Laura Schlessinger's unceremonious punting from the public airwaves after her use of word---not even a word forbidden by the FCC's Canon of Censorship---underscores the reality of free speech in America today.
It illustrates a point that libertarians too often miss. Dr. Schlessinger lost her contract because of an advertising boycott, not because of a loss of audience. This demonstrates clearly that corporate dominated media is no more free than an outright government-owned Ministry of Propaganda; and just as politically correct about its censorship standards.
Whether we talk about government-run corporations or corporate-run government, it amounts to the same thing. As Frederic Bastiat noted decades ago, it is monopoly that is the enemy of free enterprise. It is of no consequence whether this a public or private monopoly.
Eric,
Dr. Laura is off the air? I for one am delighted to hear it. I may not agree with the group-think in the media that says people should be singled out for using certain words -- all racism is deplorable, and there's nothing uniquely evil or wrong about someone using the word "nigger" in an offensive context, but she's an offensively sanctimonious social conservative and her loss of a prominent microphone from which to spout her venom is no loss to anyone else.
It's not like she's been deprived of her right to free speech -- she can go start a blog or comment on news sites like millions of ordinary folks do. She has no "right" to be subsidized by advertisers, or to be given a national audience by a network, that find her hateful rhetoric detrimental to their business interests. Would you want to advertise on her show, if you were in charge of a large company's marketing budget? Being denied such a platform or audience is far different from being threatened with legal penalty for certain types of speech regardless of where the speech takes place.
There are plenty of reasons to be concerned about the status of free speech in the United States, but this to me ranks way, way down on the list. I'm much more troubled by mandatory ratings for movies and music recordings, the prosecution of porn producers, the criminalization of certain words via "hate speech" rules and "hate crime" laws, restrictions on political advertising and contributions, people being investigated for saying things that could be vaguely construed as threatening to a U.S. president, etc.
Love & Liberty,
((( starchild )))
Thank you, Starchild. I don't listen to Dr. Laura's program. However, out of huge co-incidence, NPR had some dull stuff, and I tuned in early to KSFO in anticipation of Coast to Coast with George Noori; and I heard Dr. Laura address the poor woman who called for her advice. Forget the fact that Dr. Laura used non politically correct words! Her verbal assault on the caller would be enough for me to stop buying from whatever advertiser was so insensitive as to advertise on her program. Eric is entirely correct that corporations rule the speech on programs in which they advertise; and they do so in anticipation of buyer response. Corporations are not in business for their health, no more than I am.
Marcy
Starchild:
She announced yesterday that she was leaving when her contract expired; not sure when that is, so she's not off immediately. I think that this is another case, though, of a conservative who wasn't toeing the party line closely enough and, like recently happened to Michael Savage and David Frum, found themselves excommunicated.
I wholeheartedly agree about the movie ratings, porn industry, &c. If were up to me, I would close down the FCC altogether, and relegate the government's activities in this sphere to prosecuting slander, libel, &c.
But to address yours and Marcy's point: monopoly concentration of media power not only puts limits on consumers, it puts limits on advertisers too. For example, where I live, the voters routinely vote about 85% Democrat---we have ONE left-wing talk station and FOUR conservative ones. And nationally, when you have some neo-nazi like Rupert Murdoch owning 40% of the media outright and holding stock in about 40% more of it, the advertisers really become more dependent on him than he is on revenue from them. It also gives Murdoch and his camarilla enormous power to lobby the government for the kinds of restrictions you mentioned; as well as enormous power over the politicians themselves who need to curry his favor or find themselves up against a media blitzkreig.
I'm not sure what a free-market solution to this problem would be, though I think deregulating the internet and releasing more bandwidth on the public airwaves might be a good start.
Hi Eric,
Yes, deregulation and more band width are good free-market solutions. However, I will have to give some thought as to how corporations limit choice. As I indicated before, in our house, we buy a lot of stuff, on the Internet, from small entrepreneurs. Therefore, whatever the likes of Murdoch is saying or not saying is irrelevant to us. (We recently canceled our subscription to the WSJ, and now have Financial Times, which at least "feels" smaller.)
That said, now I will also have to give some thought to 85% voting Democrat, listening to 75% conservative talk radio. Maybe conservatives do a better job of supporting their own!!
Regards,
Marcy
Hi Marcy/Starchild;
This is an issue that goes all the way back to when our country was founded. Then, the mass media was in its infancy, but even Thomas Jefferson noted that there was a serious political problem involved.
On the one hand, government-owned mass media is obviously dangerous; but on the other, concentrations of mass media in the hands of the few is no better. But at the same time, mass media--- in any venue---is an expensive undertaking out of reach for most individuals, yet at the same time, people depend on it for vital information.
