Of course, many of us believe we’re well-informed consumers, carefully researching product reviews by the likes of Consumer Reports, as well as various other information outlets in print and electronic form that focus on more specific product categories.  

But it’s one thing to base an economic system on the individual choices of vast numbers of reasonably knowledgeable shoppers, and quite another to base it on the judgments of perhaps 20 to 100 writers with deadlines to meet, other stories to complete, and a motivation to increase readership by focusing on whatever is considered “hot” or current at the moment.

More fundamentally still, we need to better grasp what our era’s glut of consumer information and advice is ultimately based on.  Do you suppose that in, say, 1750, anybody would have read an article on “How to Tell a Good Apple from a Spoiled One?”  How about “How to Tell Coarse Cloth from Fine Woven Goods?”  And would they have bought a compilation of such articles—twelve times a year?  

What makes the prospect of such a periodical ludicrous, when our own Consumer Reports is not, is simply the difference in product complexity, and a corresponding difference in buyer uncertainty.  The less capable we are of evaluating products, the more need we feel for consumer journalism.