A few years ago a company had a bold and novel idea: why not launch a mile-long billboard into space, let it circle the earth, and put a company logo up there? The sky would, so to speak, be brought to you by the sponsor of the day!

In response, the Hon. Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts addressed the House of Representatives:

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to introduce a bipartisan
piece of legislation, the Space Advertising Prohibition Act of
1993. What will our world be like if Space Marketing, Inc., the
Georgia-based company seeking to launch mile-long billboards made
from mylar sheets into low Earth orbit, has its way? Children will learn a new nursery rhyme: `Hey diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle, the cow jumped over the mylar.`

Why not brand the sky?

When we adults were growing up, our parents asked a general question, "How do we introduce our children to our culture?" Now, over the past 20 or 30 years, these self-same children have grown up and are parents. The question for many of them now is, "How can I keep the culture out? What should I let in, and when?" Is it even possible to resist Barbie? Not very likely, when you consider that a Barbie doll is owned by 95% of all American girls. (Yes, you'd know that well enough if you'd played our Foolish Trivia game!)

So what? What's wrong with consuming? That's what drives the engine of business, which is surely what drives our country. As we navigate the highways and byways of the late 20th century, we search for that magical intersection where ideal values meet reality. Is it all right, for instance, that if one hums the tune "This Old Man" in front of a toddler, her face will light up and she'll immediately tell you that you're humming the Barney theme song? What difference does it make whether or not the children of the land worship at the feet of Disney? After all, every society has its icons, its storytellers, its heroes of myth and legend. Does it matter that children will associate the exploits of Hercules not with the Greeks, but with the movie cartoon recently released? And the moral lessons that are being imparted -- Good winning out over Evil -- are themselves timeless.

I don't know for sure -- I suppose no parent does -- but each family has to draw a line in the sand somewhere. At my home we've made the quixotic decision to try to stem the tide and to build a little shelter against the storm. We know it might get leveled by the Mighty Hand of Marketing, but we build it all the same. We've decided not to have cable TV in our house. This means we only get our piddling 4 or 5 channels, and we don't allow our children to watch television during the week. They can have videos on weekends -- sometimes Saturday, sometimes Sunday, sometimes both. The average American child sees about 40,000 commercials a year; at least with videos we can, with backs pressed hard against the bulging door, stave off the deluge.

Let's say we consider ourselves virtuous and clever, and that we succeed, at least for a while. Let's look a couple of years down the road (our children are currently ages 5 and 3) when the issue of an allowance will emerge. If you ask around these days, "How much allowance do you give your children?" you'll find a remarkably consistent answer. Someone has devised a formula: one dollar times the age of the child per week. Your seven year-old gets $7 a week; your eight year-old gets $8 and so on.

Let's think about this for a moment. First, it's a far sight more than the tales your grandpa used to tell about getting a nickel a week for an ice cream cone. Then, it's awfully difficult to imagine your child resisting spending that money right away. (There will always be exceptions, of course, but as a rule you'd have to say that kids want stuff.)

If you took that $7 for your seven-year-old and added each week's $7 and invested it in a Foolish Fourish strategy, and this made 22% a year (actually slightly less than the Foolish Four annual return since 1971), then your child would, by the age of 27, have $132,987.37 in the bank. If you followed the rule of adding a dollar a week for each succeeding year, she'd have a lot more than that.

In the meantime, of course, you the parent are the villain. Everyone else on the block has the new ray gun or Power Ranger or Batmobile, and your child doesn't, and that's your fault. There was one excellent suggestion put forth by TMF Catlst in a Family Fribble that might actually encourage your child to save rather than spend.

We are no longer a country of citizens, but of consumers. If there's a way to teach investing to our children and to demonstrate what it's all about, you just might be killing two birds with one stone and finding that happy place where personal values -- not those dictated from without -- can survive, thrive, and, as we at the Fool are fond of saying, "Make you good money in the process.

If you have some Foolish advice to pass along, send us your Family Fribble and see it right here in The Family Fool.

What's a Fribble? and how you can write one!

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