FYI WARNING: July 1 Ca. Veh Code Changes - $285 fine for cellphone use without hands-free device while driving, etc.

Discussion
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My best friend who is building a house in his backyard in Berkeley, and there by definition has the patience of Jesus when it comes to authority abused, had his feathers slightly ruffled when driving home from home depot with a shower door. He had to lower the back seat and so his teenage daughter was sitting in the back without a seatbelt when the cop pulled him over for no apparent reason. The fine was $500 for a minor not wearing a seatbelt. and the cop waited around until he saw the kid get on the bus (with herMom). The bus has no seatbelts, but thats a gvmnt vehicle.

Also, Starchild I applaud your enthusiasm about getting the posters out there. even though we have to reign it in sometimes.

On your problems with promotion and advertising, I think you throw the baby out with the bathwater. Freedom of expression is an essential liberty, including the freedom to present people with new ideas and new services. Like all human activities, thetools are sometimes if not often used to promote unhealthy or destructive, or aesthetically displeasing behaviors. However, sometimes the tools promote valuable knowledge, and are even quite creative in and of themselves. If you choose to join the Luddites in rejecting many forms of free market promotion, that is your choice, I don't see why we should cower to the desires of a few Luddites. when working to spread our nearly invisible ideas.

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Phil,

  I'm curious about what part of marketing and public relations you acknowledge to be dirty bathwater, so I can find out where we are in agreement.

  Freedom of expression is indeed an essential human liberty, but I'm afraid that the dehumanization of individual people into demographics via marketing, and the spinning and concealing of the truth via public relations have little to do with the genuine expressions of individual human beings. Much more typically they are the calculated efforts of large organizations to scientifically manipulate members of the public.

  Yes it is a matter of degree, and hence difficult to apply a clear standard of exactly when more authentic methods of communicating with others as part of a commercial venture or political cause cross the line into marketing and PR. And yes, people often have the legal right to do these things even when they clearly cross a line. But that doesn't mean we should turn a blind eye to the alienating and dehumanizing processes so often at work. Nor as William Safire said, does having the right to do something necessarily make it right to do it.

Love & Liberty,
        <<< starchild >>>

P.S. - Compare the following hypothetical fortune cookie fortunes:

(1) "You will soon make a major purchase after concluding that you really need the product."
(2) "You will soon make a major purchase as the result of a successful marketing campaign."

(1) "You will have your opinion swayed by a persuasive argument."
(2) "You will have your opinion swayed by a successful public relations effort."

Which of the fortunes in each pair would you prefer to be yours?

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There is the medium and the message. Yes being aware of the medium and resisting certain messages is a good idea.but just because a tool is abused by others and many folks resent the abuse, does not mean that we should eschemw the methods of reaching peples *dare I say it, hearts and minds, with the ideas of liberty.

Marketing to the luddites can also be done, and we can leave that to you. After Toms of Main and Dr Bonners Peppermint soap, not to mention the old VW bugs , were very successfully sold to the counter culture

Even the ideas of resisting mass media need to be spread and sold. Do you think the authors of books on this subject never had a book signing?

The world is full of people with bad taste and bad values who consume all kinds of stuff that they do not need. Looking on the bright side , it appears that as people get wealthier for a period of time, then valuues change to be more directed to arts, music , philosophy, nature and minimal consumption. If allowed to prosper , we can look forward to a less gaudy society. All of the rich folks I know lost the neauveau rich need to consume in the second generation of wealth. The richest families I knew growing up had Monets on the walls, but never ever updated the kitchen, and drove old dodges into the ground.

But in order to have old money, first you have to have new money. So embrace the Escalades, the Wall Marts and the Big Macs, Shreck III promotions, and 54" surround sounds, for someday, one can hope, they will morph into ramshackle old cabins in Maine, Dickens on the bookshelf,with no TV and clam soup in the iron pot.

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Phil,

  Don't confuse the counterculture, or people who resent marketing, with Luddites. The counterculture frequently embraces new technology and new uses for the old -- look at the way rave DJs turned turntables into musical instruments, for example, and how the scene employed computer-generated visuals and took them to creative new levels.

  And often it is people who've been exposed to lots of marketing who are turned off by it. Consider the crude commercials of the early days of radio and television. Listening to and watching them now, it's hard to see how people were swayed by such heavy-handed pitches for products. And yet they were -- for a while. Gradually however, as they were bombarded with more and more ads, people became more resistant and suspicious of efforts to push things on them. I think this is reflected in how people feel about business. As Gallup Polls put it in a recent report ( http://www.galluppoll.com/content/Default.aspx?ci=27946&pg=1 ):

Big vs. Small Business

There is an enormous difference in Americans' confidence in business -- depending on the one-word adjective placed before the word "business" when the list is read to respondents. Only 18% of Americans express a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in big business, compared to 59% who express confidence in small business.

Confidence in big business has never been high, reaching its maximum of 34% in 1974. Even in the halcyon days of the dot.com boom in the late 1990s, only 30% of Americans expressed a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in big business. The current 18% confidence rating in big business is the same as last year, and remains the lowest in Gallup history.

  One might think that big business would inspire more confidence, since size is the result of commercial success, but just the opposite is true. Although people are obviously still buying the products and using the services of large companies, I think they increasingly alienated by the impersonal practices that are more prevalent with large businesses, i.e. marketing and the whole mindset/approach that tends to go with it.

  What you say about new money being more into tasteless or gaudy consumption is I think true on average. But in this thread I was criticizing marketing, not tacky consumption, though they are perhaps related. Your example of a book signing -- a form of direct, unmediated contact to which I have no objections -- makes me think you still do not really understand what I am saying about marketing and public relations. Spreading ideas is one thing. Selling them is another. Marketing them (going about selling in a very planned, impersonal way) is yet another. There are degrees of alienation involved.

Love & Liberty,
          <<< starchild >>>