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Saturday, June 15, 2002 Hello. The meter's running.NEWS-JOURNAL EDITORIAL Federal Trade Commission members are working over a deal to make telemarketers pay for the lists of people who don't want to be bugged by dinner hour sales pitches. Today, you pay the government to put your name on the list and the telemarketers don't pay anything for it. They also ignore it, I discovered after paying to get on that list. The sellers always have argued this is a free market economy and they have the right to interrupt your dinner with a sales pitch. That's how capitalism works, they claim. Your phone becomes their property, if that argument is correct. You pay to have them call you and you pay to ask not to be called but still get called. Or you can pay the phone company another $14 a month, plus tax, to thwart the callers. I have a better idea, one that thoroughly favors the free market economy and capitalism and also just might be a way to derail poverty. It's called advertisingOur residential telephones belong to us. We buy them and pay the bill to keep them working. It's our investment. So why not institute a truly capitalistic plan and sell telemarketers advertising time on our telephones? Since they are our telephones, we could set our own rates and raise them just like the good folks at the cable TV companies raise their rates all the time. If you receive 10 telemarketer calls a day and you sell them the right to call you on a per minute basis, just think how much money you can make. Handle it like Microsoft handles its customers, who pay Bill Gates' company a whopping $1.99 a minute to ask a question about the products the software giant sold them. But don't stop there. Be a good capitalist and sell the car dealers the rights to post their names on your car. Today, they do it for free! Since we're hauling their advertising message around all day, why not charge for the moving billboard our vehicles become? Since we have to wash and polish our cars, we could even add on a thing called a handling charge. How about $50 a day for the ad, plus $5 a week handling charge? You bought the T-shirt?Look at all those T-shirts with free advertising on them. If you're a really clean person, you might wear a particular shirt once a week, so why not charge an advertising rate for it? I think my fair charge would run about $100 a week, since I'm old and don't get around as much as the kids do. Naturally, I'll have a laundering charge. Yeah, let those kids charge a decent price to wear those ads. Now there's a way to get their college tuition paid in advance. Put your logo on any article of clothing that's visible and send the check to the person wearing it. Kids can charge a grand a day to wear that stuff. Sports teams all over America charge a fee for the players to wear the logo and name of a company. Why shouldn't citizens be able to do the same thing? That is the essence of a free market economy, isn't it? My plan calls for fees to knock on my door to pitch your products, religion and political thoughts to me, too. The rates are very high since I have to get up to answer one of those irritating door to door hawkers. I have arthritis and it aches to have to jump up and answer the door to hear a sales pitch. I'll add in a charge that will cover my arthritis drug for another century. When radio was bornWhen radio was born about 85 years ago, a thoughtful pioneer in the business had a wonderful idea. He wanted to give away radios to consumers so he could sell advertising time to companies. Today, you pay the cable or satellite company $40 to $100 or more to watch as many as 250 channels of advertising. Some channels do nothing but run ads all day but you are paying for them. I watch no more than six channels out of 50 I can receive. I think it is time to employ the idea of the old radio pioneer. Give away the TV sets and the cable, or pay me to watch your ads. It is my eyes and my ears those pitchmen are using to hawk their goods. I have to get my calculator to figure how much to charge to watch ads on TV. Retired journalist Bill Hill's column appears weekly in The Daily Journal. |
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