Funding for National Public Radio and Television

Great Debates
41

Yes, it would be much quicker. Look at it this way - if you politically organize and eventually do get some action from the elected officials, Clear Channel gets called in to a hearing or whatever and produces documentation that the stations you are protesting against have the best ratings in their markets. In other words Clear Channel says, “How could we be doing anything wrong, the listening public loves us!” At this point, you have nothing to stand on.

Legislation is not always the best way to solve a problem (and in fact in a free market economy, it’s usually the worst ). What gets a corporations attention the quickest is always a reduction in profit.

I hated telemarketers as much anyone, but the truth is they were still making money. Enough people were still buying their products to result in a profit. If that wasn’t true, they would have quit wasting their time and efforts on an operation that did not cover their costs.

42

Renob: Because economic activity is the only non-coercive way that humans express their preferences. Using the government to force others to do what you want, to me, is the wrong way to go about things.

Well, that clarifies that you are indeed an extremist market fundamentalist, to the extent of not even acknowledging the existence of economic coercion.

Your economic preferences show what’s really important to you. I find it much more humane to use the marketplace to offer incentives for the behavior that meets your desires. No one is forced to do anything this way.

Unregulated “marketplace incentives” have not always been that notable for their humaneness, have they? Or are you suggesting that child labor, sweatshops, and twelve-hour workdays would have been magically negotiated into more humane systems without political activism and government regulation? Sorry, but this is a retreat into libertarian la-la land.

Frankly, I think the do-not-call list is a prime example of unncessary governmental interference. There is absolutely no justification for the government getting involved in order to protect people from being annoyed.

Huh? I could understand your objections if the government decreed by fiat that telemarketers couldn’t call anybody. But all it does is forbid them from calling people who have voluntarily gone to the effort of indicating that they don’t want to be called. If the goal is really for people to be able to conduct economic transactions as efficiently as possible, then that sounds perfect: the consumers are not bothered by sales pitches that they don’t want and the producers don’t waste time making pitches to people who don’t want them.

Yes, they make a sacrifice, but it’s paltry compared to the real sacrifices they’d have to make if they really believed in their cause

I don’t see why we have to accept your arbitrary designation of what counts as a “real” sacrifice indicating that someone “really believes in their cause”. Basically, your rule for economic interaction seems to be “make it as easy as possible for the producer to do whatever they want and as hard as possible for the consumer to change it.”

I can’t speak for everyone, but it’s obvious that the Clear Channel formula is working.

Not much of a “trade-off” there that I can see. “It’s good for the producer, so it must be good for everyone.” Uh-huh, because everyone knows there’s no such thing as market failures.

Please explain to me why it’s profitable if people don’t like it?

I’d say, because sometimes people would rather have something they don’t like very much than nothing at all. And I see nothing wrong with using political as well as market activity in order to broaden their choices to include something that they do like very much.

The crowd that’s focusing on the supposed loss of “diversity” is only focusing on a few sectors of the media, and even there, as Cecil explains, it’s not really a big deal

Sounds to me as though, on the contrary, Cecil does consider it significant:

[quote]

[…]it’s not yet time to worry about the dissemination of news and opinion in the U.S. falling into the hands of a tiny corporate cabal.

At the local level, though, the situation is murkier. A local media company often controls the major newspaper in a given market as well as several broadcast or cable outlets, and sometimes owns nonmedia properties like sports franchises too. Many fear that this concentration of ownership will impede the free flow of information […] Local media consolidation can also bring other problems: for instance, the pressure to cut costs that comes with centralized ownership often means fewer reporters and less local news coverage. Civic groups are still railing against the recent relaxation of federal rules that limit companies’ ability to own both newspapers and TV stations in the same market, but the issue has yet to galvanize the public at large. Let’s hope people wake up. If TV broadcasters and newspapers merge at a national scale and the nightly news, the cable guy, and the Daily Bugle all start sporting mouse ears, I for one am going to get a little freaked. *

“Let’s hope people wake up”, says the Master. Given that most people are not extremist market fundamentalists, there’s reason to hope that they will.

43

Renob: Because economic activity is the only non-coercive way that humans express their preferences. Using the government to force others to do what you want, to me, is the wrong way to go about things.

Well, that clarifies that you are indeed an extremist market fundamentalist, to the extent of not even acknowledging the existence of economic coercion.

Your economic preferences show what’s really important to you. I find it much more humane to use the marketplace to offer incentives for the behavior that meets your desires. No one is forced to do anything this way.

Unregulated “marketplace incentives” have not always been that notable for their humaneness, have they? Or are you suggesting that child labor, sweatshops, and twelve-hour workdays would have been magically negotiated into more humane systems without political activism and government regulation? Sorry, but this is a retreat into libertarian la-la land.

Frankly, I think the do-not-call list is a prime example of unncessary governmental interference. There is absolutely no justification for the government getting involved in order to protect people from being annoyed.