Britain has a hybridized solution which has been somewhat effective. Back in the 1920s, the government began charging license fees for radios (now expanded to televisions and computers) and the revenue collected went into a 'lock box' which funded the BBC. Given the corruption of our system and the complete untrustworthiness of our own government, I doubt such a system could be implemented here. The BBC is free of corporate control and technically free of government control---though the British government has considerable discretionary powers about imposing controls whenever it deems it necessary to do so.
I think it is probably better to open bandwidth on radio and television and deregulate the internet to allow more search engines. Also, the government should break up the existing media monopolies.
One suggestion I've heard was a variation on a plan of Obama's; though with more free-market orientation than his. The idea was follow Obama's plan of dividing the country into broadcast 'regions' but selling the bandwidth to entreprenuers within that region: the effect being that mass national media monopolies would have to compete against regional mass media for marketshare. It's an interesting concept, though not orthodox libertarian.
Hi Eric,
Coincidentally, I just sent a Yahoo article on Dr. Laura's first amendment controversy.
But, your concern here is giant media dictating what will be news and who will provide the news; as is mine. I remain dubious of solutions involving government action, such a breaking up the media monopolies or dividing the country into regional bandwidths. Maybe better for consumer to vote with their eyes, years, feet, wallets, station memberships, letters to editors, telephone calls?
Marcy
Eric,
Are there limitations on new search engines now? If so, I was not aware of that. It seems to me that with the explosion of talk radio, the growth of cable television, and most of all the rise of the Internet, with group websites, blogging, discussion lists, public comment forums, chat rooms, and so on making it easier than ever for individuals and grassroots organizations to get their messages to the public, that the media has gotten much *less* concentrated, not more.
I'm not very concerned about Rupert Murdoch. His media empire is on such a scale that he has to be much more concerned about business dealings than exercising editorial control. Even assuming he's a right-wing conservative, that still means he will probably be pro-freedom on some significant percentage of the issues. I haven't read anything to suggest he's a neo-Nazi. Besides, he will be 80 next year. He's probably not going to be actively running his companies that much longer anyway.
On the other hand, I do tend to feel that corporate empires should be broken up when they reach a certain size. That doesn't necessarily mean any loss to shareholders -- sometimes the value of the sum is less than the value of its parts. Although John D. Rockefeller bitterly opposed the breakup of the Standard Oil trust, he actually made money on it. Corporations are chartered by government, and without the privileges so conferred, they likely wouldn't get so large too begin with. While it is not a conventionally libertarian position, I have come to feel that large organizations are inherently problematic. Even when privately owned, they start to take on many of the negative characteristics of big government -- distant, out-of-touch leadership, bureaucracy, resistance to change, tendency to use un-libertarian means to suppress upstart competitors, etc.
Although current laws and perceptions in the world tend to be superficially clear on whether a particular organization is a government or not, I think a careful look at reality suggests a more nuanced picture. Is the Taliban a government, for instance? Al Qaeda? The political leadership of the Kurds in northern Iraq? That of Indian tribes in the U.S.? How about homeowners' associations? Disneyland? A "company town" in the middle of nowhere? A small cult with a powerful leader? All of these organizations have government-like aspects. Just because a particular group does not call itself a government or is not generally perceived as a government doesn't necessarily mean it's all well and good from a libertarian point of view and should be given a free pass to exist in its present form.
Love & Liberty,
((( starchild )))
Starchild;
You touched on a major concern here. There is a point, and I think this true of the US today, where corporations have grown more powerful than the government itself. The problem is that, while the government was designed (at least in theory) to operate under constitutional restraints, corporations have basically become laws unto themselves. A good example is the prison-industrial complex; the practice (engineered by Bush) of privatising prisons and jails. This had led to a system of judicial corruption and human rights abuses that never would have been possible under a government-run system.
Also, some of the institutions you mentioned do the same. Homeowners Associations frequently are more authoritarian than municpal zoning and building code agencies.
This is why I agree with you---though this will get us both branded as communists---about ending the practice of incorporating altogether. I've also in favor of enforcing the anti-trust laws, though not strictly from a libertarian principle; I think that the government bears responsibility for having created this situation and it alone has sufficient power to stop it. In fact, if I had been president instead of Obama, I would have gone even further; I'd have put Wall Street and the DC area under martial law and dragged all of them from Bernancke on down to a stockade.
Hi Marcy;
If we had a genuinely free market, what you said would be true. But consumers can't vote with their dollars when they have no alternatives. For example, I STRONGLY object to the airlines' treatment of passengers and invasions of my privacy. What is my alternative to using them? I can't afford my own airplane; and my vision's too bad for a pilot's license anyway. How many people can take days or weeks or travel by trains, ships, or driving over long distances?
