Here we encounter another kind of normative vagueness under capitalism, one not discussed at length in the book. While the hypothetical utility of a commodity in one way objectively subsists in its material properties, whether that utility will “work” for a given person is a matter of that person’s preferences, made clear to her by way of introspection. Yet the criteria determining whether a given set of goods counts as the right one for a given consumer are, like the criteria determining fair wages, quite obscure. There is some sense that the consumer ought to “optimize” over a set of choices but, because the diferent options are themselves often incommensurable, it is not at all clear what that might mean. The problem is compounded by the fact that preferences are uncertain and mercurial, and can always be subjected to skeptical interrogation. Indeed, the entire cultural machinery around consumption under capitalism encourages second-guessing about preferences. There is some tension between the notion that fair compensation for work is an objective matter, rooted in measurable substances, on the one hand, and the normatively subjective, evanescent character of individual preferences in consumption, on the other. Consumption by individuals is then at least to some degree driven by the urge to find the right set of choices to satisfy internal and external criteria that are ill-defined, unstable, and potentially contradictory.
Moreover, according to an influential norm concerning consumption under capitalism, rooted in the notion of consumer sovereignty, the subjective preferences of a given individual are supposed to constitute a kind of private knowledge. The normatively private character of individual preferences works against judgments about value being informed by public, intersubjective checks. Such checks can bring social knowledge to bear on assessments made by individuals about matters of usefulness. An example would be knowledge within a community about the contextual constraints on making use of commodities. But the asocial, private character of final consumption insulates thinking about consumption (and by extension also production) from social knowledge of that kind.
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Time for Things