The birth of the modern consumer movement

This episode explores the origins and impacts of the modern consumer advocacy movement, ignited by Ralph Nader in the 1960s.

1. Ralph Nader's activism began with his investigation into car safety, revealing widespread industry neglect.
2. Nader's efforts led to the creation of new federal safety standards and regulations for automobiles.
3. His work spurred the broader consumer advocacy movement, influencing various public safety laws.
4. The episode also discusses the corporate and political resistance faced by the movement.
5. It traces the evolution of public opinion and policy on consumer protection from the 1960s to the 1980s.

1: Introduction

Overview of the episode's focus on consumer advocacy's rise. Adrian Ma introduces the topic and sets the historical context. Adrian Ma: "This is the result of the modern day consumer advocacy movement."

2: The Spark by Nader

Discusses Ralph Nader's early investigations into car safety and the publication of "Unsafe at Any Speed." Ralph Nader: "I began looking at the cars and how they were crushed in."

3: Corporate Backlash

Covers the aggressive corporate reaction to Nader's claims, including surveillance and harassment. Ralph Nader: "They tried to seduce me with young ladies."

4: Legislative Impact

Details the legislative outcomes influenced by Nader's advocacy, including the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act. Adrian Ma: "This law created new federal standards that included safety tires and dual braking systems."

5: Debate on Regulation

Explores the ideological battle between Nader and critics like Milton Friedman over the extent of regulation needed. Milton Friedman: "What troubles you about him? I think he's wrong."

1. Stay informed about product recalls and safety standards to make safer purchasing decisions.
2. Advocate for transparent corporate practices and support regulations that enhance consumer safety.
3. Educate yourself on consumer rights and how to exercise them effectively.
4. Support organizations and policies that prioritize consumer safety and rights.
5. Encourage legislative action that holds corporations accountable for safety violations.

Today on the show, the story of the modern consumer movement in the U.S. and the person who inspired it: Ralph Nader. How Ralph Nader's battle in the 1960s set the stage for decades of regulation and sparked a debate in the U.S. about how much regulation is the right amount and how much is too much.

This episode was made in collaboration with NPR's Throughline. For more about Ralph Nader and safety regulations, listen to their original episode, "Ralph Nader, Consumer Crusader."

This Planet Money episode was produced by Emma Peaslee and edited by Jess Jiang.

The Throughline episode was produced by Rund Abdelfatah, Ramtin Arablouei, Lawrence Wu, Julie Caine, Anya Steinberg, Casey Miner, Cristina Kim, Devin Katayama, Peter Balonon-Rosen, Irene Noguchi, and fact-checking by Kevin Volkl. The episode was mixed by Josh Newell.

Help support Planet Money and get bonus episodes by subscribing to Planet Money+ in Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/planetmoney.

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People

Ralph Nader, Milton Friedman

Companies

General Motors

Books

"Unsafe at Any Speed" by Ralph Nader

Content Warnings:

None

Adrian Ma
This is planet money from NPR.

You know how it seems like just about every day there's some sort of new product? Recall Toyota recalling 1 million vehicles worldwide over a potential airbag issue. FDA is reporting another baby formula. Recall some of Boeing's 737 Max nine planes are grounded right now, triggering cancellations nationwide. The idea is if a product is faulty, the government should intervene and keep it from the market.

This is the result of the modern day consumer advocacy movement. This movement started decades ago with Ralph Nader. He's well known for his presidential run in the 2000 election, but back in the sixties, he was a young lawyer who was trying to make sense of a pretty significant problem. I lost a lot of friends in car crashes. They were killed or they were permanently disabled.

Ralph Nader
It's far, far worse then than it is today. Fatal car crashes were nearly five times more common back then, and that didn't make sense to Nader. I kept thinking of people who could be living productive lives today and who were killed in totally survivable crashes. You know, I began looking at the cars and how they were crushed in. What Ralph Nader found kicked off a movement.

Adrian Ma
And that movement triggered a push and pull and a flurry of questions that we are still grappling with today, questions about how much government regulation we want in markets, what that regulation does and doesn't do for us, even questions about the ways we go about getting the government to respond to calls for regulation.

Hello, and welcome to Planet Money America. BARRIS our colleagues at NPR's History podcast throughline have done some reporting about the birth of the modern consumer advocacy movement, and we wanted to share some of that reporting with you today on the show, how one man's sixties era battle set the stage for decades of regulation and sparked a debate in this country about how much regulation is the right amount and how much is too much. The story has faulty cars, alleged temptresses, and a fateful softball game.

