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My late father-in-law sold mainframe computers. He competed against the IBM juggernaut, but he did very well.
I asked the secret of his success. People always want
what they can't have,
he said.
What's that mean?
It means that you tell a potential customer that your
products are powerful and expensive, totally unsuited for
the client's operation. So the customer can't have one.
Naturally, the customer wants one. You try to talk
him out of it by explaining how it's impractical and
perhaps impossible. By the time he persuades you to make a
deal, he is very grateful that you arranged to provide him
with something he thought he couldn't have.
In the 1960's, we had a governor whose unabashed motto
was Sell Colorado.
During that decade, Colorado's
population grew by 2.3 percent a year.
In 1972, we voted against any state funding for the 1976
Winter Olympic Games. Colorado gained an international
reputation for being anti-growth, which was enhanced in
1974 when Dick Lamm, a/k/a Governor Gloom,
was
elected. Every city, town and county adopted strict
regulations for development, along with stiff up-front
fees.
So what happened during the 1970s when Colorado discouraged growth? The state's population rose by 2.7 percent a year, a substantial increase over the preceding pro-growth decade. Per-capita income rose faster than the national average, and unemployment was lower.
In the 1980s, when we elected a pro-growth governor to get along with the greedheads in the legislature. The word went out that Colorado was open for business. The state's annual population growth rate dropped to 1.5 percent, and while the national per-capita income went up 16.8 percent, Colorado's rose only 10 percent. Unemployment was higher here, too.
The only towns that prospered then were enclaves like Aspen and Boulder which had growth controls and a reputation for active hostility to bulldozers.
Our lesson should be obvious. If you want to grow and prosper, don't ever tell people that. Proclaim that you don't want them or their money.
Instead of courting major-league baseball and United Airlines, Colorado should announce that it has absolutely no interest in millionaire utility infielders, and that if United wants to build anything that will bring in more people, there's a $10 million front-end fee before discussions even start.
People always want what they can't have, and if we tell them they can't have Colorado, they'll bring their checkbooks and stand in line. Anti-growth rhetoric is the only proven method which produces more air pollution, increased congestion, greater sprawl, inflated real-estate prices, longer fast-food strips and the other blessings of prosperity.
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