A few days ago I was woken up one morning - holiday morning! - by a telephone marketing pitch that initially sounded like nothing so much as a creditor call.

It was not. That period of my life thankfully remains over. In fact by local law a collection agent would not even have been allowed to call on a holiday. And yet the learned reaction still sets in, teasing with a near panic: somewhere between hide and (once found) to do whatever it takes to make it Go Away!

Honest it was to the bare letter of honesty: not a single untrue word was spoken. Fair it was not, but since when has marketing ever specialised in fairness? Certain it is that this product would sell well among those who continued to run into financial trouble with credit cards; and so the campaign specifically targeted those with a history who might possibly have an emotional knee-jerk response to a creditor's call. No question, it would sell, and no law would have been broken. What else matters?

Marketing is a science of appearances.

All things in a purely capitalist society are measured in currency against supply and demand. Where the product has nothing whatsoever to do with survival needs and supply is potentially infinite, demand is created by the product's perceived impact on quality of life. In the absence of other checks or controls, such demand can be artificially stimulated or even created prior to the product's existence. In fact, such creation is desirable, for it grants the initiator a temporary monopoly. In a free market no such monopoly can last for long, though: and thus marketers come under perpetual pressure to create and build demand for the new and as yet non-existent.

Thus, in time, any purely capitalist society must inevitably must become a consumption society: as more and more products (or sometimes ways of marketing existing products) come into existence for the sole purpose of helping to fill a previously non-existent demand. This trend comes through even in something as seemingly basic as steepening technology curves: as each new innovation negates all that has gone before and eventually junks it, without necessarily improving product durability or quality. Even where the previous item may be perfectly adequate or even superior for the tasks for which it was intended, technological progress gradually eliminates access to outside compatabilities, forcing eventual replacement.

More new demands. More new products. More profit. More competition. The

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