in "Ya Got Trouble."

And, even worse, this technique can give you the power to torment people after you've rewarded them, as in the case with Spirit.  They use ticket prices as a loss-leader to get people to the airport and, once there, nickle-and-dime them on other services that people have come to expect as part of the flying experience.  It's the latter part of this process that makes up their profit margin, and Spirit gets away with it because people would rather rationalize their behavior that face it.  "Oh, well," the nickle-and-dimed Spirit customer can say, "at least I saved a ton of money on the ticket."  No you haven't--because you spent it later on.  As a Spirit executive who was interviewed said on CBS, somewhat smugly:  "What people say and what they do are not the same thing."

Let me be clear on where I think the ultimate responsibility for this belongs.  It belongs with us.  With all of us.  And especially the fools who think they're really clever by flying with Spirit.  If you allow any business to treat you this badly, and do it in sufficient numbers, you are not a bargain-spotter; you are a systematic underminer of free and fair marketplaces for all goods and services.  If there are enough of you out there, you will eventually give us an economy with nothing but bait-and-switchers, even for those of us who are smart enough to avoid them.  And you will ultimately save nothing, not even yourselves, because you will end up making all of us slaves in a nation owned by frauds.

Everyone should do themselves a favor and take a hint from another comment the Spirit executive made during the CBS interview:  the statement that they would never charge for the use of bathrooms.  That simply proves that even a good con artist knows when not to take things too far.  It also proves that consumers who not only know their rights but fight for them are the last, best hope against the hypercapitalism that threatens to devour the American Dream. Whoever you are, reading this, stop making us a nation of suckers--or don't stop trying in the first place.