Information control, or, How to get to Orwellian governance

The difference there was in part a response to your earlier references to government limitations on porn, derogatory references to groups of people and the like. I don't believe government should be particularly zealous or active in pursuing them - rather just acknowledge generally accepted limits on excesses. In addition such limits change over time witth public attitudes and tastes. I don't see any lasting, rigid standards that should be applied in rhese areas.

I am not nearly as concerned about such limitations as I am on others that may be applied to political speech. We enjoy a constitutional prohibition of government interference in this area and I would like to see it preserved.

With respect to anti trust laws, I do indeed believe the state's interest in preserving a free market for the production of shoes is more or less equivalent to its interestt in preserving a free market for news. This is an economic issue, not a political one.

Because monopoly is a well known, specific exception to the rule that markets get things right by themselves, and that government intervention necessarily makes things worse. Back in the days when only three TV channels were technically possible, these three channels had monopoly power. The government had a chance of improving on laissez-faire by regulating the TV market. So the FCC's content regulations had a legitimate, even important role to play in the early days of TV. I concede that.

Today, on the other hand, there are dozens, and potentially hundreds of channels on cable, but you usually can't buy them one by one. You have to buy them through an intermediary, of which there are often only just one or two in your area. Consequently, it no longer makes sense to regulate channels, but it could make sense to regulate the middlemen, possibly by enforcing an un-bundling of the channels offered on cable.

But that's as far as I'm willing to go in your direction. Beyond curbing monopoly power under antitrust law, and curbing it by the same rules as in other markets, I don't think the FCC should influence the content of what's broadcast on TV.


No problem -- unless some monopolist middleman bundles it with "Baby TV", and forces parents to buy the bundle.

I am in agreement with Thomas here.

thomas

You understand, as does Chumly, and george might though he's a forgetful elderly sort, that we have pretty much an identical end in mind, maximal speech liberty leading to maximal political liberty. How we ought to get there and what forces/dynamics are most problematic to getting there is where our disagreements rest.

I have no urge to design content. I certainly do have the urge to design structures so as to encourage (or even enforce) pluralities in content. And I am quite unconvinced that free market mechanisms get us there.

george said

This is an unhelpful conflation and I'm trying to get you to "unpack" it.

Obviously, the state has a far greater interest in preserving a 'free market' for news/information than in preserving ANYTHING to do with shoes. As I pointed out earlier, or think I did, the term "footwear" makes no appearance your the First Ammendment. Your framers seem to have spoken almost not at all about shoes, george. This very definitely IS a political issue.

What you may be trying to suggest here is some awkwardly confused and undiscerning claim that all 'political issues' are mere shadows thrown against the wall by the presence of impediments to the free market solve-everything 'principle'. This seems exactly as useful a conceptual framework as Derrida's "Everything is political."

By the way, I mentioned earlier a study on media and misperceptions regarding the Iraq war. Here's the link to it... http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/articles/international_security_bt/102.php?nid=&id=&pnt=102&lb=brusc

It cannot be the case that democracy is well-served (or perhaps even possible) where a population is purposefully and broadly misinformed by its government and by media agencies who function as propaganda vehicles for that government.

Since we both want to achieve maximal liberty in the area of speech and political activity, why not start by ensuring that the government abides by the constitutional prohibition of interference with the activities of a free press?



Are you suggesting that, in order to preserve freedom, you must restrict it? I have a hard time conceiving of a mechanism of governmental control that would yield freedom and the absence of governmental control.



I think you have it backwards. I believe that all economic issues are, to use your phrase, "mere shadows thrown against the wall", compared to political freedom. Freedom means the absence (or minimization of ) external control. I value that political freedom far more than I do a free market - though I also believe that the best way to preserve a free market is through the preservation of political freedom.

There are some areas (for example interstate commerce) in which our constitution permits a degree of government regulation to preserve a balance of freedom with public order and access to markets. Even that is restricted to the limitation of extreme distortions (i.e. monopolies) as opposed to the day-to-day regulation of affairs (the SEC is an exception to this, but it oversees only the reporting of publicly traded companies - not privately capitalized ones). With respect to the more critical area of political speech, our constitution is clear -- no government interference, none.

If either of us is advocating a form of "Orwellian control" it is surely you - not me.