Were going to do something a little different today and play you a couple excerpts from the Throughline podcast. But first, we wanted to set the stage a little. Its the 1960s, and cars have become a central part of american life. People used them to commute, go on family road trips, even just to hang out at the drive in movie theater. And Ralph Nader, a new skeptical lawyer, had noticed that there were a lot of deadly car accidents.

He started sifting through court documents and studies. He found that for decades, doctors and researchers knew that the cars themselves were unsafe, and they had recommended adding features to make cars safer, things like seatbelts, padded dash panels, rollover bars. Carmakers would sometimes experiment with adding those features into prototypes, but then not put them into the cars available on the market. Ralph believed they were designing for style and cost rather than safety. He put everything he found into a book, unsafe at any speed.

The designed endangers of the american automobile. For the rest of this story, we're going to hand it over to our friends at throughline. I'm Randab DER Fattah. And I'm Ramtin Arablouei. The book opened with the case of one car in particular.

Ralph Nader
You are about to meet a true international beauty corvair.

The Corvair was a unique design because it had its engine in the rear. Someone once said you were the bumper on the Corvair. It would veer out of control and roll over and kill people. Publicly, General Motors had nothing to say. But the allegations hit hard because GM was a titan.

Rund Abdelfattah
At the time the book was published, they were the world's largest car manufacturer, responsible for nearly half of all uS automotive sales. We reached out to General Motors for comment on this episode, but did not receive a response. Years later, a government study found that the Corvair wasn't any more dangerous than other similar cars. Nader disputed the study, but by that time, there was no turning back. The movement Nader had started.

Ramtin Arablouei
In response to the criticism, GM created a position for coordinator of auto safety. But Naders book wasnt just about exposing a problem with the Corvair or even with General Motors. It was about revealing failures across the entire auto industry. It didnt take long for unsafe at any speed to start drawing the attention of important people in the capital, including a young woman who would be instrumental in turning Ralphs words into action. My name is Joan Claybrook.

Joan Claybrook
Claybrook. At the time, Joan was in Washington DC on a fellowship working with James A. Mackey, a us representative from Georgia. He gave me Ralph Naders book, Unsafe at any speed, which had just come. Out a month before the book hit home for Joan.

My boss had a corvair and she had a car crash shortly after I got to Washington. She was very badly injured. Joan knew that Nader's allegations against the auto industry were monumental, and Representative Mackey tasked her with tracking down Nader and getting him into the office for a discussion. When he walks in, he's a towering presence. He's 6ft four and lanky, but when.

Rund Abdelfattah
He sits down, he's very shy. Unless you ask him something, he's not going to interrupt you or start the conversation. And Mister Mackey was a very talkative southerner. And so he talked for about 45. Minutes, just a straight monologue.

Joan Claybrook
And then he looked at his watch and he said, oh, my goodness, I have to go to a meeting in 15 minutes. Mister Nader, what should we do? And so Nader said his write a bill with teeth that wrangles this wild west auto industry and saves lives in the process. And with that, their work together really began. And so did the pushback.

General Motors decided this was a great threat. They had been unleashing private detectives month after month, following me everywhere. Nader suspected they were wiretapping his phone. He says hed get strange calls in the middle of the night, threatening and harassing him. They used ex FBI agents often for their so called investigation of critics.

Ralph Nader
They tried to seduce me with young ladies. They followed him into the Safeway. I would be shopping, and he was. Area of the cookie counter, and he loves sweets. And this woman approached him and said, would he like to come up to her apartment?

Another time, a young lady came up and she said, you look like a studious fellow. We're forming a study group to study foreign affairs. How would you like to join us? And he said, no, thank you. A private detective who investigated Nader later denied making any attempt to put him in a compromising position with these women.

Rund Abdelfattah
But he did admit to surveilling Nader and trying to dig up dirt on his private life. There were just, you know, endless attempts to kind of document where he was, you know, a bad person or he was taking money from somebody to do this. The press got wind of the story along with Congress, and so Senator Rubikoff. Decided to have a public hearing, and. I was invited to testify.

Ralph Nader
I don't want to have a climate in this country where one has to have an ascetic existence and steely determinations in order to speak truthfully and candidly and critically of american industry. And he commanded the president of General Motors. His name was Roach. He told Mister Roach to come and testify. Roach got up and said that when he first heard of the allegations against GM, he was shocked.

