Of "Caveat Emptor"

The Latin tag "caveat emptor" is commonly rendered in English as "Buyer beware."

The term is usually taken to indicate that the buyer bears "personal responsibility" for making sure the seller does not cheat them.

Given the respect with which the words "personal responsibility" are treated in this culture few dare criticize the principle.

Still, in spite of the pieties about the market that few are brave enough to challenge in the mainstream (James Galbraith's remark about being expected to "bend a knee and make the sign of the cross" when publicly using the word "market" is all too accurate), one imagines many have quite other feelings about the matter. The relation between buyer and seller is by no means consistently an equal one. Quite the contrary, it is often extremely unequal, especially in an age of complex products, and Big Business--such that the buyer, especially one of limited means, who can little afford to lose out in any market transaction and for whom any such transaction is full of fear and trepidation, is apt to feel themselves thrown to the wolves in such a situation by those in power who say "Caveat emptor," especially when they understand fully that in the contest between seller and buyer Authority is on the other party's side against the lowly consumer.