I don't see why economic freedoms are mutually exclusive to political freedoms or vice versa. I suggest economic freedoms and political freedoms are very much interdependent. For me however I use my economic freedoms as a barometer for my political freedoms.

For example here in British Columbia we have:

Egg Marketing board (with quotas and zero price competition)
Chicken Marketing Board (with quotas and zero price competition)
Milk Marketing board (with quotas and zero price competition)
ICBC state run socialized auto issuance (with zero allowed competition)
Telus (telephone with zero competition for local land lines)

Those (and there are many others) are clear violations of my economic freedoms and thus my political freedoms.

Wait until Harper has more time. Perhaps he can even influence the socialist government of BC.

I agree political & economic freedom are coupled. However without political freedom there is no remedy for either.

Interesting that you should say that because in China that is exactly what they are tying to do, maintain restrictive political freedoms and maintain open markets, and to some fair degree it can be argued they have succeeded in this apparent contradiction, at least for the moment, at least on the surface.

Good point. It will be interesting to see what evolves. Until they have political freedom, there will be nothing to protect the Chinese people from yet another Cultural Revolution if the ruling elite decides it is necessary to preserve their control.

If instead this proves to have been merely an ordered way to escape the twin tyrannies of poverty and authoritarian socialism, with political liberty following in due course, then all will be well.

george

Could you formulate or list, with some attention to completeness and with a proper disdain for cliche, those elements from Animal Farm, 1984, and Politics and the English Language which Orwell drew attention to and which we now refer to as "Orwellian"?

The saving grace for the avoidance of a third world war may rest on global economic interdependence.

To make blatham happy, I'll even tie it back in to his "Information control, or, How to get to Orwellian governance" consideration by making the following claim:

No only does my exponential-technology / expanding information base argument lend credence to the belief that Orwellian governance concerns may be the equivalent of trying to drive using the rear view mirror; but so does the burgeoning global economic interdependence bring to question the likelihood of Orwellian governance.

That's a tall order, I'm glad you did not ask me!

Lazy phucking Canadian.

Now that's funny (but no wholly untrue)!

How about Orwellian governance according to NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR ? Will that do?

George Orwell's NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR constituted a prescient warning to humanity.
http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/o/orwell/george/o79n/

It was published in June 1949. He time-labeled his warning 1984, but his warning is a perpetual and timeless warning of humanity's propensity to contain and even court personalities in its midst that are dangerous to humanity's existence. These are the personalities in humanity's midst that seek power over what the rest of humanity thinks and what the rest of humanity does. They seek this power for no other purpose than gaining power over the rest of humanity. Possessing that power over even some of humanity deludes them into thinking they are of greater worth than those over which they possess their power. The truth is that to hold others down, one must be down also.

NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR, Part II, Chapter IX:
"The two aims of the Party are to conquer the whole surface of the earth and to extinguish once and for all the possibility of independent thought. There are therefore two great problems which the Party is concerned to solve. One is how to discover, against his will, what another human being is thinking, and the other is how to kill several hundred million people in a few seconds without giving warning beforehand.

NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR, Part III, Chapter II:
"[O'brien said,] Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else. Not in the individual mind, which can make mistakes, and in any case soon perishes: only in the mind of the Party, which is collective and immortal. Whatever the Party holds to be the truth, is truth. It is impossible to see reality except by looking through the eyes of the Party. That is the fact that you have got to relearn, Winston. It needs an act of self-destruction, an effort of the will. You must humble yourself before you can become sane.'

NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR, Part III, Chapter III:
"[O'Brien said,] 'The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from all the oligarchies of the past, in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you [Winston] begin to understand me?"

Well, I think Ican has done the job fairly well (though I always resented Orwell's choice of a name for the torturer in 1984, -- Just like an Englishman to misuse the Irish like that). It is well known that Orwell was preoccupied with the Communist and Facist tyrannies of the day - Animal Farm had a good deal to do with the contradictions of Soviet style Marxism, and the relative degrees of equality that prevailed among the animals.

But there are no structures who can do one, but can't do the other. If you want to establish those structures, you always face the risk of having it run by someone like Karl Rove -- with all the predictable consequences. ("There isn't enough diversity between evolutionists, young-Earth creationists, old-Earth creationists, and Deists. Let's fix that -- everyone gets equal time!") I don't really see you address the risk of these consequences in our discussions. You appear to be simply assuming it away.


