So you are still selling goods in your shop but you don’t have many people coming in to buy. How can you increase the number of people who purchase goods from your shop? The answer is advertising. We see advertising everywhere. We even buy clothes that advertise the company that manufactured the clothes.
This is the case in every nation that uses a physical object money (POM). Those who have products to sell want every possible customer to know that these products are available, where, and when. A customer will not come to buy unless he knows there is something to buy. You cannot take your shop to the customer (we will assume this, although some tradesmen in the past did exactly that) so you must somehow get word to the potential customers.
You also have competition from the shop across the street. Both shops sell similar items. So you need to convince the customers that your shop has better products or less expensive products than that other shop. Otherwise customers might buy there instead of at your shop.
You send messages to customers in a variety of ways. The messages provide information but it is a special kind of information. It is information that persuades, whatever else it does. It probably provides information, perhaps a few laughs, perhaps it has something that catches the eye, and it may even set a tone of comfort, style, success, or whatever. This is a special kind of communication. This kind of communication is what we call advertising. It is a product of POM, really.
Now let’s say that you have the same shop but in an economy which has a money which is not a POM. In this hypothetical economy, money simply appears in one’s account when it is earned and ceases to exist when it is used to buy things. So Joe works hard and does good things and $100 appears in Joe’s account. If Joe had done bad things no money would have appeared there. If Joe had worked less hard and produced less net benefit for the people in his community, he would have had less money appear in his account. So you would like to have Joe buy things in your shop. By selling items to Joe you will be doing something good for Joe and for your community because you will be rewarding Joe for the work he did. Therefore, you will have money appear in your account. Joe enters your shop and buys an item. The money Joe spends does not get transferred to you because when Joe or anyone else spends money that particular money merely ceases to exist. The money that appears in your account for selling to Joe is not the money that Joe spent. But what do you or Joe care? You are gaining money and Joe is buying things he wants to have. Joe doesn’t care what happens to the money he spends and you don’t care how money happens to appear in your account so long as you are confident that the money that appears there will be at least a reflection of how much net benefit you have provided others. In other words, if you get paid for the value of your work, you don’t care how it happens.
So to get Joe and others like him to come to your shop you want to advertise. So you go to the newspaper and ask them to put the message you have prepared in their paper. They look at the message and say they will be happy to put in the location and hours of business of your shop. They will be happy to include accurate descriptions of your stock. But they will not be willing to include those very subjective and obviously exaggerated claims about how good your stock is. They also refuse to print the picture of the barely dressed young woman holding an item from your shop. They also refuse to print the part about how much better your shop is than the one across the street. In other words, they are willing to provide accurate information, education, if you will, but they will not print lies or do anything else that they think might mislead a customer.
Why would they refuse? Well, you aren’t paying them. You can pay to have the message placed in their paper. But that money simply ceases to exist when you spend it. They are paid for the good things they do for their readers, for providing information that will help or entertain their readers, not for lying to them. Therefore, you can walk up and down the street saying whatever you wish about your store but no one else will help you lie about it to others because that would cost them money to do so and you can’t give them money.
In this economy that uses a different kind of money which is not a POM, there is no way for you to use money to reward someone for helping you hurt others in some way. You can buy items and offer those items (physical objects or services) for such help but then it would be obvious who hired them and you, also, would lose money for causing that harm. You could not benefit from advertising and no one else would either. Therefore, there would be no advertising if there were no POM. There would be education, making information available to those who need or want it, but there would be no ads.
You hold a gun in your hand. The gun is loaded. Is the gun evil, immoral, saintly, good, or none of the […]
Since 1989, Steffen Frederiksen have been working with the creation, management and distribution of structured, reusable business content (operating procedures, business policies, product information, manuals, etc.). The work included methods, software tools, training workshops and CMS solutions.
The island had temporarily eclipsed our sliding to da simmerdim (mid-summer) with gales, plummeting temperatures and freak showers… But then again, our world is resilient and it was with a certain delight a day out on the Westside of the island led us to many magical encounters. What a way to begin a brand new week!
our world full of birds oystercatcher, redshank, lapwing, meadow pipit… Adult and young in a world filled with blue.
Arcania is teeming with life, as we wandered towards the edge of the west side. The more west we wandered, the more we found life on our way…
We met with Mark and shared a moment in the sun. My eyes riveted to the blue on either side of the horizon, and spoke of wild flowers encountered alongside embankments… marsh marigold, common butterwort, cuckoo flower…. A myriad of colours to welcome mid-summer in this nordic lushness.
And then, as we made our way back towards the 60th Parallel, I stopped and marveled at the evening sun beaming though leaves of a few trees – back-lit moment here, in our world. Time stopped as blackbirds filled silence with their song. What a grand way to end Monday!
