6 ms·

Protectionism is bad in all its forms. Content providers want to capture the local market and should include local productions -- if that's what the subscriber

Protectionism is bad in all its forms. Content providers want to capture the local market and should include local productions -- if that's what the subscribers want. Mandating a quota is backwards. If a state wants to sponsor work and make it available at low costs I'm sure content services would jump to provide it. All this does is either increase cost or reduce available selection in the affected markets. If the subscribers don't want the content they shouldn't be forced to pay for it. I live in Austria and do not want to have my selection reduced or more Austrian content. Countries should try to compete on the global market place -- entertainment is one area where good content easily jumps borders.

v_lisivka 8y ago
Protectionsm is bad in all its forms. USA wants to protect it markets, and English language is one of tools to do that. Same for Russian language. Google forces me to Russian and English sites even if local versions are exist and I explicitly say that I want local version via "lang:Ukrainian". Google just ignores me and my needs and drives traffic to Russian and English sites. Youtube tries to convince me with Russian clips for years. The only tool I have is to ban every Russian clip I saw, but it helps only partially. I cannot do that for English clips, so my Recommended page is 99% of English clips and few ones sometimes in Ukrainian. I have my own site: Linux.org.ua. At beginning, it was very popular site because it was the top national site about Linux. Then Google turned switch (in 2007?) and redirected all our national traffic to linux.org.ru, because 150M Russians is way more than 50M Ukrainians. Same for other sites, so almost all our niche national sites died.
pbhjpbhj 8y ago
>If a state wants to sponsor work and make it available at low costs I'm sure content services would jump to provide it. // Who should they sponsor? By getting the people who are already efficiently producing programmes they at least seem to be targeting for efficient content production? In general I appreciate the sentiment - both financial and cultural - but the proposed implementation does seem barmy. A sensible quota would be something like 1%.
michaelt 8y ago
Protectionism is bad in all its forms. I read a book once that made an interesting point: 1. English-language films make more money than French-language films because there are more English speakers than French speakers. 2. Because of this, an English-language film can profitably have a bigger budget, allowing better production values. 3. Once a film has been produced, the rights will get sold in every foreign market - with the price set by auction, not by the film's production costs. If French broadcasters only bid $15 million for a $150 million film, they get it for that price. 4. The upshot of _this_ is English-language films look 10 times more expensive than French-language films that cost the same. 5. This makes it extremely hard for French language films to compete. The reason the French are so protective is because they believe, in the absence of such protection, the French film industry would get its ass kicked by the English-language film industry. Oh, and for 'English-language' and 'French-language' above, you can insert a bunch of stuff about national culture. How do the police and courts act in your film? What food do we see people eating? What attitudes to sex, violence and alcohol do the good guys show? What political systems are shown, and how do characters view and interact with them? What values motivate the lead characters? What sort of things does the military get sent to do? How do employees interact with their bosses? What do roads and cars look like? Is there literally a character named Captain America?
- weberc2 8y ago
  As an American who doesn't live in NYC or LA, I sympathize with wanting high quality, contextually diverse films; however, I would never want my (in this case, state) government to try to restrict the market of films available to me.
- kodablah 8y ago
  > This makes it extremely hard for French language films to compete. This assumes some zero-sum level of media the public can support and that money is enough to control it. I don't believe in either of those things wrt the arts and patronage can come in many forms, but restricting amounts of art in any direction by fiat is wrong.
  - harperlee 8y ago
rapsey 8y ago
> Protectionism is bad in all its forms. Yet it was the basis for economic growth of every developed economy. From the US, Germany, Japan to China. The only countries that have no protectionism and free markets are poor African ones that find themselves under the IMFs thumb. All of which have stagnating economies.
- antidesitter 8y ago
  Can you back up your claims with any evidence?
  - rapsey 8y ago
    It's from here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Things-They-Dont-About-Capitalism/dp/0141047976 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Things-They-Dont-About-Capitalism/d...
    - antidesitter 8y ago
      Just linking to a book doesn’t help. Elaborate. Be specific.
  - hardlianotion 8y ago
    Here is a starting point for your research. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ha-Joon_Chang https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ha-Joon_Chang He has written a lot on this subject. Also https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Jacobs https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Jacobs Jane Jacobs is another who writes very clearly on the role protecting home markets ply in development. Anecdotally, Victorian Britain was full of indignant stories about Yankees stealing intellectual property. One of the reasons Dickens conducted his US tours was to try and plead the case for payment with folk who were pirating his work.
    - antidesitter 8y ago
      Again, I see no data that supports rapsey's claims, namely that 1. Protectionism resulted in greater economic growth for the US, Germany, Japan, and China. The example of China is particularly egregious since it was China's economic liberalization reforms in the 1980s and 1990s, including opening up to foreign investment and lifting protectionist policies, that resulted in massive economic growth and massive poverty reduction. 2. There is a positive correlation between protectionism and development in African countries. This is ironic because protectionism is a major source of harm for African countries. From the introduction of [5]: In recent years, as African governments and development advocates have stepped up their campaign to reform the trade policies of rich countries, the issue of agricultural protectionism has come to the forefront. This is a highly divisive issue, with rich countries resisting poor countries' demands for major changes... Critics highlight the hypocrisy of rich countries giving lip service to free trade while maintaining tariff barriers and paying subsidies to their farmers. Their argument that agricultural protectionism places an unfair burden on Africa is becoming a mainstream view. There is a consensus among economists that protectionism has a negative effect on economic growth and economic welfare [1][2][3][4], so rapsey's extraordinary claim to the contrary requires extraordinary evidence. As Gregory Mankiw says [6], "Few propositions command as much consensus among professional economists as that open world trade increases economic growth and raises living standards." [1] https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/675410 https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/675410 [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/26/upshot/economists-actually-agree-on-this-point-the-wisdom-of-free-trade.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/26/upshot/economists-actuall... [3] https://piie.com/newsroom/short-videos/why-after-200-years-cant-economists-sell-free-trade https://piie.com/newsroom/short-videos/why-after-200-years-c... [4] https://research.stlouisfed.org/publications/review/2004/09/01/free-trade-why-are-economists-and-noneconomists-so-far-apart/ https://research.stlouisfed.org/publications/review/2004/09/... [5] https://www.jstor.org/stable/40209918 https://www.jstor.org/stable/40209918 [6] http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2006/05/outsourcing-redux.html http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2006/05/outsourcing-redux.htm...
barrkel 8y ago
"Protection is bad in all its forms" is an ideological statement of opinion, but you say it like it's a fact. It's not a fact. Marketplaces are amoral. They incentivize supply to satisfy demand. There's nothing that ensures that demand morally good or bad, and the intermediation effect of monetary transactions can disguise morally problematic inputs to goods that satisfy demand, so it can encourage immoral production, like polluting industries or child labour.
- krona 8y ago
  The principle of comparative advantage is one of the few things in economics that is both interesting, and true.
  - pjc50 8y ago
    Only if there's a single metric for "better".
  - smadge 8y ago
    It is strange for you to think of culture as a commodity to be traded on the global marketplace. British steel and Chinese steel might be effectively indistinguishable, but the same can not be said of British media/values and Chinese media/values.
  - rapsey 8y ago
    If you live in a theoretical world with no basis in reality.
    - antidesitter 8y ago
      Really? Are you saying comparative advantage doesn't exist?
      - rapsey 8y ago
        Only maybe in a pre-industrial world where economies are nothing but fishing, farming and mining. Our economies are largely service and manufacturing based. Is one country better at programming, manufacturing, cooking, etc. then another? All of these things are taught and developed. Any country can become good at any of these service or manufacturing jobs. China is a manufacturing powerhouse, but so is the US, Germany and South Korea. China and South Korea both had extremely clear strategies set forth by their governments to develop a manufacturing base over the past 30 years. What point in there in some comparative advantage theory? Nothing is innate and unchangeable. Just good economic policy.
smadge 8y ago
Culture is not a commodity. Culture is also not simply entertainment. Stories are vehicles for a society's values and values between societies are different. So stories are not exchangeable in the way that you could exchange some steel for some textiles.

