{"id":7944,"date":"2009-06-12T10:45:00","date_gmt":"2009-06-12T17:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=7944"},"modified":"2009-06-12T10:45:00","modified_gmt":"2009-06-12T17:45:00","slug":"ideology-versus-effect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=7944","title":{"rendered":"Ideology versus Effect"},"content":{"rendered":"

As long as we’re discussing Libertarianism, I was struck today by a bit from one of Kevin Drum’s posts<\/a>:<\/p>\n

And the second piece of TV news? Something that’s close to my heart: broadcasters have promised Congress that by September they will have standards in place that prevent commercials from being wildly louder than the TV programs they’re embedded in. Hooray! It’s only taken them 40 years to finally address this. “We get it,” an industry flack told Congress about loud ad complaints. “As a matter of pure economics, we do not want to lose viewers.”<\/p>\n

The bad news, however, is that the industry’s sweet talk has convinced Congress to halt work on legislation to force broadcasters to address this. Too bad. Like the Do Not Call list, this is one of those things where ideology plays no role for me. I don’t care if this is liberal, conservative, libertarian, or anything else. I just want it to stop, and I don’t care a whit whether or not it’s a justified interference in the free market. JUST MAKE IT STOP!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I think that, in broad terms, this is how most people think about politics. It’s not about whether a certain action is libertarian\/socialist\/whatever\/etc, it’s about, “I want X.” In as much as the free market provides X (quieter commercials, safer food, telemarketers leaving me the fuck alone), they’re happy to go with the free market.<\/p>\n

When the free market fails to provide, though, as it can arguably be said to have failed in those examples, I think most people have no problem with compelling action through government means.<\/p>\n

An essential part of free market ideology is the idea that, left to its own devices, the market will give customers what they want. So this then, to me, is the ultimate rebuke: the reason why the huge regulatory framework has grown up around certain issues is because the free market explicitly did not<\/em> give customers what they wanted, and they turned elsewhere. They didn’t turn elsewhere because they love regulation … they just want the effect.<\/p>\n


\nPlease do not comment unless you accept the basic dignity, equality, and inherent worth of all people.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As long as we’re discussing Libertarianism, I was struck today by a bit from one of Kevin Drum’s posts: And the second piece of TV news? Something that’s close to my heart: broadcasters have promised Congress that by September they … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7944","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics-and-the-like"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7944","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7944"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7944\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}