The very first thing you notice when you approach the summit of a headland (well, apart from the salt from the ocean carried by relentless wind gusts!) is that sudden cacophony; a bit like the Royal Albert Hall, or le Palais Garnier, in surround sound! High pitched, non-stop, storytelling in a multitude of avian languages!
To live on the edge of the North Atlantic, common guillemots (once called “petits pingouins” by French explorers on their voyage to Canada in the time of Jacques Cartier) find nesting safety in numbers on stacks. The chocolate colour member of the auk family – a cousin to the more maverick razorbill and the ever so clumsy looking puffin – returns to those rocky pinnacles to lay an egg even without bothering building a nest. The conical shape of the bluish stained egg somewhat prevents (or limits) a fall in the ocean…
To stand at the very top of the headland allows you to converse with feathers and exchange glances at close range.
That’s exactly what I did today with a few avian friends. “Johnathan” – not Seagull! – …Seagulls do NOT exist! “My Johnathan” happens to be the very affectionate name I once gave to fulmars, (the miniature version and very distant relative of the Southern Hemisphere based albatross) as I began to make my acquaintance with them on a more professional basis when wardening on and around this “belfry”, Sumburgh Head, now some nine years ago. I came to appreciate a world as real as it could be, not that bubble we, humans, have built around ourselves. A very raw, somewhat “harsh”, “tough” world in which the very concept of natural evolution as well as Darwinian concept of “survival of the fittest”… Here, you really witness life and death as it happens live.
Prey and predator live side by side, as wanted by nature to regulate itself. Many folk perceive predators, such as bonxies (aka great skua, as pictured on the right) as a pest… What those same folk forget to understand (or ignore) is that they have a very disctinctive function around bird colonies: they clean them of sick/injured birds, hence preventing epidemics on cliffs… Every creature has a function on Earth, otherwise, it simply does NOT exist.
The island has already begun to display a palette of colours all around. Now with June approaching, thrift (or sea pinks) have added to the myriad of petals around the headland, as well as on road verges and in ditches. The island is shining in sheer splendour. Walking around the edge of my world full of birds never ceases to amaze the eye and heart. Night has turned blue. The wind may still rage outside my window as I type, however,
Beltane done and dusted, now we are sliding to summer. Temperature do not appear to go higher, and yet, blue now stretches well beyond nine (p.m. GMT). Cloudscapes fashion in exquisite shapes without shame… The other night, I saw two hounds above my head playing in blue. Aerial dream, as blackbird began to share its elaborate recital. Summer has come to the island.
The more I look to ground level, the more colours and signs of life meet the iris. It’s like a hymn or an anthem the world wishes to share with us. Explosive red of the campion – intimate bath of a skylark… And when plovers act as vigils, we know nesting is taking place.
That plethora of wild flowers begin to show: campion, sea pinks, kidney vetch, bird’s foot trefoil, cuckoo flower… Spring squill, marsh marigold, primrose and common mouse ear to name a few. I think Van Gogh would have loved my boreal meadows after Beltane. The light may not be Provençal, however, colours dare to explode in cool blue!
And when I look in the garden, my avian friends shine among daisies and bluebells, as they delight my Saturday morning!
Our librarians are devoted to share the power of the print, recorded voice or fiddler’s bid and endeavour to devour miles across islands to reach out to communities separated by roaring tides.
So, here and there, we come to gather and air pages or a song… Inside the walls of Ringan’s Church at the Hillhead, we are blessed by such dynamic team! Our librarians have a passion to share might of the spoken word and provides writings with a home, where we belong in all seasons…
Thank you, Fiona, for such evening – thank you, dear Shetland Library, for harbouring so many treasures and a home! Shetland Library
I love Northmavine. It’s wild, rugged, shaped by fire, time and tempests… Timed in granite, basalt and salt.
A trip to the Eshaness Peninsula, NW of the island, feels like a reunion with your true self. To stand to the edge of the cliffs, without fear of staring at the world with your heart wide open, reinstates your humility.
Eshaness is a magic place. There is no other word for it. It holds many secrets, dormant inside the many crystals molten rocks once solidified by a mystic jewel designer… On Beltane Eve (30 April), we came and found more than we thought.
We’ve always known of da peerie folk who roam at night and snatch fiddlers for reveling inside their homes deep inside earth… The miniature cast of the much more famous Scandinavian trolls, trows, as they’re known, only bring mischief around roads, crofts and our world. However, those supernatural creatures have their own Achilles heel: sunlight petrifies them at once and the faintest ray from our star turns them into rock… Now, I wonder.