llars, goods and services, has to be factored into the cost/benefit analysis of consumption and production. Making intelligent consumer choices requires a clear understanding of the opportunity cost and an applied strategy for maximizing total utility. When that takes place a window for technological advancement is opened. New technologies enable producers to eliminate some of those factors that drive up production costs and therefore prices. For example, the development of new technology for the manufacture of tape by companies such as 3M has lowered the cost of producing tapes and increased the available supply. Technology advances in the area of sticky products is now available and affordable to the masses. However, that technology has also made obsolete other goods and services. Tape sales may be up due to market demand created by new tape technology, but the market for library paste is drying up. Makers of library paste may or may not be able to hold enough market share to continue production. But until it is no longer economically feasible to produce library paste, consumers have choices beyond tape when considering sticky products. Basically, consumers are faced with more choices than at any time ever before. In a spiraling effect, these consumer choices have created the opportunity for increasing technology. And that technology has changed every aspect of day to day life and all human transactions. We live in a style that previous generations could not have imagined. Goods such as home videos and microwave popcorn now appear on the average shopping list. Advances in medicine have cured previously fatal diseases. Homes are more spacious, people eat better, grow taller, and are even born larger than in past generations. Economic growth and technological change have made the current generation richer than the generations of our parents and grandparents. But we have not created Utopia. As a society we experience ...
