Market players initially were supposed to follow the rules of the common good - the state was a collection of individuals who were charged with determining the public good. Because the public didn't know what was good for them, public education was instituted so as to align their wishes with the state's policies, as the state's policies were by default good for the public.
Markets could only be fair if market players played fair. Thus Victorian morality was supposed to be injected into market competition - restraint not only would help keep markets fair, but capitalists who weren't consumerist would reinvest their money into capital, which is good for economic growth and prosperity and which is then good for the public. To Mill, free markets will leave the individual to pursue his own wants and needs, and these are he presumes their better natures, i.e. moral character over physical pleasures. Implicit in Mill's model is the requirement to restrict the liberty of those who are preoccupied with the lesser goods (children, barbarians, and the working class (the poor)) until they can be fixed: they must adopt Victorian morality, including individual self-reliance, and they must use the institutions of the classical liberal state (education, banks, and eventually public libraries)
In reality, market players cared not a whit for the public good, but for the private good. The state in attempting to prevent the market from failing to provide for (intangible) public goods, tried first to educate the public so they would do it, and when that failed it became an instrument of the economic interests it sought to curb. Thus liberalism lost its moral corrective force, lost its drive to serve the public good, and redefined the market itself as the servant of the public good. "The relation between the public and private realm of the state is reversed and obliterated, as the public realm of the state is made to serve the private economic interests of the market" (40).
Markets were supposed to be a large number of individuals competing on level ground, which means little profits for individuals (they're spread around), which of course means that model must be rejected in favor of the illusion of free markets with big firms making huge profits.
****Of course the capitalists of today don't want a genuine Christian morality to reign, as that would be in contradiction to their obscene profits, and would rile the public to revile the corporation's disregard for public welfare. Thus the modern disregard of religion and religious sentiment seems to have been largely engineered by a state and private sector that don't want to be regulated by a public morality!
So state/corporate propagandists of today preach a watered down, nonrevolutionary Christianity. They also revile all aspects of the state that provide for public goods: welfare, health care, education, libraries. They only want a state where it will crush competition so that they can keep reaping profits. The market is not (or can not) serve a moral purpose.***
ENTERTAINMENT
Coney Island was an early example of pure spectacle entertainment that contemporaries feared was unleashing man's id (inner animal) unrestricted by reason or spirit. What happened was not an out of control animalistic mob that has been created by lunatic entertainment, but instead an entertainment that reinforces dominant capitalistic values: pandering to desires to make money rather than induce states of madness, liberate the id, invert social order, or threaten authority. It actually reinforces discipline and authority and conformity - people are always consumers. [If they threaten to actually become rebellious, the rebellion is sold back to them without the substance (***From grunge to emo, From revolutionary to hippie, etc.)]
So genuine liberals (progressives) sought still to squeeze some public good out of entertainment, and did so by opening parks, gyms, community centers and libraries to instill common purpose, democratic faith - people are still the product of their environment and this extends beyond education to society as a whole. Thus they object to an institution (Coney Island) that does naught but profit the owners and pleasure the patrons - solely entertaiment without education or edification.
What it was was the early stages of a shift from industrial asceticism/morality/productive work/savings to post-industrial impulse buying and mass consumption.
p.48
If capitalist markets do not provide information to consumers for the purpose of educating them then they cannot be called populist.
Market populism is especially problematic when the product being sold in the market is information. In the classic liberal capitalist model of the marketplace, consumers bring their beliefs and desires with them prior to their market transaction. B ut what if the consumers' beliefs and desires are shaped by or originate in their market transactions? In that case buyers and sellers are no longer independent actors and we can no longer speak of a 'voluntary exchange' between them. Instead, the consumer becomes an instrument of the marketplace. Thus, although it is true that consumers desire the products they consume, in the act of consuming those products their desires may change in ways they did not choose. This is especially true when the product being consumed is information because information has the power to change consumers' beliefs and desires. Mreover, since information, like any other commodity, is produced for profit in a capitalist economy, consumers beliefs and desires will be transformed not for the purpose of iproving them but for the purpose of maximizing profits.
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