"Why should the factory produce more washing machines? Who would want one? The housewife would simply reposit the dirt from her clothes into her flowerbed, without using water and soap. Or, more likely, reposit new clothes with different colors, fabrics, and styles. The Matter Repositor would eliminate textile mills and clothing factories. Earth's oceans have vast enough quantities of seaweed to eliminate the growing of cotton, wool, or flax. Or, again, you could reposit the chemical elements, either from the soil or from seawater." Jerry pondered the extensive implications of these revelations. Finally he said, "What it boils down to is this. All Earth's bustling material activity, all the logging and construction, the mining and manufacturing, the planting and fishing, the printing and postal service, the great transportation and shipping effort, the cleaning and painting, the sewage disposal, even the bathing and self-adornment, consist, when you analyze them, of one process only--_putting something from where you don't want it to where you do_. There's not one single, solitary Earth invention or service left to advertise!" "Nothing," the Ambassador agreed. "Which is exactly why advertising has not developed on the Federated Planets. You're fortunate that Earth doesn't have Matter Repositors. You'd be out of a job if it did." "Oh, no!" Jerry said. "I could still advertise the gadget to end all gadgets--the Matter Repositor itself. I know other people have asked you this before, but could an Earth company get a franchise to import those machines here, or the license rights to manufacture them?" "No," the Ambassador said, briefly and definitely. "Mr. Ambassador," Jerry protested, "you've gone to a lot of trouble to explain things you must already be tired of explaining to Earthmen, just so I personally could be sure they weren't merely rumors or misinterpretations. Now that I get down to the real point, you suddenly become blunt and unqualified. Why?" "Because there's a very serious question of ethics involved, wherever a more advanced civilization comes in contact with a relatively primitive one. For instance, when the white men came to America, the aborigines were introduced to gunpowder and firewater." "So you people are keeping Matter Repositors away from us, like a mama keeping candy away from a baby who's hollering for it, because it's not good for him! You'd pass up a chance to name your own price--" "The very way you phrase that remark indicates the danger. You regard personal gain as the strongest of motives, which means that Matter Repositors would be used for that, even by such unusually intelligent members of your race as yourself." "Don't softsoap me," Jerry said angrily. "Not after you just got through saying that we Earthlings are nothing but naked savages, compared to the high and mighty super-beings on other planets!"