Why Everything Became a Product (Including You)

Think back to the first time someone told you that school was all about “getting ready for the job market.” Maybe a teacher said it. Maybe a parent did. Maybe it was just something you absorbed without ever questioning it. You were probably too young to notice what that message really meant: that your value was already being framed in economic terms, like a product being prepared for sale.

Before you were old enough to vote, the world had already decided you were a consumer.

And that shift, from citizen to customer,  didn’t just happen in schools. It happened everywhere. Government departments started calling people “service users.” Hospitals started measuring “customer satisfaction.” Politicians talked more about “taxpayers” than communities. Even our identities were subtly pushed toward something branded and individualised: your achievements, your productivity, your personal optimisation. It reframed citizens as consumers, public goods as marketplaces, and collective power as an inconvenience.

And here’s the part you’re not meant to notice:

 A society of passive consumers is much easier to manage than a society of active citizens.

Education is just the place where this becomes easiest to notice.The generations before you lived through a massive political experiment. In the late 70s and 80s, leaders like Thatcher and Reagan rewired the foundation of public life. They weakened unions, deregulated industries, and elevated competition to something almost sacred. This ideology became known as neoliberalism,  the belief that the logic of the market should shape the entire structure of society.

If you’ve ever wondered why schools feel more like performance factories than places of learning, this is why.

The academy trust take over: a case study in corporate control 

The 1988 Education Reform Act in England and Wales didn’t just change how schools were run. It changed how children were understood. Parents became “consumers.” Pupils became objects of competition. Standardised tests became the new currency of value. Schools were encouraged to see each other as rivals. Students learned early that they, too, were competing,  not collaborating.

Maybe you grew up thinking this was just normal. But it wasn’t normal. It was intentional.

Academic research now openly describes how universities have shifted from being centres of knowledge to corporations in disguise. If you’ve ever felt like university marketing sounds more like a tourism brochure than a promise of education, you’re not imagining it.

This language,  “customers,” “outcomes,” “products,” “delivery”, didn’t accidentally find its way into classrooms. It’s part of the same worldview that turned public health into a marketplace, public housing into investment property, and public policy into a spectator sport.

If you went to school in the UK, you’ve seen academisation up close. You may have watched your school suddenly “rebrand,” get a new uniform, join a trust, or start talking about “targets” and “performance indicators” more than teaching.

Academy Trusts didn’t appear to improve education, they appeared because they aligned with a political project: shifting public services into private hands. Research shows these trusts operate like corporate networks, complete with CEOs earning hundreds of thousands of pounds, managing schools like franchises, and measuring success with business-style metrics.

When a school is labelled “failing,” it’s often handed to one of these trusts. The conversation stops being about community needs. It becomes about risk management and brand reputation. If you ever felt like your school was more interested in its Ofsted report than your actual learning, you were feeling the effects of this system.

The world doesn't have to work this way 

Not every society treats education, or citizens, like this. Social-democratic countries with strong public systems still treat education as a collective investment, not an economic transaction. Their schools are designed to prepare young people for democratic participation, not just employment. Students are encouraged to debate, vote, govern, and understand social issues as something they can shape.

It’s not perfect. No system is. But the intention is fundamentally different. You’re not trained for the marketplace. You’re trained for society. And that difference shows up in how politically engaged people are, how much trust they have in each other, and how willing they are to stand up for their rights.

Why power prefers you passive 

Here’s the part that connects everything: passive students become passive adults.

If you think your role is to compete quietly, you’re less likely to question why things are unfair. If you’re focused on building your “personal brand,” you’re less likely to build collective power. If you see yourself as a customer, you start to believe that your only avenue for change is to “make better choices,” not to challenge the systems that limit those choices in the first place.

Passivity is profitable.

A society of atomised individuals is a goldmine for advertisers. A workforce afraid to unionise is a dream come true for corporations. A generation too overwhelmed or cynical to vote gives governments a free pass to do whatever they want.

And so the systems you grew up in subtly taught you to stay in your lane. Achieve. Compete. Don’t question. Don’t disrupt. Focus on yourself.

The other side of the argument

There are people who genuinely believe that applying market logic to public services makes them better. They argue that competition drives innovation, that choice empowers individuals, that data improves accountability. They’ll say that without efficiency, public institutions become slow, bloated, or outdated. And in a world of rapid technological change, they’re not wrong to worry about that.

It’s true that schools should be accountable.It’s true that young people need opportunities.It’s true that governments can be painfully slow to adapt                                     And it’s true that some market tools can make systems more responsive.

But efficiency isn’t the same as humanity.

Choice isn’t the same as agency.

And competition isn’t the same as justice.

A system can be efficient while failing its people.A school can be high-performing while crushing curiosity.A government can be streamlined while ignoring democratic responsibility.

The opposing argument often overlooks the quiet damage in the background: that when you treat people like customers, they begin to behave like customers,  passive, individualised, and disconnected from each other.

The question isn’t whether public services should function well.The question is who they should function well for.

Where that leaves us 

When we look past the market language that’s shaped our schools, workplaces, and politics, a clearer pattern appears. We’ve been encouraged to see ourselves as customers making individual choices rather than as citizens sharing collective responsibilities. It’s a model that keeps us busy, competitive, and quietly isolated, and it benefits institutions that prefer compliance over participation.

But we’re also living through a moment that shows this model isn’t holding. Across issues from climate justice to workplace organising, young people are questioning the roles we’ve been assigned. We’re beginning to recognise that our challenges aren’t just personal but structural, and that real change comes from acting together rather than navigating a system alone.

If anything, the return of a more active citizenry highlights what was missing all along: a sense that individuals are part of something larger than economic competition or personal advancement. Citizenship, unlike consumer choice, carries responsibilities, relationships, and possibilities that extend beyond individual outcomes. It requires attention to systems, not just to personal trajectories.

Recognising this isn’t about rejecting efficiency or modernisation, nor is it about romanticising the past. It’s about acknowledging that a society cannot rely solely on transactional models without weakening the democratic fabric that holds it together.

Reframing yourself not as a customer of public institutions but as a participant in them changes the questions you ask and the expectations you hold. It invites a shift from private dissatisfaction to public engagement, from isolated pressure to shared responsibility.

And in a period defined by uncertainty, economic, political, environmental, that shift may be one of the most important developments of all.

Written by Vanessa Twerefou