v_lisivka 8y ago

Protectionsm is bad in all its forms. USA wants to protect it markets, and English language is one of tools to do that. Same for Russian language. Google forces me to Russian and English sites even if local versions are exist and I explicitly say that I want local version via "lang:Ukrainian". Google just ignores me and my needs and drives traffic to Russian and English sites. Youtube tries to convince me with Russian clips for years. The only tool I have is to ban every Russian clip I saw, but it helps only partially. I cannot do that for English clips, so my Recommended page is 99% of English clips and few ones sometimes in Ukrainian. I have my own site: Linux.org.ua. At beginning, it was very popular site because it was the top national site about Linux. Then Google turned switch (in 2007?) and redirected all our national traffic to linux.org.ru, because 150M Russians is way more than 50M Ukrainians. Same for other sites, so almost all our niche national sites died.

pbhjpbhj 8y ago

>If a state wants to sponsor work and make it available at low costs I'm sure content services would jump to provide it. // Who should they sponsor? By getting the people who are already efficiently producing programmes they at least seem to be targeting for efficient content production? In general I appreciate the sentiment - both financial and cultural - but the proposed implementation does seem barmy. A sensible quota would be something like 1%.

michaelt 8y ago

Protectionism is bad in all its forms. I read a book once that made an interesting point: 1. English-language films make more money than French-language films because there are more English speakers than French speakers. 2. Because of this, an English-language film can profitably have a bigger budget, allowing better production values. 3. Once a film has been produced, the rights will get sold in every foreign market - with the price set by auction, not by the film's production costs. If French broadcasters only bid $15 million for a $150 million film, they get it for that price. 4. The upshot of _this_ is English-language films look 10 times more expensive than French-language films that cost the same. 5. This makes it extremely hard for French language films to compete. The reason the French are so protective is because they believe, in the absence of such protection, the French film industry would get its ass kicked by the English-language film industry. Oh, and for 'English-language' and 'French-language' above, you can insert a bunch of stuff about national culture. How do the police and courts act in your film? What food do we see people eating? What attitudes to sex, violence and alcohol do the good guys show? What political systems are shown, and how do characters view and interact with them? What values motivate the lead characters? What sort of things does the military get sent to do? How do employees interact with their bosses? What do roads and cars look like? Is there literally a character named Captain America?

