* TV control and precedent

Topics: FreeSpeech, Regulation
06 Aug 1993

From: ervan

Another case of how congress does work by precedent can in the paper
this morning. There is a bill before congress to require TV manufacturers
to include a chip in all TVs that can be used to block "violent" shows.
One of the sponsors, Fields (an otherwise anti-regulation congressman),
"contended that his proposal would not impose an onerous burden on the
industy because televisions already must be equipped with devices that
allow closed captions".

When the closed caption decision was reached, the decision that congress
could tell manufacturers what they had to put on their TVs was also
reached. I can hear the McIntosh's of the world defending the original
closed caption decision as some wonderful handout for the deaf that
has no impact beyond that. Wrong, that was the wedge that allowed
congress to start mandating all sorts of other foolishness. When
the 16th amendment was passed they said income tax rates would
never exceed 5%.

As for the bill itself, it is censorship in the same way that movie
ratings are. While it doesn't wholesale ban people from seeing something
it arbitrarily classifies based on content and then controls differently
based on the content. The government would decide which programs
are violent and require broadcasters to send a signal to that effect
with the program.

The market is not broken in any case. People have all the control
they want now. The lack of any techo-fix to the 'problem' simply
means that people really don't care that much about a fix. I'm
reminded of all the complaints about the move to the stadium lot.
When it came to put up or shut up, people were not even $70 concerned
about their safety. So much for the doom & gloom complaints.
Back in the technical realm, I think of all the whining about
the need for legislation to control phone sales calls. The
solution is simple: get a 2nd #, about $2/month. For the calls
that doesn't take care of, you can buy a PBX (or something similar)
and use extensions like passwords. That's expensive of course but
the lack of a cheap version in the market to handle just the problem
of sales calls is not a market failure but simply proof that people
really don't want it as bad as they say. This is rather like
Chau-Wen's wanting to force bars to be smoke-free. They are smoke
free now, he's just not willing to pay what it costs. Heck,
I want all bars to be topless for women under 150# and 30 years
of age. The market just doesn't provide it, oh market failure!
market failure! quick, pass a law!

On yet another related theme, the original closed caption decision
was a mistake too. If we took all of the money that will be spent
by everyone on closed caption devices who don't need them, all
of the money spent (implicitly) by complying with the regulations,
and gave it to the deaf, they could all buy closed caption decoders
and have a fair chunk of cash left over. The market is not broken.
Furthermore, the current scheme is taxation by pervision. We tax
people by decreasing the efficiency of the economy instead of being
honest about the cost being imposed.



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