Ramtin Arablouei
He immediately ordered a statement to be released denying GM's involvement. But he discovered, quote, to my dismay, we were indeed involved. Let us assume that you found something wrong with his sex life. What would that have to do with whether or not he was right or wrong on the car there? Nothing.

Senator Ribikoff declared in front of the Senate committee that Ralph Nader was squeaky clean. He said, quote, they put you through the mill and they haven't found a damn thing out against you. I want to apologize here and now, the members of this subcommittee and Mister Nader. This public apology couldn't have been a better press moment for Nader's crusade. People were outraged that a major american corporation would attempt to intimidate a whistleblower.

GM's plan to discredit Nader had backfired, and within a few short months, the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety act passed into law.

Adrian Ma
This law created new federal standards that would include provisions for safety glass, dual braking systems, safety tires, and it required manufacturers to let consumers know of safety related defects in cars. And Ralph didn't stop with this one win. He had received a settlement from General Motors and used that money to fund more investigations. He recruited law students. They were dubbed Naders raiders.

They decided to look into government agencies, and they had a series of successes, like getting lead out of gasoline and paint. They lobbied for the clean air and clean water acts. And across the nation, all kinds of consumer advocacy groups cropped up. But just as this movement was growing, so too was skepticism. For example, the famous economist Milton Friedman.

He had some strong thoughts on Ralph Nader and his approach to regulating consumer products. Have you ever met Ralph Nader? Of course, I've debated Ralph Nader many times. And I assume you feel that. What is it that troubles you about him?

Ralph Nader
I think he's wrong.

Adrian Ma
The heart of the debate between Ralph Nader and Milton Friedman was what is the right amount of regulation? Ralph Nader said consumers need the government to protect them. But Milton Friedman argued consumers don't need all this regulation, that consumers would not buy cars that would kill them, which would incentivize carmakers to make safer cars. He argued the market would sell self regulate. And he argued too much regulation could stifle creativity and it could harm the economy.

A new movement was forming, one that would compete with the consumer advocacy groups that Ralph Nader inspired. That's after the break.

Hey, Adrian. Ma here millions of Americans are behind on saving for retirement and face the possibility of working longer. In our latest bonus episode, it's my extended conversation with economist Theresa Gilarducci, who's written a new book on retirement in the US. We talk about where the current system falls short and policy ideas she says could help workers struggling to retire. You can check that out if you're a planet money listener.

If that's you, thanks. And if it's not, it could be you. Get bonus content, sponsor free listening, and support the work of NPR. Just go to plus dot npr.org. Dot.

The debate between Ralph Nader and Milton Friedman. Between more and less, regulation intensified in the 1970s, and not everyone was on board with the growing consumer movement and Ralph Nader's vision. Heres the next part of the story from the throughline team. I think you see an immediate backlash to him from corporate interest. This is Paul Sabin.

Ramtin Arablouei
Hes a professor of history and american studies at Yale University. Business leaders, and, of course, the car industry had long been wary of Nader. I have some very serious reservations about some of his positions and some of the levels of expertise that he professes to have. But as the power of the consumer movement grew, a conservative political backlash started to take shape, spearheaded by a soon to be US Supreme Court justice named Lewis Powell. There's a very famous memo that gets written by Lewis Powell, the Powell memo.

Paul Sabin
Lewis Powell, who becomes a justice, but at the time he is working with the chamber of Commerce, and he publishes this sort of confidential memo at the time, which later gets leaked, in which he is warning of these threats on the horizon. And Nader is very prominent in that. Perhaps the single most effective antagonist of american business is Ralph Nader, who, thanks largely to the media, has become a legend in his own time and an idol of millions of Americans. The Powell memo is really a calling to action, to conservatives and to business, that they need to develop an ideological counterbalance to this new public interest and citizen movement. Business must learn the lesson long ago learned by labor and other self interest groups.

Lewis Powell
This is the lesson that political power is necessary, that such power must be assiduously cultivated, and that when necessary, it must be used aggressively.

Rund Abdelfattah
It's the summer of 1976. Democratic presidential candidate Jimmy Carter, a self proclaimed consumer advocate, is playing a game of softball with family Secret service agents. And Nader is appointed to be the umpire, Ralph Nader. And Nader's behind the base, you know, in a suit, in a tie, jacket and tie, you know, calling balls and strikes and things like that. Nader had traveled down to Georgia to outline what he thought needed to be done to further consumer rights.

