Starving the Monkeys: Fight Back Smarter

by Tom Baugh

  That commercial made the beauty-pageant Moms look half-sane. And it will be a long time before I will go there even alone because I don't want to look like I'm there for the show. I also don't want to look like I'm hoping to watch the little girls practice what they saw on TV as they wait in line. This from a guy who sees hitting a strip club as a legitimate and essential way to enjoy the local culture, as essential as hearing some local bands or trying the ethnic dish. Even I have limits.

  Most marketing isn't as ham-handed. Some of it is so subtle as to almost escape attention, which almost seems contradictory. Not so, once you appreciate that the best marketing speaks to your subconscious mind while simultaneously trying to avoid triggering your conscious mind. A long time ago, Wal-Mart, founded in Bentonville, Arkansas, was a regional chain which appealed to a western cowboy ethic. In that day, their logo was a saloon font which made you think everyone in there should be wearing a Wild West sheriff's badge. For their region, this was a great thing.

  But as the chain grew, that font probably stifled their image, or at least threatened to. As a consequence of growth, they moved into regions of the country where western-ness seemed about as silly and out of place as a Texan trying to run a business or run for President without Daddy's oil money. As proof of this, recall what happens to Texans who run for President based solely on their own entrepreneurial resources or their own ideas of government. Any idea which doesn't originate from the GalvestonHouston-Dallas-Fort Worth corridor is dead on arrival. Even non-Texans shun these native outsiders as not sufficiently Texan.

  Had Wal-Mart not changed their logo, they would have faced an unending uphill struggle with non-Western housewives. Each of these ladies might imagine that every towel in the place had patterns woven with little boy fantasies of "Cowboys and Injuns". Or hung on racks which looked like horns on a Cadillac. Tacky. So, in 1981 the logo changed to the blocky sans-serif which we recognize today. Deftly, they decoupled their image from their previous ethic. All was fine for a decade.

  Then, Wal-Mart added a generic star in 1992 as the candidacy of Clinton resonated with younger voters or other budding or established domestic communists. All of these were unhappy with the elitist presidency of Bush, and instead were looking for an elitist all their own, hopefully with fresh new Stalinist ideas. Sadly for them, they would have to wait almost a decade for another collectivist Texan to help them in their Stalinist quest and lay the foundation for a dyed-in-the-wool Marxist to arise.

  The 1992 Wal-Mart star might be interpreted as a tip-of-the hat not only to these domestic communists, but also the Chinese who were beginning to make everything in the place. And the older generations would be pleased as well, associating that star with that seen on every tank and truck they had ridden into battle. Clever. That marketing ploy managed to sweep them all in, from both sides of the collectivist spectrum.

  But today, the Chinese are threatening to directly sell their own brands in this country. As I write this, rumors abound that GM is about to import Chinese-branded cars, presumably sporting a Red Chinese star. Other brands and products will likely follow soon. For the millions who shop WalMart, lacking any real options, the association with that red star might be uncomfortably close. I wonder whether this reasoning had any influence on the 2008 change of the logo to include a sun-burst instead of the classic star. A change which hit the streets a year or so ahead of even rumors about Chinese-branded products hitting the shores?

  But just dropping the star or changing its shape wouldn't be enough. Your subconscious mind would still be too likely to plug it in, just as you see your child's face as you talk to her on the phone. To prevent your subconscious from even visualizing the old star, the font had to change, as well as the color. Even the new sunburst shape was moved to the side, effectively decoupling the old star completely in your mind by erasing the previous image entirely.

  Sounds paranoid? OK. About as paranoid as thinking I can force an older person to think of the color "yellow" just by having him read the words "juicy" and "fruit" in the proper context. Or make a kid think of a goofy yellow sponge just by singing "Ohhhhhhhh..." in the right intonation.

  There is no nuance too subtle to escape the attention of an effective marketer, or as sometimes used, propagandist. Even the impression of paranoia is designed to program your subconscious mind to "just be reasonable" instead of suspicious at the intrusion and manipulation.

  Essentially, the marketer is trying to shortcut not only the necessity of thinking for yourself, but also your willingness to do so.

  Marketing is a necessary thing in the modern world. It is a consequence of free trade, but is too often used to thwart free trade. It is impossible to imagine a circumstance in which one ancient woodman didn't tell his customers that his wood was better or safer or more woodish than some other woodman's wood. And then to begin lying about these things.

  It is a lot easier to lead people to believe that your product is better than another one than it is to actually make it a better product. Making a better product is a lot more expensive than making a better marketing campaign. So, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out, on average, where the dollars will go. And if that doesn't work, it is a lot easier and cheaper to weave a marketing web to convince the masses to regulate that better product out of existence. Or, to automatically assume that your product is superior in some subjective way. As a last resort, factual details can be presented in such a way as to distort reality.