While I'more optimistic than you are about market forces, my optimism has limits too. That's why I brought up anti-trust law. This would put the problem into the hands of people who are experts in market power concentration, but don't care about the content per se.

thomas wrote

thomas

I identify this as a weak spot in my position too. But I think it is not insurmountable.

Let me start though with a redirection of attention back to that link I posted yesterday or day before which demonstrated that viewers of Fox are far more likely to hold factually inaccurate ideas on the Iraq war than are viewers of any other network, particularly PBS (as if our experience here on a2k weren't enough demonstration of this phenomenon). That difference arises out of a clear intent on the part of Fox personnel from Murdoch down through Ailes etc. The network functions, by design, as a mouthpiece for one party. A well-informed public (a la the framer's notions of what makes a functioning democracy even possible) is NOT the goal of the Fox enterprise. Where it is perceived as ideologically or politically advantageous for Republican Party gain, a POORLY informed (uninformed, misinformed) public is the intention, and it now is the measureable result. As you understand, such an information control apparatus is "Orwellian". We don't really have to imagine various scenarios by which the Orwellian might arise, we have one to hand.

Were it not for the rise of this network, along with the rise and influence of rightwing radio in the US (with evident similarities in successfully creating a misinformed/uninformed electorate), and the concentration of media ownership in the hands of six large corporate entities, I would not be advocating as I am...there wouldn't be a need.

But that need has now arisen. Even you, holding the libertarian notions you do, would not argue that there is no cause for concern in these phenomena. You may believe that they will be made moot through more voices yelling, but you wish those voices to be yelling precisely so as to eviscerate what Fox, Limbaugh etc are up to.

So, what would I do to minimize the weakness you point to?

First of all, the American system looks to be rather simpler than things would be elsewhere because there are really only two political parties functioning here. This minimizes the number of representative voices that a network, say, would have to bring in.

This alone seems like it might handle your complaint. It wouldn't be issues (eg darwinian vs creation science) which require separate representation or voice, rather just either political party.

Secondly, this is already a de facto arrangement in many situations. PBS is surely the best example (eg, I've seen John Yoo at least a dozen times in discussion there beginning probably five years before his name hit the press as one author of the 'torture memos'). But even Fox makes at least the pretense of reps from 'both sides'... Hannity and Coombs, as Franken wittly has it in one of his books. So it doesn't seem at all as if this has to be an onerous or expensive scheme. It does entail that news outlets will be mandated to do something they already commonly do but to do it better. It does entail that media companies would operate under oversight perhaps comparable to pharmaceutical companies...they are held to be responsible to the community for their products - that they will be charged with some greagter responsibility than merely making a return for their investors.

Who might be slated to gain oversight? Perhaps that could be established on the basis of audience size. If some specified percentage of the electorate attend to your broadcast, then you would fall within the realm of those who must carry double representation. After all, it is domination of media (or a large percentage of it) which represents the problem, and that's why you subscribe to anti-trust regs in the matter. Such a scheme would also permit new voices or new modes of voice to be fostered without contraint or burden.

Thus:
- no idea or content would be squelched, plurality would be forstered
- a multiplicity of voices beyond the two party machines would remain free to find or develop whatever means of dissemination might become open to them and the electorate would remain completely free to access those voices
- the dangers of powerful interest groups controlling the media and the messages that travel on them would be reduced

As Aesop's wise old Mouse said "Who will put the bell around the cat's neck?"

Who will referee the "balance" of the content and reporting of large outlets which meet the audience share requirement? By what standards will he make his judgements? What powers of enforcement will he have? Will the sacred PBS also be subject to review? How about the New York Times? What about the clear Constitutional prohibition?

It is the products of pharmaceutical companied that are regulated by the government. They must be proven to be effective for the claimed condition and relatively free of harmful side effects, which must be acknowledged in all advertising. The analogy of this regimen to the media is prior censorship by government -- hardly a mild form of restraint.

Most of the dangerous forms of authoritarianism come from classes or groups of people who become convinced that their understanding of certain issues is better or more "correct" than others. Once they act to suppress alternative views (or "moderate" them or ration their distribution), they shut themselves off from criticism and competing points of view. The original (assumed) right understanding becomes rigid dogma and the suppression becomes a compulsion. Tyranny is the usual result.