The Underside of Innovation

One of the points of contention raised whenever a discussion of the merits of capitalism is broached concerns the topic of innovation. Capitalism spurs innovation better than any other economic system, we're told. Competition is the engine that drives it and self-interest is the fuel of competition.

While I have never bought into this argument -- I think communitarian-interest is just as valid -- I do recognize that capitalism has spurred much innovation in the past 200 years -- both in a positive AND negative sense.

In my opinion, base self-interest often doesn't discriminate between the two. For every positive innovation like the polio vaccine, we have negative innovations like nuclear bombs. When obtaining wealth for yourself is the chief goal, you divorce yourself from the morality of what you can develop.

What spurred me to write this little diatribe? The following story I read last week at PR Watch.

Fool junk mail recipients once, and then Fake penkeep fooling them over and over again. That's the hope of a Virginia-based direct mail marketing company that has developed a specialized machine that makes junk mail envelopes look like they have been hand-written.

RST Marketing, a Virginia-based, direct-mail marketing company, custom-makes its "Real Pen" machines and markets the technology to cash-strapped nonprofits and others seeking to raise funds or sell products through the mail. The machines can use any kind of pen, can create a custom font from any person's actual handwriting, and can even use multiple handwriting styles on the same page.

RST can crank out hundreds of thousands of fake hand-addressed envelopes per day. Its high-tech machines can even fake hand-write yellow sticky notes and affix them to marketing materials by machine. The machines make envelopes look like they've come from a real person who may actually know or care about you. RST Vice President Glen Thomas says, "With Real Pen, the machines run 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and they never take a break and never take lunch."

The fake "personal" touch helps lure unsuspecting mail recipients into opening junk mail more often. Testimonials on the company's web site say the open rate for fake handwritten junk mailers is about equal to the open rate for real handwritten mailers...

Yes, good old American know-how! With all the serious problems in this world today, people are coming up with methodologies to trick others into opening [junk] mail that seeks to drain them even more of the little money they have.

Don't it make ya proud?