What if retail clothing establishments sold outfits. That is, they focused on selling a package of pants/jeans, undershirts, dress shirts, sweaters, sweater vests, sport jackets, scarves, ties, etc. that are meant to work together. And what if they sold these packages at a discount? The discount could be progressive so that the more items you purchased as part of the package the more you would save.

Here is why I would like this retail option: I like to look good, or at least match. I also like to feel like the hard work is done because I already have clothing that fits together. I also like a deal. This appeals to our human weakness for deals, like a late-night infomercial but classier. I want the knives, the cutting board, and the scissors that can cut a penny, especially when I am shown that when put together they are at their best.

Obviously, a lot of people enjoy creating their own outfits. The liberty of choices is another of our human weaknesses. Retailers already bend over backward to meet this need though. I concede there would need to some kind of balance struck between a total outfit approach and an a la carte approach, especially since even I don’t want to wear the same mass market outfit that I know (or may simply believe) 10 other guys along my path will be wearing that day.

But wouldn’t it be great if those stylish outfits draped over retail store mannequins–the ones comprising more layers than you thought possible–could be bought at a combo price? Perhaps fewer mid-priced belts and neckties would end up at Marshalls and TJ Maxx selling at $10 if their marginal cost, as part of a package, dropped the retail price from $30 to $15.

Note: This idea is free. I downright encourage its adoption and use.

We discussed this topic this morning in Boston at Web Ecology Camp 6 and the conversants brought up a lot of cost-benefit analysis suggestions around the question of whether users being more informed of this trade-off might adjust their behavior because of the loss of privacy or support of private interests through data they didn’t realize they were voluntarily contributing to the service or related services offered by the service provider. These are most relevant to the services people use most online: Google, Facebook, etc.

An enormous number of people use such services, and their value is heavily derived from the people offering their data to improve it. As Google tracks more or your online actions via Google Analytics and everyday search behavior, and Facebook offers their Connect platform to every other social or nascently social site on the web, the question of “How free is free?” becomes more relevant to any individual online.

I started by thinking about this in terms of “social contract” developed by Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau, where citizens cede certain personal freedoms assuming others will also in order to generate the public good of protection by the state. Locke’s limited government idea suggests that we stop at some point in where we ceded this control to the government. In other words, there is a tipping point separating ideal government from Hobbes’ Leviathan.

Exchanges online might have a similar tipping point: where free stops feeling like free to users. To continue with the government metaphor, The Patriot Act is a curious example. On the one hand, we started ceding extraordinary freedoms to the US federal government in exchange for perceived protection from terrorism. But this got too personal, too invasive to some when the attention turned to spaces like library records where we expect that our loan records are safe from Big Brother-like data systems. People responded very negatively to this and law suits were produced and people fought the system.

At the same time, a lot of people didn’t really feel the impact on their personal privacy. It didn’t affect them and they just proceeded according to a new norm, a new role of government in your life which you weren’t really aware if you it didn’t touch you. This is where I think human adaptability, a survival instinct, plays a large role in the question. We humans are empowered  by cognitive dissonance and adjusting to new environments in order to survive. Most Americans adjusted to the new norm of The Patriot Act and even if they were unsettled by the idea possible invasions to their privacy, they moved on with their lives. This is what allows people to function in dictatorial regimes or even individual predilections toward nihilism. Most people are pragmatic and move on.

So to answer the question of “Will knowing about how much personal data is collected by these companies change individuals behavior?” it probably falls into the same vein as The Patriot Act. People who can’t cope through cognitive dissonance will change their behavior and advocate for a reversal of the trend of greater invasions of privacy or loss of personal freedom. But these are massively outnumbered by the people that will simply move on with their lives, enjoy the services of the government or company to which they have offered their personal information…

…until a tipping point is reached. That tipping point is different for everyone. But their may be a somewhat definable collective tipping point, or the right catalyst invoked for massive response: the type of thing that generates popular protests (like those we have seen in the past two weeks in Tunisia and Egypt and might be spreading to other dictatorial regimes in the Middle East).

I’m excited to see what Sara’s panel comes up with regard this question. The panelists are on both sides of the situation too. And of course this applies both literally and figuratively. If you’re online: companies (and of course the government) are always watching.

If you haven’t seen the film, Howard Beale, the anchor of the nightly news program of a fictional fourth news network UBS, goes literally mad and takes the rest of his impoverished network with him. Hoping for greater and greater ratings / market share, the news program turns into bona fide edutainment with Howard Beale–a raving truth-spouting lunatic–at the center of the circus. Through most of the film, despite his psychosis, Beale is a character whom you can empathize with and even root for as he preaches against bullshit and encourages everyone to chant with him: “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.”

I expected to do a search online today and find a least a few clever writers comparing Network‘s antics to the last five to ten years of Fox News’ programming. I even speculated that if I failed to find such comparisons made by any of the other major cable or network news outlets, that they would be afraid to draw the edutainment criticism to themselves. What I didn’t expect to see was Wikipedia’s “Culture References” for Network to list examples of both Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck voluntarily comparing themselves to Howard Beale.

Certainly, the stage antics and truth-spouting style of Fox News’ personalities are reminiscent of Howard Beale’s exhortations. But Beale was truly mad. He heard voices telling him what to say.  Beale’s popularity wanes after a transformative encounter with the chairman of the large corporate that owns UBS. The chairman, furious that Beale decided to  turn his attention and audience against a planned corporate buyout by an Arab firm, offers Beale his own apocalyptic sales pitch preaching money and corporate power as the only thing that matters in the world anymore, and then instructs Beale to spread the gloomy message.

In the end, Beale is a puppet. He has become so disillusioned and volatile that he is now a slave to ideological argument. I’m not sure exactly what to make of the reflexive satire of O’Reilly and Beck actually choosing Beale to be their standard-bearer.

“Today the challenge of political courage looms larger than ever before. For our everyday life is becoming so saturated with the tremendous power of mass communications that any unpopular or unorthodox course arouses a storm of protests such as John Quincy Adams–under attack in 1807–could never have envisioned. Our political life is becoming so expensive, so mechanized and so dominated by professional politicians and public relations men that the idealist who dreams of independent statesmanship is rudely awakened by the necessities of election and accomplishment.” (Introduction)

The very next sentence could be similarly descriptive of the situation immediately following 9/11, i.e. our war with the epithet “on Terror”:

“And our public life is becoming so increasingly centered upon that seemingly unending war to which we have given the curious epithet “cold” that we tend to encourage rigid ideological unity and orthodox patterns of thought.” (Introduction)

“While they continued to write and talk, we saw the wounded and dying. While they taught that duty to one’s country is the greatest thing, we already knew that death-throes are stronger. But for all that we were no mutineers, no deserters, no cowards–they were very free with all these expressions. We loved our country as much as they; we went courageously into every action; but also we distinguished the false from true, we had suddenly learned to see. And we saw that there was nothing of their world left. We were all at once terribly alone; and alone we must see it through.” (Chapter 1)

Apparently, the US is the only industrial country without a VAT (value added tax) on products. The Economist claims this is an extremely efficient tax for generating revenues without deterring jobs; however, the burden “falls disproportionately on poorer people who spend a higher share of their income than richer folk”. As a result, The Economist stated:

Thanks to its reliance on income taxes, America—by some measures—has the most progressive tax system in the OECD.

I’m not entirely familiar with the economics of this discussion but I was definitely surprised by the statement. I knew that US income tax is progressive, but I never think of the US as having a generally progressive tax policy. I imagine my biases are based on comparing welfare policies instead, which would likely blind most people to this idea.