Posts by Leigh Anthony

Save the BBC - by setting it free

Free Market Rot

I'm normally a big fan of Reg analysis but I've got to disagree here. Maybe the Curtis articles/programmes polarised the issues more than normal.

Economists might spout rubbish based on over-simple models but even they know that free markets fail in various situations. This article was selling free-market philosophy, rather than free-market economics or even observations of reality.

An economist would have pointed out:

1. Big media requires big budgets (hence music labels, Murdoch etc)

2. Large budget requirements are a significant barrier to entry.

3. Significant barriers to entry pushes the market to domination by a few large firms

4. Large firms "compete" by market segmentation (repackaging the same product - laundry soap, multi-channel TV), local monopoly (cable, water, electricity, railway companies), gimmicks (wine or beer glasses from a petrol station) but the basic product is the same from all vendors.

5. "Perfect competition" requires and provides homogeneity

There were also some rather flawed assumptions:

1. the BBC doesn't already compete for viewers

It is known how popular various programmes are - the commercial companies at least want to know which programmes the population wants to watch.

2. Commercial companies provide what the customer wants

Not true at all. Companies provide what shareholders want. The customers are just a means of achieving that. Firms decide if the revenue expected warrants the investment required. Rubbish programmes will be produced as long as the return on investment is greater than on good quality programmes, even if the company knows customer would rather watch good quality programmes.

The next time you are unfortunate enough to have to sit through one of those "dance" or "singing" shows, measure how much time is spent on the song or dance vs the rest of the programme - recaps (always a favourite - look ma, no new material!), chatting, judges comments (which are the same every week) and adverts. I suspect the content the show is about only lasts for about 15-30 minutes out of a 2 hour show. That's worse than the 1/3 adverts on Sky-1.

3. Commercial companies seek out and provide value the BBC doesn't or can't.

The whole point of commercial companies is to siphon off the value for shareholders benefit. I would rather that value is re-invested in programming and returned to me that way.

I know the BBC also produces bad programmes, I know the government held a gun to its head as the charter came up for review (at least that's over for another 10 years) but I'm would rather be the one investing than give the reins to an organisation with no accountability at all.

There is more to life than profit - Curtis for BBC Director!

Technology is root of all evil, says IMF

maybe not the root of all evil but...

Ok, I haven't read the article. However, as someone mentioned, IT is an accelerator and a multiplier of the status quo. This in itself, modifies the environment.

1. the cross-licensing of "intellectual property" - i.e. ideas. You can't use any ideas we thought of first, even if you came up with it on your own. If you try to, the WTO will come and get you. Plus, we have given ourselves ludicrously long lifetimes on the monopolies on ideas that we have given ourselves. So you can invent and build your product, but you can't sell it into an area with people who have money to buy it, because any product you build probably utilises an idea we've already patented.

2. IT and electronic communications have enabled globalisation. With globalisation comes very large markets and volume of goods being sold by the market leaders. With large volumes comes the impetus to cut the unit costs as a small unit reduction adds up to a large total reduction. This is where we get companies breaking the law, using sweatshops, genetically modifying tomatos to make them look ripe when they aren't, compromising on safety (of employees or products), or playing pitifully poor suppliers against each other. Let face it - if you are earning $1.40/day and someone tells you your income will drop to zero unless you accept $1.20/day because someone else has offered to work for $1.30/day, you'll do it or starve - maybe both.

As volumes increase, each additional unit of supply (suppliers) or demand (product/customer) becomes relatively less important to the company.

I'm not saying you can put the globalisation genie back in the bottle, or that it would be helpful to try to do that, but we do have to recognise what sort of environment we have helped to create. The next time the issue of fair trade comes up, remember that we have not created a world where everyone gets the same chance and in our financial planning, a little noblesse oblige rather than insisting on our rights is probably in order.

It isn't money that is the root of all evil, its the *love* of money.

Fundy dunderheads make monkey of monkey man

@Merkin

Its weird - the Bible doesn't comment on how old the earth is!

The 6000 years is an estimation based on various genealogies which were almost certainly _not_ intended as a way to date the earth!

Propaganda

Dawkins' film (The Root of all Evil) was a propaganda piece aimed at the atheist equivalent of the evangelicals interviewed within it. I'm a Christian and even as he mocked my beliefs, I had to wince on behalf of the scientific community as he played fast and loose with the scientific process. By cleverly going all the way to the USA to interview a nutcase and not looking at evidence from an evangelical such as John Stott, Dawkins got the evidence for what he already believed.

Now there is a propaganda film that goes the other way. What did Dawkins expect? There was always going to be a bias one way or another - Dawkins is just miffed it wasn't his bias that was put forward.

Why do so many people think Christianity is about bringing back the dark ages? I would join the chorus of disapproval of anyone who suggests that critical thought should be suspended - that is a mark of a cult. The scientific communities that brought us out of the dark ages were staffed mostly by Christians working on the premise that God is a God of order and what he created should and could be explored and understood.

The materialist view excludes the supernatural by definition. The Christian view is that God (supernatural by definition) transcends the material and this must be recognised if every reality is to be addressed.

As for Dawkins, under his own philosophy, his dismay is just another random electrical brain pattern in an accidental universe with no inherent meaning or relevance. Paradoxically, I disagree.

Darwin Mr Popular again in Kansas

Cos we live in a material world...

Life started as a random biochemical chain-reaction (we don't know how), but it has continued for millions of years. One of the more recent developments in this chain reaction is the human type of biochemical formation.

This is fact and therefore there is no place for God or his morality in a scientific world or in the what we teach our children.

Our brains and thus thoughts are just a part of this random biochemistry and its reactions with other equally random human-type biochemical formations.

Our thoughts of what we want for dinner, our work, our love or hate, thoughts about children, partners, enemies are all just random bits of this vast, random, chain-reaction. It isn't possible to create meaning out of them any more than it is possible to create meaning out of random numbers.

The acting out of our (random) thoughts is also just part of this chain reaction. Do I buy chocolate or vanilla ice-cream? Do I eat at McD or BK? Do I have sex or not? Do I gun down my classmates at school or not? Do I instigate genocide or get myself a drink?

Certainly the human-type biochemical chain-reactions often destroy each other (or themselves), slightly before they would naturally terminate, but this doesn't matter - they are just a chance association of atoms with no more value than a rock. Those that are destroyed are obviously not "the fittest" and those that do the destroying are also naturally terminated within a few years anyway.

In fact, the whole bio-chemical chain-reaction we call life will definitely terminate when the universe cools down (subject to the laws of thermodynamics), but probably long before then, as it destroys the local planetary environment which sustains it.

Some parts of the biochemical chain-reaction react strongly against other parts of the chain-reaction who say that the origins of the chain-reaction are not what is currently believed. This was declared heresy and to protect critical thinking, politicians were called upon to suppress it. The State intervened to do so and replaced Science in its rightful place as Supreme Authority and there was great rejoicing.

Actually, given that the whole event was just a random part of the random chain-reaction, it doesn't mean anything. In fact, given that everything we think and do is a result of a random process, absolutely nothing matters.

...which leads to the natural conclusion that its very important for our children to know this.