Recently I stumbled upon a quite interesting article, about the horrendous TV channel now known as TLC. What is quite fascinating about it is that it actually started as a quite good educational TV station. Originally called Appalachian Community Service Network, it was founded by the Department of Education and NASA. Younger readers may not realize this, but once upon a time the Department of Education was actually about real education, not about turning children into social justice warriors, and NASA was a space agency unlike today's diversity training center.
Later privatized and renamed "The Learning Channel", it remained a pretty good source of serious documentaries, which were usually a level or two above those shown on competing TV stations. Overall, we could say it was a really good TV channel for education and I'm sure geeks loved to watch it.
But what happened then? Well, it all started with one innocent little show, called "Captain's log". It was basically a reality show about a captain on the boat doing whatever boat captains do in their life. Sounds pretty boring to me, but I've realized by now that my opinions usually aren't really in accord with those of the Average Joe. The show caught on and broke all viewer records on the as of yet still niche channel for geeks and the like. It didn't take much for the management to realize that geeks are unfortunately quite a small minority of the population, and that by going more mainstream their viewer statistics will go through the roof.
Promptly, over the next year or two, the channel sacked all its good stuff and replaced it with TV shows whose common denominator is "I have a bizarre lifestyle and I want to share it with the world".
And this is, alongside the well known tragedy of the commons, why I'm not a libertarian or a democrat, although I do share some of the views associated with the scene. Because in libertarian view, there really is no problem with what happened here. People wanted to view trash and the market gave them trash. Everyone is dumb and happy, the invisible hand did its job, and now the couch potatoes can laugh at people who are even more worthless than they are. It is a misfortune that an occasional geek or two got screwed up in the process because they are too few to make any sort of serious documentary television profitable, that is true, but hey, the majority is majority, right?
Well, not really. The thing is, good stuff costs a lot of money to produce, and is often not appreciated by the commons. Now, while it is true that the commoners will not really watch the educational channel anyway, it's a mistake to say such a channel shouldn't exist at all. And that's because the common peasants don't really matter. They're not the ones who push the world forward. They just tag along, do their boring daily routines, occasionally procreate, and wait to die. While their satisfaction is economically viable, it is also utterly pointless.
Smart people, those who drag the masses forward, need to have as much education and information as the society can provide, especially during their formative years. Because while smart people are pretty much born that way, environment does play a big role in how much of that potential will ultimately be realized. Limiting their environment to the taste of the Average Joe also limits their development and creates lesser personas than what they could have become.
By having the market do the selection of our education for as, we are basically limiting those of us who are truly great and pulling them down into the sea of mediocrity. While the market often does punish stupid people by taking away their money and thereby reducing their voting power, that is not really the case when it comes to TV and other information sources. What matters there is pretty much just the number of views, or in modern day clicks. Whether the person who performed the view or click is a Nobel Prize winning or a total idiot is really not important at all, just as in a democracy it is not important whether the vote came from a great thinker or a local beer stuffed gullible village idiot.
Education, including commercial leisure education such as good documentary channels, simply can not be put to the market, because most players in the market won't realize the benefits it will bring them, and those who make a wrong decision will not be punished severely enough to make their voting power irrelevant in the long term. It is simply much better when it's guided from the top.
Is there an alternative, a purely libertarian scenario that will provide better results than what we have now? Yes, there is. Eliminate all welfare and let those who chose to watch stupid instead of educational things die of starvation when they realize their experience of watching all the episodes of "Look what plastic surgery did to me!" won't really help them when looking for a job. Now, while such a scenario really does help the procreation of the smart individuals in relation to the rest of the species, it also brings with itself a huge amount of misery and unwanted externalities which really don't seem to be something a society should strive for.
Later privatized and renamed "The Learning Channel", it remained a pretty good source of serious documentaries, which were usually a level or two above those shown on competing TV stations. Overall, we could say it was a really good TV channel for education and I'm sure geeks loved to watch it.
But what happened then? Well, it all started with one innocent little show, called "Captain's log". It was basically a reality show about a captain on the boat doing whatever boat captains do in their life. Sounds pretty boring to me, but I've realized by now that my opinions usually aren't really in accord with those of the Average Joe. The show caught on and broke all viewer records on the as of yet still niche channel for geeks and the like. It didn't take much for the management to realize that geeks are unfortunately quite a small minority of the population, and that by going more mainstream their viewer statistics will go through the roof.
Promptly, over the next year or two, the channel sacked all its good stuff and replaced it with TV shows whose common denominator is "I have a bizarre lifestyle and I want to share it with the world".
And this is, alongside the well known tragedy of the commons, why I'm not a libertarian or a democrat, although I do share some of the views associated with the scene. Because in libertarian view, there really is no problem with what happened here. People wanted to view trash and the market gave them trash. Everyone is dumb and happy, the invisible hand did its job, and now the couch potatoes can laugh at people who are even more worthless than they are. It is a misfortune that an occasional geek or two got screwed up in the process because they are too few to make any sort of serious documentary television profitable, that is true, but hey, the majority is majority, right?
Well, not really. The thing is, good stuff costs a lot of money to produce, and is often not appreciated by the commons. Now, while it is true that the commoners will not really watch the educational channel anyway, it's a mistake to say such a channel shouldn't exist at all. And that's because the common peasants don't really matter. They're not the ones who push the world forward. They just tag along, do their boring daily routines, occasionally procreate, and wait to die. While their satisfaction is economically viable, it is also utterly pointless.
Smart people, those who drag the masses forward, need to have as much education and information as the society can provide, especially during their formative years. Because while smart people are pretty much born that way, environment does play a big role in how much of that potential will ultimately be realized. Limiting their environment to the taste of the Average Joe also limits their development and creates lesser personas than what they could have become.
By having the market do the selection of our education for as, we are basically limiting those of us who are truly great and pulling them down into the sea of mediocrity. While the market often does punish stupid people by taking away their money and thereby reducing their voting power, that is not really the case when it comes to TV and other information sources. What matters there is pretty much just the number of views, or in modern day clicks. Whether the person who performed the view or click is a Nobel Prize winning or a total idiot is really not important at all, just as in a democracy it is not important whether the vote came from a great thinker or a local beer stuffed gullible village idiot.
Education, including commercial leisure education such as good documentary channels, simply can not be put to the market, because most players in the market won't realize the benefits it will bring them, and those who make a wrong decision will not be punished severely enough to make their voting power irrelevant in the long term. It is simply much better when it's guided from the top.
Is there an alternative, a purely libertarian scenario that will provide better results than what we have now? Yes, there is. Eliminate all welfare and let those who chose to watch stupid instead of educational things die of starvation when they realize their experience of watching all the episodes of "Look what plastic surgery did to me!" won't really help them when looking for a job. Now, while such a scenario really does help the procreation of the smart individuals in relation to the rest of the species, it also brings with itself a huge amount of misery and unwanted externalities which really don't seem to be something a society should strive for.
Learning - so much fun!
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