  Legitimate marketing is not like this. Legitimate marketing genuinely informs potential customers about the features of your product or service, and the benefits they can expect to receive when using it. Legitimate marketers might undertake their task either passively or actively, or more likely, use both in succession to help you become aware of their product. A passive marketer can perform research to understand the true needs of their potential customers. Or, how those customers respond to product or service prototypes to discover potential flaws or shortcomings in the design.

  Once a product or service concept is fully understood through this research, the legitimate firm might then design a product or service to fill that need. Then, they would employ active marketing to inform their potential customers about the product or service and how it might benefit them. And, by the way, where they can buy it.

  This legitimate process is what a productive value-based individualist might employ or demand for his company. In quality of life terms, a legitimate marketer looks for unsatisfied gaps in a customer's quality of life matrix. He then figures out ways to fill those needs by supplying stuff, push, time or energy which meets those needs. Sometimes, the customer has a potential gap in their quality of life matrix, but doesn't understand that the need even exists. In that case, the legitimate marketer might find the gap during the research, design the product, and then educate potential customers first about the gap, and then how the product meets the need.

  For example, it might be discovered that joint pain is reduced in workers who stand on their feet all day by providing a certain kind of arch support. Perhaps research is conducted specifically to find out what support works best for these workers, or this research simply pops out of some unrelated work by someone else. Shoe Company A might then decide to use this information to make a brand of shoe specifically directed at this kind of worker, and then use active marketing showing some before and after dramatizations. Perfectly legitimate. The customers have a -ΔQ factor in their life, sore joints, and Shoe Company A has created a product which resolves this -ΔQ factor.

  On the other hand, illegitimate marketing uses deceit or ungrounded fear to make you inclined to buy their product or service. In this case, the passive marketing stage takes customer feedback not to resolve shortcomings, but instead to devise a marketing strategy to bypass any negatives in the offering. The active phase of illegitimate marketing then doesn't educate the customer, but instead weaves a web of "spin" around him.

  This web of spin can take several forms.
First, the quality of life factors themselves can be manipulated to view the marketer's offering more attractively, or to view the competitor's offerings more negatively. This can be either a good thing or a bad thing, depending on whether this factor adjustment is done based on facts or nonsense.

  Another form of spin is to artificially inflate a product or service's features. This type of marketing is universally illegitimate. A computer chip maker might hype their product as using little power, and then claim that this feature alone is important. Clearly, this approach is intended to make you not look too closely at the raft of shortcomings which chip might have for most users.

  A related form of spin is to artificially downplay a negative feature about an offering. This, too is universally illegitimate. For example, a promotion might claim "our saw only rarely decapitates," or more likely, "our saw cures headaches."

  Suppose in our standing worker example that, before the miracle shoe, most workers instead took a painkiller tablet each day to head off their pain. That pill may be only pennies a day, while the shoe may be seen as a little too much to pay. Shoe Vendor A might then cite a study which shows that "joint pain, if ignored, can lead to disabling injury later in life." OK, that sounds legitimate, right? Maybe, but not if they also fail to present the next paragraph from that same study which says, "Fortunately, simple exercises can be performed which have been clinically shown to permanently prevent either pain or later injury."

  Now let's assume that a workplace health service starts which offers to teach these exercises to employees at various companies. To the shoe company, this is a threat which cannot be tolerated. It might embark on the following marketing campaigns:

  "No study has been performed which says that treating workplace joint pain with painkillers is effective at avoiding future injury. Buy ShoeWedge!"

  "Exercise can help with workplace joint pain, but only if administered by appropriately trained personnel with the proper equipment. Beware of practitioners who claim they can treat your pain on site. Buy ShoeWedge!"

  "Workplace joint injury, caused by ill-fitting or improper shoes, threatens your ability to work. Ask your shop steward to demand that your employer provide you with the proper safety equipment."

  "Workplace joint injury, caused by ill-fitting or improper shoes, threatens our national competitiveness. Write your Congressman and demand that your health be protected."

  And through cutouts, "Some painkillers can adversely affect those with allergic reactions. Demand that Congress limit access to sharing medications in our schools and at our jobs."

  And, more silently, the vendor sends lobbyists to Washington to ensure that when such workplace regulation is enacted, these regulations happen to fit nicely within the boundaries of Shoe Company A's ShoeWedge patents. And promote regulations which seek to block the availability of legitimate painkillers. And impose licensing and other restrictions on practitioners who may have a legitimate claim of success.

  Illegitimate marketing cannot stand the test of truth. And so, left to its own, free trade would eventually weed out those customers most susceptible to deception. For example, headless saw users rarely ever are repeat customers, headaches or no. Or for that matter, workers who stand on their feet all day will figure out what works best for them, shoe, pill or exercise, and spread it around. Those who ignore great advice will then be less productive and less capable, and eventually learn or give way to others who will.

  To survive, then, illegitimate marketers rely on ignorance and coercion to help them in their work. And to that end, marketers focus more and more, not on the expert in a field who might give them trouble, but instead upon the masses of those who are not as well informed about their offerings.

