Coyote Blog

This is yet another in a series of posts on the value of branding (previous iterations include here and here).  Socialists and anti-capitalists often deride branding as, at best, a complete waste of resources and at worst a huge value destruction in that the marketing associated with branding tricks consumers into buying products they don't want or need.  This argument that consumers effectively lack agency in the face of corporate marketing is characteristic of a broader class of capitalist critiques that assume the powerlessness of individuals to make good choices.

I don't buy into these critiques because I think individuals are hugely powerful in a capitalist system, far more powerful in fact than they are in any more authoritarian system  (just ask Toys R Us and Pontiac).  Brands are obviously useful to producers as they help create barriers to entry and a potential basis for obtaining a price premium.  But they also have benefits to consumers.  I ran into one this morning.

My 21-year-old daughter is in another city and called to say that she thought she had a bad tire on her car and was not sure what to do.  Every dad worries about his daughter when she is on her own (I know, patriarchy, but I am not apologizing) and this is particularly true in car repair because women have historically been taken advantage of in many car repair situations.  But I sent her without hesitation to the local Discount Tire store.  That's because I knew from past experience with several of the stores in this chain that the stores were clean and safe and the people who worked there were fair -- they have never tried to charge us for something we don't need.  My wife goes there all the time because she is kind of panicky about her tires and most of the time they tell her the tires are fine and fill them with a bit of air and send her on her way with no charge.  They easily could have sold her a crapload of tires she didn't need but have never done so.  So it was with relief that I saw Discount Tire had a store near her.  Sure enough, she just needed air (is this sort of tire-related behavior genetic?) and they were very nice to her and filled up the tire and told her she was fine.

This is the power of branding.  From a distance, without any chance to inspect or check out the establishment, I knew exactly what the store would look like and was pretty confident how their employees would treat my daughter.  That has real value.

As background, I live in a town called Paradise Valley, Arizona.  This town is perhaps most famous recently for installing surveillance cameras all over town hidden in fake cacti.  Here is the one on my block.  There are at least two others within walking distance of my house.
    

These cameras apparently have license plate reading ability and perhaps the ability to do facial recognition, and likely are funded by Homeland Security for the purposes of feeding data into a national tracking database.  I say "likely" because the town of Paradise Valley under Mayor Michael Collins somehow appropriated these things secretly without any public discussion or debate.

So in this context, it was hilarious to see none other than Mayor Michael Collins piously intoning about the importance of privacy in the town of Paradise Valley:

Paradise Valley is considering an ordinance that would make it illegal to fly drones in town without a permit. Backyard hobbyists and law-enforcement agencies that may need to use drones during emergencies would be excluded from the proposed ban.

"Our residents move to Paradise Valley because they like the privacy," said Mayor Michael Collins, who presides over a community that counts celebrities, sports stars and Discount Tire founder Bruce Halle, the richest person in Arizona, among its residents.

What Mr. Collins apparently means is that he wants the government to maintain a monopoly on surveillance technologies.  Libertarians like myself cringe at the notion that a monopoly on privacy-invasion should be granted to the government, the only institution in the country that can legally jail you, take your money, and even shoot you. Conservatives, who dominate this community, tend to be blind to this danger, saying that "if you aren't doing anything illegal, you have nothing to fear from surveillance."  I will say, though, that some Conservatives have woken up a bit over the last several years on this with the IRS non-profit harassment and the Wisconsin John Doe investigations.

By the way, extra credit to the Arizona Republic for gratuitously publishing where a wealthy citizen lives in a sentence about privacy.