commercialism

It is rare for economists and other champions of the marketplace to step outside of their worldview and see it as an ideological value-system.  How refreshing, then, to see the Wall Street Journal run a favorable review of Harvard political philosopher Michael Sandel’s new book, What Money Can’t Buy:  The Moral Limit of Markets.  The review, by Jonathan V. Last of the conservative Weekly Standard, notes that economistic thinking has exploded over the past generation, superimposing market criteria on countless aspects of personal and social life. 

In 1988, only three stadiums had the names of corporate overlords.  Now more than 100 companies have bought “naming rights” to stadiums.  I was shocked to learn that “brand extension” has even reached the level of requiring the announcers for the Arizona Diamondbacks to call home runs “Bank One Boomers.”  The degradation of a venerated national pastime shows how very deeply the tendrils of market thinking have penetrated.

This is only the beginning.  List writes:

"Today you can purchase your way out of waiting in line for rides at many amusement parks. There are express lanes that allow us to buy our way out of traffic. Many schools now 'incentivize' performance, paying students if they read books or do well in school; some schools now sell ads on children's report cards. Cities routinely sell advertising space on public property, ranging from parks and municipal buildings to police cars. In each of these cases, long-held ideas about inherent worth and common ownership have been displaced by the simple morality of the market. There are, Mr. Sandel notes, practical concerns with this shift, affecting matters such as equality: 'The more money can buy, the more affluence (or the lack of it) matters." But the higher concerns are philosophical and spiritual, about how we ought to value what he calls sweetly "the good things in life.'"

As the free-market siege of government intensifies, I propose a new index for assessing the desperation of municipalities.  Let’s call it the School Bus Hucksterism Index, or SBHI.  This scientifically calculated number will represent the number of school districts nationwide that have begun selling advertising space on their school buses, multiplied by the aggregate number of ads and the average revenue per bus.   

What was once a bizarre novelty – advertising on school buses – is becoming the new normal in many school districts.  It is an ominous sign of a great decline of our civic identities and commitment to place.  As the NYT reported this week:  

“Cash-hungry states and municipalities, in pursuit of even the smallest amounts of revenue, have begun to exploit one market that they have exclusive control over: their own property. With the help of a few eager marketing consultants, many governments are peddling the rights to place advertisements in public school cafeterias, on the sides of yellow school buses, in prison holding areas and in the waiting rooms of welfare offices and the Department of Motor Vehicles.”

The idea got its start in Colorado in the 1990s, and was picked up by Texas, Arizona, Tennessee and Massachusetts.  Now Utah has begun selling ads on the sides of it school buses and at least eight other states are considering doing the same.