The unintended consequences of the countercultural movement of the 1960s: What’s marketing got to do with it?

Since the 1960s, the American milieu has evolved in a way that is at once more tolerant, humane, and progressive on the social and cultural fronts and yet more darkly threatening, unforgiving, and malevolent in our economic and business lives. This article offers a single explanation accounting for these two seemingly divergent phenomena. The all-pervasive, unrelenting power of marketing ideology, with its laser-like focus on the consumer and customer satisfaction, is cited as a contributing agent of change in how the affairs of our public institutions, including universities, are now being conducted.