Talk is cheap

It used to be that talk was expensive. Only the nobles and politicians could afford to say anything while their servants and peasants were condemned to silence.
Some say that Hiram Gabsalot invented talk, but he didn’t: he just came up with a new industrial process to make it downright cheap.
Pretty soon, everyone was talking all the time. (Some people even talked in their sleep… something unheard of in the days when talk was as priceless as gold!)
The nobles and politicians eventually stopped talking altogether, choosing to use spokesmen to add to the constant barrage of meaningless drivel.