Number one on that list, create a consumer protection agency. Carter declares that he wants to be the great representative of the consumer, and Nader supports him and is very excited. So back to the ballgame. Carter doesn't always agree with Nader's calls. It's a spirited game, and in many ways, it's a symbolic one, too.

Paul Sabin
Is Nader going to be an umpire or is he going to be a player? So he's going to join the administration, or is he going to stay on the outside watching over the administration and judging it. And this is, you know, was a real question. A few months after their softball game in Georgia, Jimmy Carter wins the presidential election. At the election celebration, he promised to be a president for the people.

Ralph Nader
If we could just say our government, as I've said a thousand times, as good as our people are, that's all we can hope for, and that's all we can expect, and that's enough. We're going to have a great government, a great nation, and it's because of you, not me. And it looked like a real win for the consumer rights movement. Many former Nader's raiders actually joined Carter's administration, but not Nader. He would have easily had a high level appointment in the Carter administration.

Paul Sabin
He decides he's going to be an umpire. He believes in the permanence of this whole sector that he's been involved in creating, and they need to stay outside the government, and they need to watch over the agencies and hold even their allies accountable. Former allies like Joan Claybrook, who he publicly accused of going too easy on the car industry's rollout of airbags. He blasted me having betrayed my own personal standards. And so I didn't talk to Ralph for quite some time after that.

Ramtin Arablouei
Nader wasn't going to hold back against friends or foes. He was still fighting for the consumer. And his number one goal was to finally get the consumer protection agency. Hed been fighting for four years, created. This little agency that could take other regulatory agencies to court and make them change their behavior, make them go from inaction to action or make them strengthen weak standards into stronger standards.

Ralph Nader
And it would be the voice and the muscle of the consumer movement. The bill to create it had come close several times, but never quite made it through. The hope was that Carter would be able to push it through, but unfortunately. The crown jewel of the consumer movement never made it into law. In 1978, the effort to create the consumer Protection agency came to a grinding end.

People who want to work but can't find jobs are part of today's other bad economic news. By the late seventies, early eighties, the political climate was beginning to change as high inflation, unemployment, and gas shortages rattled the country. Isn't this disgusting? Why doesn't anybody contact the president? Why is he letting this happen to us?

Paul Sabin
So you have inflation and issues about employment, and these things start to get blamed on environmental regulation and safety. If only we would get rid of these regulations, things would be cheaper, the economy would be doing better. Basically, it boils down to the country. Is going to the pits Carter had. Lost the trust of the people, and Nader's call for more regulations wasn't resonating anymore, and their stead was a new voice.

Ralph Nader
Many Americans today, just as they did 200 years ago, feel burdened, stifled, and sometimes even oppressed by government that has grown too large, too bureaucratic, too wasteful, too unresponsive, too uncaring about people and their problems. In 1981, when Ronald Reagan became president, he immediately started to roll back many of the regulatory protections that Nader and the consumer movement had fought for, including gutting the EPAs budget and refocusing OSHA to benefit small businesses rather than workers. I put a freeze on pending regulations and set up a task force under Vice President Bush to review regulations with an eye toward getting rid of as many as possible. The heyday of the consumer movement was over. To this day, we're still engaging in this debate that Ralph Nader and the consumer movement started.

Adrian Ma
Over the last few decades, the pendulum has swung back and forth on how much to regulate consumer products. In the mid seventies, corporations ramped up their lobbying efforts. Lobbying expenditures increased from tens of millions of dollars to billions of dollars a year. These days, corporations spend two and a half billion dollars on lobbying annually. And as that pendulum swings back and forth, more regulation, less regulation.

We can look back on this one historical moment when this debate kicked off.

This planet money episode was produced by Emma Peasley and edited by Jess Zhang. Big thanks to the throughline podcast team. Their episode has so much more on Ralph Nader and the history of the consumer advocacy movement. It's called Ralph Consumer Crusader. Go check it out.

Throughline has a fun way of doing their credits, so we'll let them take it from here. I'm rund Abdelfattah. And I'm Ramtin Arab Louie this episode was produced by me and me and. Laurence Wu, Julie K. Anya Steinberg, Casey.

Minor, Christina Kim, Devon Kadayama, Peter Balanon Rosen, Irene Noguchi. Fact checking for this episode was done by Kevin Volkal. The episode was mixed by Josh Newell. Thanks for listening.

Ramtin Arablouei
Thanks for listening.