Shaping the markets, and subsequently the flow of great wealth, has been done via PR and the label of "consumer advocacy" for years.

While obviously the reporting on the quality of various products can be a useful tool to buyers, much of the reviews are subjective and intentionally slanted depending upon the source. Much the way Disney owned Siskel & Ebert never found a Disney cartoon they didn't like or Consumer Reports never found a big car or luxury car they could "with a clear conscience" recommend, since no one "really" needs those things anyway and so weakly advocated whatever was made outside of America, if you were such a wasteful lout you were going to buy one anyway regardless of their heaps of social scorn. European or Japanese favoritism made little difference so long as the end result undermined US industry and the shaping new desires while stigmatizing old ones was one path to such successful US industry sabotage.

So caveat emptor is even more applicable to consumer "reviews" which not only are not really the buyer's friend, but are really one group of "workers" sabotaging the output and wealth of another whole group of "workers". Consumer advocacy played a HUGE role in turning the OPEC crisis of '74 into a full fledged, industry destroying mini-depression. Lots of hype, hysteria and outright lies were spouted (i.e. Oil will run out in less than twenty years - trash your US gas guzzler and buy your Japanese Honda Civic today!) As a result US industry was given a shelling that destroyed much of it and helped bring us to the plight of the US worker today. Lots of great US stores folded in the wake (1976-1983) leaving Americamuch poorer and was actually the first phase of mergers that would lead to the deadly, communist imitating "Wal-mart economy" in which the customer is screwed by ever-shrinking selection and is effectively denied realistic competitive sources to purchase everything from toilet paper to major appliances.

Competition is the heart of successful, thriving capitalism and consumer advocacy is by design geared to funnel money into the hands of the few. So consumer advocacy really doesn't help the consumer - it turns him into a hard working peasant, for ever smaller wages.

It's far bigger than toasters. Communists were generally "smart idiots" and the vast marketplace is rather simple and so the smart idiots wrecked havoc upon it.

That's why I am so down on consumer reports and their ilk. Eventually it doesn't lead to better products - even if it they carefully nurse such an image - but rather, when one thinks it truly out, one sees it leads to Wal-martification and the reduction of competition and quality of goods for consumers. The same is true for environmentalism, illegal immigration or any other "PC cause" which is also designed by some to funnel money out America and eventually bring about a hellish economic conditions for the masses of US citizens.