"What Springsteen is doing is producing consumer product, not musical tradition. Therein lies the difference.

Pete Seeger did both, with a foot in the world of traditional music, and a foot in the world of commercial consumer product.

Springsteen only does one: commercial consumer product.

Reasonable arguments can be made that Springsteen, much as I adore him, isn't doing a bloody thing to "introduce" people to traditional music."

I don't think anyone has claimed that Bruce Springsteen is doing anything other than producing music. I don't think his intent was to "introduce" people to music either.   What he is doing is following Pete Seeger's lead and MAKING music that carries traditional songs into his own world.

As for "having a foot in the world of traditional music" - that is a very hard aspect to define. As soon as a song is sung in front of a microphone or an audience it looses it's "tradition".