Ah, the free market.  What can't it do?  Everything – even convince people to buy a product although it is conveniently available free all over.  

The most amazing example of this is bottled water.  Clever marketers have convinced people, especially liberals, to buy the stuff by promoting its health benefits, supposedly better for the drinker than the water freely dripping from taps at homes, offices, theaters, and restaurants.  And bottled water comes in...bottles, plastic ones at that, while tap water comes from...the tap, the fountain, or is placed in usually reusable glasses or cups.  Nevertheless, bottled water has become so popular that last year, more bottles of plain water were sold than artificially flavored sweetened water – i.e., soda pop.

For the first time ever, Americans drank more bottled water than soda in 2016. 

After a decades-long growth streak, bottled water sales by volume surpassed sales of soft drinks last year. Total bottled water volume grew nearly 9% in 2016, reaching 12.8 billion gallons, according to research and consulting firm Beverage Marketing Corporation. ...

The reversal of fortunes has been traced to Americans' changing tastes and growing concern about sugary beverages. 

"Bottled water effectively reshaped the beverage marketplace," Michael C. Bellas, Beverage Marketing's chairman and CEO, said in a statement. "When Perrier first entered the country in the 1970s, few would have predicted the heights to which bottled water would eventually climb. Where once it would have been unimaginable to see Americans walking down the street carrying plastic bottles of water, or driving around with them in their cars' cup holders, now that's the norm." ...

But the truth is, the comparison is a case of false equivalence. Bottled water isn't simply an alternative to soda — it's an alternative to tap water, which is free and much more eco-friendly. By buying bottled water, consumers aim to establish themselves as savvy and health-conscious, even though they could simply drink a glass of tap water that is 2,000 times less expensive. ...

In a 2008 study, the Environmental Working Group found 38 pollutants in 10 brands of bottled water. Two of the 10 brands tested were chemically indistinguishably from local tap water.

And now, in another area of great marketing ideas, a clever author has a self-published bestseller, available on Amazon, that is...blank.  Yes, you read that correctly: the pages are blank.

The title explains it all: "Reasons To Vote For Democrats: A Comprehensive Guide."

The most exhaustively researched and coherently argued Democrat Party apologia to date, "Reasons To Vote For Democrats: A Comprehensive Guide" is a political treatise sure to stand the test of time.

As Cory Derespina of Fox News explains in an interview with the author, Michael J. Knowles:

To quote an excerpt from author Michael J. Knowles' new book, the main reason to vote for a Democrat is "          ."

The above is not a typo.

Knowles' tome, "Reasons to Vote for Democrats: A Comprehensive Guide," is 266 pages of absolutely nothing. Clean, blank, snow-white pages. And as of Thursday morning, it occupied the No. 4 slot on Amazon.com's "Best Sellers" list.

"What's really great about this book, you can go cover-to-cover in about 15, 20 seconds," Knowles' told "Fox & Friends" on Thursday.

Billed as "the most exhaustively researched and coherently argued Democrat Party apologia to date," the spoof book was Knowles' attempt to razz the party for a lack of direction. The conservative journalist released it last month and the book was listed at $9.99 on Amazon -- but you can pick up a paperback on sale for $7.08.

The project does, curiously, contain an extensive bibliography and a table of contents. But nothing else. 

"It took a very long time to research this book," Knowles said Thursday. "I've been observing the Democratic Party for at least 10 years now and when I observed their record and reasons to vote for them – on reasons of economics or foreign policy or homeland security or civil rights and so on – I realized it was probably best to just leave all the pages blank."

Hmmm...sounds interesting.  By the way, for a good laugh or chuckle, read the reviews on the Amazon site.   Yes, there are reviews of blank pages.  Enjoy!

And think about the lesson we can learn here: people are willing to pay for free stuff.  Hmmm.