Being the Customer

There are a few instances where Sammy is buying, selling, or otherwise procuring goods. He's acting like that normal bloke we all know and love, just with lots more cussing. However when he's pulled in from his bath, which let's be honest we all know he needed, and the questioning begins the police (or whomever they really are) start to refer to him not as a perp or criminal but rather as a "customer" that they have in their custody. The officers switch from explaining to the record keeper that "silence was the answer" (164) whenever Sammy does not reply to explaining that the "customer declines to answer" (167). As they question him about his race track luck he changes from Sammy into a customer. This language plucks them from their role as a servant of the people and places them as members of the service industry. Sammy therefore is no longer the criminal but rather a customer of the police service.

This language monetizes Sammy, he becomes the officers means of a profit. If a shop is to succeed in the free market then it needs to have people buying from it. The currency being exchanged is then the words that Sammy uses, the information that he is willing to give the officers. However, as they are so quick to point out and so willing to solicit from him, his information is not very good. This limits the potential profit they can make from his case, their own worth in the eyes of their superiors. As a result Sammy receives some horrible treatment and loses the freedom he had in his previous visit when he had the chance to lead them to something, to be profitable: the freedom to have his hands unbound. He is treated like a far worse criminal than he is because he is limiting their margins.

Harvey mentions in chapter 1 of A Brief History of Liberalism that "[t]he assumption that individual freedoms are guaranteed by freedom of the market" (7) is a key piece of neoliberal thinking. Sammy is a customer in the police shop, he has no money on him, no information to give, and blind. He has little worth to the marketplace of the police. If the market is guaranteeing freedoms then those unable to pay into the system become like Sammy: bound, barely fed, mocked, and worthless.

So where is Sammy's place in the economy? Is he just screwed from the beginning as the customer here? Is there any way for him to ever "earn" or provide a profitable means to the officers so they allow him the freedoms earned through market value? I cannay tell ye, it's fuckt.