Like it or not, almost every cultural artifact is a product.

My neighbor down the block wants to sell the abstract art she makes. Just as my tv producer neighbor up the street wants to sell the rock-and-roll show that he’s dreamed up.

In America the marketplace drives the culture.And every couple of days lately there’s been a news story that’s reminded me of this truism in a surprising way.

Like the article in the New York Times about Hollywood’s strong disinclination these days to make R-rated OR PG-rated movies. Kids under 17 can’t go to R movies by themselves, and they won’t go to PG movies - too uncool.

So, in order to maximize the audience -- that is, in order to sell tickets to as many teenagers as possible -- Hollywood is now obsessed with making PG-13 movies.

Of the top 20 movies at the box office last year, 13 of them were PG-13 - and not a single one was rated R. Not that there aren’t terrific PG-13 movies - like Pirates of the Caribbean.

But if fewer and fewer smart R-rated ideas and scripts get pushed through the pipeline by writers, and directors and studios, then great, tough, edgy movies don’t get made as frequently as they did 20 or 30 years ago. That is, the early 21st century versions of films like The Graduate or Midnight Cowboy or Five Easy Pieces won’t show up in the theaters.

And unleashed market forces are about to transform live entertainment in a different way. Ticketmaster, which virtually monopolizes the concert- and theater-ticket business in America, plans to start auctioning off all the best seats online.

In other words, no more top price of $80 or $90 for the Stones concert or $120 for the road company production of Hairspray. Ticketmaster plans to sell the seats for $90 or $120...or $900 if that’s what somebody will pay.

I’m a believer in the free market, for better or worse. The fair price for anything is whatever somebody will pay.

But I have to admit that I find next big step into cultural laissez-faire is slightly disconcerting. Maybe I’m more of a fogey than I realized.

Because I also have to admit that the third recent story about the cultural marketplace pleased me because it suggested that there are still lines that can’t be easily crossed.

Advertising, as you know, has been creeping into all kinds of places where it never used to appear: school cafeterias and doctors’ offices and movie theaters, to name a few.

And lately, inside taxi cabs. For the last year, closed-circuit TVs have been installed in the backs of taxis in cities like Chicago and New York.

The idea is to divert passengers with little bits of entertaining trivia -- and then, of course, force this captive audience to watch commercials.

Annoying, sure, but inevitable, too, right?

Maybe not.

Amazingly, in New York City, the taxi commission just cancelled the program. How come?

No one’s saying publicly, but it’s apparently simply for reasons of…taste. The taxi TV programming was just too cheesy.

Maybe the free market is not quite as inexorable as we thought.

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