Huh? I could understand your objections if the government decreed by fiat that telemarketers couldn’t call anybody. But all it does is forbid them from calling people who have voluntarily gone to the effort of indicating that they don’t want to be called. If the goal is really for people to be able to conduct economic transactions as efficiently as possible, then that sounds perfect: the consumers are not bothered by sales pitches that they don’t want and the producers don’t waste time making pitches to people who don’t want them.

Yes, they make a sacrifice, but it’s paltry compared to the real sacrifices they’d have to make if they really believed in their cause

I don’t see why we have to accept your arbitrary designation of what counts as a “real” sacrifice indicating that someone “really believes in their cause”. Basically, your rule for economic interaction seems to be “make it as easy as possible for the producer to do whatever they want and as hard as possible for the consumer to change it.”

I can’t speak for everyone, but it’s obvious that the Clear Channel formula is working.

Not much of a “trade-off” there that I can see. “It’s good for the producer, so it must be good for everyone.” Uh-huh, because everyone knows there’s no such thing as market failures.

Please explain to me why it’s profitable if people don’t like it?

I’d say, because sometimes people would rather have something they don’t like very much than nothing at all. And I see nothing wrong with using political as well as market activity in order to broaden their choices to include something that they do like very much.

The crowd that’s focusing on the supposed loss of “diversity” is only focusing on a few sectors of the media, and even there, as Cecil explains, it’s not really a big deal

Sounds to me as though, on the contrary, Cecil does consider it significant:

“Let’s hope people wake up”, says the Master. Given that most people are not extremist market fundamentalists, there’s reason to hope that they will.

44

flickster: Yes, it would be much quicker. Look at it this way - if you politically organize and eventually do get some action from the elected officials, Clear Channel gets called in to a hearing or whatever and produces documentation that the stations you are protesting against have the best ratings in their markets. In other words Clear Channel says, “How could we be doing anything wrong, the listening public loves us!” At this point, you have nothing to stand on.

Excuse me, but what on earth are you talking about? Do you have any idea of what the FCC public-comment hearings on media consolidation were actually about? The issue does not involve, as you seem to think, some kind of bizarre popularity contest whereby the stations with the best ratings get FCC approval. It is rather the much more fundamental issue of permitted levels of monopolization—i.e., how many and what sort of media outlets the same company may be allowed to own, regardless of how good their ratings are. Sheesh.

Legislation is not always the best way to solve a problem (and in fact in a free market economy, it’s usually the worst ). What gets a corporations attention the quickest is always a reduction in profit.

I asked for a cite providing hard evidence in support of this statement, and all I get is a repetition of the statement itself. I don’t expect much better from market fundamentalists, but I keep trying.

I hated telemarketers as much anyone, but the truth is they were still making money. Enough people were still buying their products to result in a profit. If that wasn’t true, they would have quit wasting their time and efforts on an operation that did not cover their costs.

Nobody said that telemarketers weren’t making money. What I said is that the nearly two-thirds of Americans who didn’t want to deal with telemarketers were not successful in achieving their aim by means of market incentives. Political activism and government regulation were required.

And if you’re going to argue, like Renob, that it’s our ethical duty to put up with unlimited random calls from telemarketers as long as they can manage to stay in business that way, I’m just going to sit here and laugh at you. Good golly, one would imagine from hearing you market fundies talk that we were created to serve markets, instead of markets being created to serve us.

45

Your point about monopoly digs right into this already…
I personally think that the telephone soliciting phenomenon is being funded by the DoD through taxpayer dollars to wage psychological warfare on the population, I do believe that there are economic advantages to this behavior that have nothing to do with the informed consent of the population – others profit at their expense. The thing about ecomomics, is that when taken into a larger context, write-offs like the telephone soliciting phenomenon are part of the manufacturing cost of social stratification. We paniced about Japan selling all their cars for far under cost in order to be cheaper once those cars came through our tarifs – the society was writing off BILLIONS in order to gain economic leverage – THAT’s how the economy works. This nonsense about businesses only existing for profit simply doesn’t take into account that a very specific environment needs to be constructed in order to allow social stratification to occur – and this specific environment requires that profit from one business be used to write off one or more entire product economies as part of the manufacturing cost of the larger picture of social stratification. A hundred million dollars to shape the psychological content of a population to be vulnerable to this onslaught is incalculably valuable to many who appreciate the fruits of financial inequity.

To add insult to injury, an entire new profitable product has emerged to pay for the money used for the telephone soliciting physological warfare program – people have to pay money to be put on a list to not be terrorized. The psychological warfare program has DOUBLED the taxes generated and still acts as a phychic warfare program. Of course, in lala land, this is considered the FAIR way to do exchange of goods … if it allows you to make more money than aother, it’s good, and if it doesn’t it’s bad. This type of market extremism is what has caused it to become so profitable to educate people on the premise that otherness doesn’t even exist – because on the foundation that something exists, one can begin to formulate axioms that detect economic exploitation. The cost of post-modernism in the education system and paid guns on the internet? Maybe 30 billion… the profit – maybe 4 trillion in social inequity.

Monopoly is a very key issue with regards to transparency and what is actually earned, vs. what is claimed by someone to have been deserved by them.