Eric,
Do you believe that any single corporation in the world is more powerful than the U.S. government? I don't. Comparing lots of corporations collectively to a single government seems like an unfair comparison, just as it would be unfair to compare many governments collectively to a single business. Corporations are typically competing with each other and their interests are far from identical.
Within a particular industry there may be some shared interests, and all companies may have a small number of basic shared interests (e.g. keeping taxes low, maintaining economic stability), but they have shown little inclination to work together as any kind of monolithic power structure. A group like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce might be about as close as it gets, but while the Chamber spends a fair amount of money lobbying, it has virtually zero power over the day-to-day lives of ordinary people.
While I oppose privatizing prisons, I can't agree that this practice has led to any judicial corruption or human rights abuses that couldn't have happened under government. Do you know of any examples of such corruption or abuses that haven't been matched or exceeded by things that have happened in government prisons?
Communists want government takeover of industry, not a free market with less government involvement, so it should be easy to refute any charges of being communists for favoring an end to the practice of incorporation. Not that I'm sure I favor ending such charters altogether, but the idea is at least worth looking into.
Love & Liberty,
((( starchild )))
Hi Eric,
Arranging one's life to achieve certain objectives is a long term plan. As I indicated previously, at our house we pretty much ignore the giant corporations, by purchasing pretty much of what we need from local and small-business Internet sellers. The last time we traveled by airplane was when I had a fit at the San Diego airport, refused to take my shoes off, and nearly joined the ranks of the "desaparecidos." That is something we can do because for many years we had arranged our lives so that we minimized our necessary travel - and thus our oil consumption. I run my business from home, serving local clients. Bart my husband has always worked for local firms and has always refused positions where traveling was necessary. We are not wealthy, just comfortable, and that is fine with us.
The point I have been trying to make is that we, personally, prefer taking action on our own, rather than depending on government to take action for us.
Marcy
Starchild,
Incorporated entities, including governments, are inherently hostile to the interests of the individual. The only reason for their existence at all is achieve some particular purpose that an individual cannot achieve alone. The problem is: both governments and private corporations have power as their ultimate aim.
A lot of libertarians, I think, do not realize that the economic paradigm has shifted radically since thinkers like Ayn Rand were writing. Today's corporations are not what they were in the 1950s. Many of them then were exactly like Taggert Transcontinental and Reardon Steel Works; the creation of a man's will in a competitive environment. Today's corporations are so diffused by stock-share ownership into the public sector that they are scarcely different from publically-owned industries in Communist economies. In fact, the bureaucracy operates on exactly the same principle; globalist concentrations of wealth; professional executives (i.e., bureaucrats) who bounce from one corporation to another dictating policies and mass marketing; planting their stooges in government to enforce their will &c. Our economy is really, in principle, so close to the USSR that---if the government actually did seize most of them---I doubt that the average American would notice any appreciable difference.
Starchild;
The last post was kind of involved, so I broke up the reply into two posts.
1. Yes, there are corporations more powerful than the US government. The Federal Reserve Board is one example. This private company has the power to create inflationary or deflationary cycles at will by manipulating interest rates and the M3 money supply with no oversight from Congress. The Fed has refused to be audited.
2. The banking cartels: Rember the TARP bailout? Essentially, Goldman-Sachs operatives walked into Congress and threatened them with martial law unless they signed a three-page ultimatum into law.
3. The insurance cartels: These groups absolutely dictate policy to the government. Mandatory insurance laws; the AIG bailout; about 90% of so-called 'security measures'; most government-healthcare schemes were totally dictated by these corporations.
4. The media cartels: Like I've mentioned previously, the mass media can make or break political officials who oppose them without restraint. Remember how they treated/ignored Ron Paul?
5. The energy cartels: Did you notice how BP took the Coast Guard away from Obama and impressed it into its own use during the recent oil disaster? Or how they completely ignored environmental regulations about the use of dispersants? And before then, they've used the military freely to seize foreign oil in places like Kosovo, Iraq, and Georgia.
6. The military contractors: our troops pull out of countries, but these guys never do. Their control over foreign policy is enormous.
I could probably add others. I agree with you though about too much government regulation in breaking up these concerns. I heard some left-wing congressmen propose something the other day which actually sounded libertarian (these guys occasionally DO come up with a novel idea). Their solution was that, since corporations are chartered by the government, and since the government is also a corporation, then it should be mandated that incorporated entities be subjected to the same constitutional restraints as the government. Interesting theory!
Marcy;
You are completely right about this; but my concern is that our options are becoming increasingly restricted.