The Freeman 1972 - The Ludwig von Mises Institute

526 THE FREEMAN SeptemberI give, as ~xample, the lobbywalls of a college building that Iknow very well. At one time thiswas a handsome lobby with wallsof thick marble; you could walkfrom one end of the building to theother and the walls would be clear.SOIne years ago an enterprisingentrepreneur decided to use somefree advertising space. He pastedup a sign. It was the only sign onthe wall; everybody looked at it,saw the message. I don't rememberwhat the message was orwhether it was torn down', but I doremember that soon afterwardthose walls were full of signs. Asyou walked down the passage, youcould read all kinds of messages,all kinds of student activities, nonstudentactivities, student nonactivities.It was fairly easy tolearn about what was going onsimply by reading the signs.At first,. the signs did not haveto be big. But as advertisers sawthe opportunity, the free spacegradually filled up. The Ricardianrent theory came into play; all thefree land was in use. And as thefree land or space was taken, ofcourse, it became more and moreimportant to get up early to pasteup your sign. That was the "rent,"the high price, getting up early.But more than that, it became necessarynow to arouse all kinds ofinterest in me in order to get meto read these signs. In otherwords, the variety and multiplicityof messages make it harder andharder to get a hearing.The Price of AffluenceWe live in a world which is oftendescribed as an "affluent society."An affluent society is one in whichthere are many, many opportunitiesplaced before consumers. Theconsumer enters a supermarketand if he is to make a sensible, intelligentdecision he is going tohave to spend several hours calculatingvery carefully, reading, rereadingeverything that's on thepackages and doing a complete researchjob before feeding all theinformation into the computer andwaiting for the optimum packageto be read off. It's a tough job tobe a consumer. And the multiplicityof opportunities makes itnecessary for advertisers, for producers,to project more and moreprovocative messages if they wantto be heard. This is a cost of affluence.It is a cost, certainly;something that we'd much ratherdo without, if we could; but wecan't.The. number of commoditiesthat have been produced is sogreat that in order for anyoneparticular product to be broughtto the attention of the consumera large volume of advertising isnecessary. And we can expect toget more and more. Is it part of