Housewives in the past usually canned their own foods and sewed their own clothes, and although they stopped doing so later, most of them were still adept at judging quality and hard to cheat. But these days, as full-time housewives become scarcer and scarcer, as technology advances, and as new products appear almost daily, being a consumer grows tougher and tougher.

Are the oranges sour? Is the material real silk? Does the soy sauce contain artificial coloring? We're babes in the wood when it comes to questions like these.

Most people believe that the consumer question has come about because increased prosperity has raised demands for a higher quality of life. But Hsu Sheng-hsiung, associate professor at the National Taiwan Institute of Technology, indicates that the chief cause of the problem is the growing distance between producers and consumers in contemporary society.

In the past, dissatisfied consumers could bargain, return products, and argue their case before neighborhood shop-owners. But people who buy products at fixed-price department stores and supermarkets today run up against a "no returns" policy if they try to take something back and a Kafkaesque run-around if they try to find the owner.

Even more serious than spatial distance is the knowledge gap. "Consumers today can only learn to protect themselves through trial and error--once bitten, twice shy," says Chung Chih-tsung, a lecturer in home economics at National Taiwan Normal University.

In fact, today's products are so complex that half the time you don't even know when you've been taken. If it weren't for tests by consumer groups, for example, people would probably go right on drinking certain soft drinks for the rest of their lives without knowing what harmful chemicals they contain.

Not only "can" consumers be cheated, but manufacturers find they "must." The pressures of industrial development and oversupply force them to design packaging and advertisement aimed at exaggerating advantages and concealing defects as much as possible. Labels and advertising can be so misleading that often the consumer is led to believe that "expensive means good."

Under the assault, consumer rights today are in a precarious position and need to be protected. The question is, by whom?

As a rule, public problems are managed by the government. But manufacturers are just as much the public as are consumers.

"The government has too much to do as is," Hsu Sheng-hsiung maintains. "All it can do is deal with wherever it feels the heat from." The main pressure in the past was for economic growth, and "consumer problems are not the most glaring. Buying a lousy product or getting ripped off by a tour group are usually not questions of life or death." Another reason for government inattention was the failure of consumers to stand up for their rights.

Besides departments such as the Ministry of Economic Affairs and the Department of Health which inspect factories and restaurants, consumer groups have now set up organizations like the ROC Consumer Association and the New Environment Housewife Union to take on the "nanny" function.

The biggest problem at present is that most consumers aren't knowledgeable enough to make informed purchases. "Except for inadequate laws, consumers must blame themselves for that," says Ch'ai Sung-lin, a professor at National Chengchi University. "They blame others but they don't educate themselves. Lectures are held and they don't go. Consumer reports are published and they don't subscribe."

To get at the root of the problem many people advocate that consumer education be made a required course in the public schools. The Ministry of Education maintains that the course load on students is heavy enough as is without adding to the burden, but the National Institute of Translation and Compilation, which publishes public school textbooks, may draw up a handbook so that teachers can provide supplementary information to students on the subject.

People in the consumer movement don't think that's enough. "Learning a few less English words or doing a few less math problems wouldn't be so serious," Ch'ai Sung-lin says. "But not understanding something that you'll have to use the rest of your of life is really sad."

In fact, the focus of education has always been on how to become a good producer rather than a discriminating consumer.

Every right must be earned. Now is the time for consumers to earn the "right to an education."

[Picture Caption]

The three past chairmen of the ROC Consumers' Foundation attended the banquet marking the foundation's seventh anniversary. From left are Pai Hsing-san, Ch'ai Sung-lin, and Li Shen-i. (photo by Leeng Lih-pyng)

Consumer Reports is one of the country's most important sources of information for consumers. (photo by Arthur Cheng)

Consumer Reports is one of the country's most important sources of information for consumers. （photo by Arthur Cheng）