  Increasingly, just as it is cheaper to spin than it is to produce a great product, it is even more easy to advocate regulations which favor a particular product or service. Without regulations to the contrary, free trade would eventually discover spin and weed it out. With regulations in place, however, free trade is forbidden to ferret out the spin. Even the attempt is deemed criminal.

  Monkeys invented and support shamans, lawmakers, regulators, lawyers, accountants and all the other regulatory and regulatory compliance workers. As if these weren't bad enough to extract value from the individual, now even the relatively benign deceit of the marketer has been turned to the monkey's purpose. The regulatory marketers serve the collective, and ultimately the will of each monkey, as he whips the collective into more and more regulation and restriction of the individual.

  It is in this environment that the modern entrepreneur finds himself struggling to succeed against increasingly larger odds.

  Chapter 15, Entrepreneurial Success

  Once you make the decision to leave the comfortable prison of your cubicle or union shop to strike out on your own, you take upon yourself the challenges which have been specifically designed to break your spirit. Suitably broken, it is your purpose then to return to your cage. Once there, your place is to serve the monkey collective, to feed them, to provide for them, to sacrifice yourself for their noble purpose. Gone are the days in which you could happily trade your efforts and skills to others, enriching yourself by providing the stuff of quality of life.

  The obstacles are too high now. You now have been reduced to the level of a bare animal, yoked to their gleaming plows. The exercises from a few chapters back should have shown you your jailers. And how many of them there are.

  They surround us. And yet, if you were to listen to conservatives, you would hear that there is plenty of opportunity for excellence. Then, they hold themselves up as examples of success, but fail to mention that there are precious few opportunities to be a television pundit, or talk show host, or former Speaker of the House. Or best-selling author.

  The people who promote entrepreneurship, in the classical rags to riches model, could be seen as merely naive and misguided. Provided, of course, you didn't examine their sponsors very closely, or examine their own views of ways in which their side seeks to control your lives. We will look into a few of these things shortly, but they hope that by struggling, you will eventually feed their own enterprises with the ideas which they need to continue. Both sides of the political spectrum set traps for your productivity and energy, and use your own energy to feed themselves.

  At least the progressives are honest about their intentions to enslave you. If they were the only problem we might at least have a fighting chance. But the country club collectives set more obscure traps. They then try to hijack your loyalty to them as "fellow businessmen." Each of their pet issues assists their large collectives, while crippling your entrepreneurial business.

  As I give these examples, try to spot which collective benefits at your expense. Hint: sometimes both sides benefit as you lose.

  Want to paint houses better than the next guy? The collective imports slave labor to underprice you as you struggle with their regulations.

  Thousands reading this know how to solve the problem of nuclear waste by converting it into safe and useful things. But these thousands will never have the chance to break through the walls of regulation to try.

  Energy is all around us, but your ideas will be crushed under building codes and safety and environmental laws if you try to flesh them out.

  Some are particularly skilled at teaching children but they are resisted by unions on the left and shamans on the right. The liability insurance alone for opening a private school would dash your hopes to provide this service. And in many jurisdictions, you can teach your own children in homeschool, but can't teach the children of others. Even if their parents beg you to do this for them.

  Farming, the most fundamental of all the trades, is increasingly overwhelmed with regulations and compliance as their operators try to feed us. The choking out of the family farm paves the way for collective farming, operations whose shares are held by the power brokers.

  We hail bio-fuels as our salvation, as we fine and arrest the hobbyist who tries
it, calling him a tax evader. These things are only useful to the extent which they provide revenue and jobs, we are taught.

  Energy, in particular, is a key area in which the productive mind is stifled. We saw earlier that energy is the foundation of civilization. It is no wonder, then, that energy has the most stifling influences of all of them.

  Let's take a simple example and see where the obstacles lie. Over a kilowatt of energy strikes each square meter of the surface of the earth when the sun is at its zenith. While we argue over how best to fund the Chinese for solar cells which might capture twenty percent of this, we ignore Sadi Carnot. His writings tell us that even simple solar thermal installations might capture as much as twenty-five percent of the incident energy. But even a fraction of that would be better than the zero of it we collect today.

  For example, a low efficiency thermal collector would trap some of this energy. Simple thermal collectors do not require specialized manufacturing as do solar panels. So, these would be accessible to everyone with a garage where they might work and have the urge to try. Entirely new industries might arise to supply the components. But the hobbyists who would develop these industries are prevented from using the ammonia or ethanol which would be required as working fluids. After all, these materials might supply a drug lab or evade a tax.

  Plus, in many jurisdictions the skylines are choked with subdivisions which don't allow you to put a collector of any kind on your roof. Yes, each resident agreed to these restrictions, but practically speaking, they had no choice. Good luck finding a home in most suburban areas which isn't part of a subdivision.