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When I was little, my mother warned me never to accept gifts from strangers. Yours probably did, too. That's because the brightly dressed man on the corner offering us "free candy" doesn't really mean free. He really wants something from us.
So how come when we grow up and get a job and a couple of credit cards, we become such pitiful suckers for "Free Stuff!"?
It's because as kids we easily learned the fear (now long gone), but we never learned the difficult truth underneath: that "free" frequently means "you owe me." The man with bright clothing offers the children free candy so that they will stop and examine the yo-yos he is selling. Having accepted his gift, they feel obliged to at least try the yo-yo, perhaps even to buy one.
This type of planted obligation is a famous psychological principle called "reciprocity." It's chapter two in Robert Cialdini's splendid book, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. We all live by it, knowingly or not. Followers of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon have made millions of dollars for their boss by giving away free flowers to strangers, and then pleading for a donation. Reciprocity works. Think of the free address labels you get in the mail from charities. They do that because it is proven to boost response.
On the Web, "free" is one of the most popular tools used to persuade surfers to become online spenders. "Click Here For Cool Free Stuff," goes the tease. You think, what have I got to lose? So you click there. Look at all the great stuff you might win: two round-trip airline tickets, a PowerBook, US$1,000 cash, a US Robotics X2 Sportster, a BMW Z3 Roadster. Enter to win. Sure, why not.
To paraphrase the great contemporary capitalist-philosopher H. Ross Perot: When they say "free," hold on to your wallet, folks. Are you ever going to win a free X2 or Z3 simply by clicking through a banner ad? No, you are not. Instead, you will fantasize about winning a Z3, driving that Z3 down Highway 101 with that blond waif or buff stud you almost met last weekend. You will begin to notice others driving your Z3 down the road. You might stop by a dealership, look into what the monthly payments would run you. You might end up buying one, or convincing a friend to buy one.
Enter to win: You won't win, but you will enter the company's marketspace. Instead of getting free stuff, you will enter into an invisible contract of consumption, seduced by the mirage of $0, the illusion that you may actually get something for nothing. If you paused to think about it for a moment, you would recognize it for the simple contradiction it is. That old quip about there being no such thing as a free lunch is just another annoying cliché that turns out to be true, and to be just as relevant to the Third Wave of civilization as it was to the first two.
In fact, the seductive illusion of $0 works increasingly well in the US culture of distraction and stark economic disparity. This is the same illusion that has helped massively inflate the level of revolving credit-card debt in recent years (from $54 billion in 1980 to $484 billion today), by convincing consumers that they're not just spending more and borrowing more - most importantly, they are getting more free stuff. Frequent-flier points, camping gear, "cash back." In my case, for several years, my profligate Visa spending was rewarded with free Apple computer equipment. Did the lingering carrot of Apple rewards ever make that decision to purchase the pricey sports jacket just a little bit easier? No, it made it a lot easier. With Apple stuff, I became my own best salesman. "David, sweetheart, here's the absolutely beautiful thing about it - you're not spending money so much as getting money back!"
This is the same proposition that has spiritually impoverished millions of disadvantaged people in the United States who steadily pour significant percentages of their income into state-run lotteries. In New York, where I live, the state government goads down-on-their-luck dreamers with TV commercials of yachts and castles, and with the slogan "Hey, you never know." (What's that crawly feeling on the back of my neck: Doesn't that hey-you-never-know guy sound an awful lot like the drug pusher with the cheesy mustache?)
It has come to this: Our own government is in the highly profitable business of manufacturing fanciful reveries for its poorest, least-educated citizens. Thanks to the Lotto-billions in state revenue, relatively affluent homeowners can pay less property tax. The whole setup stinks. (What was that Marx said about class antagonism?)
Get free stuff when you buy stuff. Here at the apex of capitalism, citizenship and consumerism are indistinguishable from one another, and consumers are so flushed with purchasing zeal they no longer discern the difference between merchandise and marketing, between opportunity and fantasy, between what is truly free in life and what costs us a bundle.
This article appeared originally in HotWired.