weberc2 8y ago
As an American who doesn't live in NYC or LA, I sympathize with wanting high quality, contextually diverse films; however, I would never want my (in this case, state) government to try to restrict the market of films available to me.
kodablah 8y ago
> This makes it extremely hard for French language films to compete. This assumes some zero-sum level of media the public can support and that money is enough to control it. I don't believe in either of those things wrt the arts and patronage can come in many forms, but restricting amounts of art in any direction by fiat is wrong.
- harperlee 8y ago

rapsey 8y ago

> Protectionism is bad in all its forms. Yet it was the basis for economic growth of every developed economy. From the US, Germany, Japan to China. The only countries that have no protectionism and free markets are poor African ones that find themselves under the IMFs thumb. All of which have stagnating economies.

antidesitter 8y ago
Can you back up your claims with any evidence?
- rapsey 8y ago
  It's from here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Things-They-Dont-About-Capitalism/dp/0141047976 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Things-They-Dont-About-Capitalism/d...
  - antidesitter 8y ago
    Just linking to a book doesn’t help. Elaborate. Be specific.
- hardlianotion 8y ago
  Here is a starting point for your research. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ha-Joon_Chang https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ha-Joon_Chang He has written a lot on this subject. Also https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Jacobs https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Jacobs Jane Jacobs is another who writes very clearly on the role protecting home markets ply in development. Anecdotally, Victorian Britain was full of indignant stories about Yankees stealing intellectual property. One of the reasons Dickens conducted his US tours was to try and plead the case for payment with folk who were pirating his work.
  - antidesitter 8y ago
    Again, I see no data that supports rapsey's claims, namely that 1. Protectionism resulted in greater economic growth for the US, Germany, Japan, and China. The example of China is particularly egregious since it was China's economic liberalization reforms in the 1980s and 1990s, including opening up to foreign investment and lifting protectionist policies, that resulted in massive economic growth and massive poverty reduction. 2. There is a positive correlation between protectionism and development in African countries. This is ironic because protectionism is a major source of harm for African countries. From the introduction of [5]: In recent years, as African governments and development advocates have stepped up their campaign to reform the trade policies of rich countries, the issue of agricultural protectionism has come to the forefront. This is a highly divisive issue, with rich countries resisting poor countries' demands for major changes... Critics highlight the hypocrisy of rich countries giving lip service to free trade while maintaining tariff barriers and paying subsidies to their farmers. Their argument that agricultural protectionism places an unfair burden on Africa is becoming a mainstream view. There is a consensus among economists that protectionism has a negative effect on economic growth and economic welfare [1][2][3][4], so rapsey's extraordinary claim to the contrary requires extraordinary evidence. As Gregory Mankiw says [6], "Few propositions command as much consensus among professional economists as that open world trade increases economic growth and raises living standards." [1] https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/675410 https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/675410 [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/26/upshot/economists-actually-agree-on-this-point-the-wisdom-of-free-trade.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/26/upshot/economists-actuall... [3] https://piie.com/newsroom/short-videos/why-after-200-years-cant-economists-sell-free-trade https://piie.com/newsroom/short-videos/why-after-200-years-c... [4] https://research.stlouisfed.org/publications/review/2004/09/01/free-trade-why-are-economists-and-noneconomists-so-far-apart/ https://research.stlouisfed.org/publications/review/2004/09/... [5] https://www.jstor.org/stable/40209918 https://www.jstor.org/stable/40209918 [6] http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2006/05/outsourcing-redux.html http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2006/05/outsourcing-redux.htm...

barrkel 8y ago

"Protection is bad in all its forms" is an ideological statement of opinion, but you say it like it's a fact. It's not a fact. Marketplaces are amoral. They incentivize supply to satisfy demand. There's nothing that ensures that demand morally good or bad, and the intermediation effect of monetary transactions can disguise morally problematic inputs to goods that satisfy demand, so it can encourage immoral production, like polluting industries or child labour.

krona 8y ago
The principle of comparative advantage is one of the few things in economics that is both interesting, and true.
- pjc50 8y ago
  Only if there's a single metric for "better".
- smadge 8y ago
  It is strange for you to think of culture as a commodity to be traded on the global marketplace. British steel and Chinese steel might be effectively indistinguishable, but the same can not be said of British media/values and Chinese media/values.
- rapsey 8y ago
  If you live in a theoretical world with no basis in reality.
  - antidesitter 8y ago
    Really? Are you saying comparative advantage doesn't exist?
    - rapsey 8y ago
      Only maybe in a pre-industrial world where economies are nothing but fishing, farming and mining. Our economies are largely service and manufacturing based. Is one country better at programming, manufacturing, cooking, etc. then another? All of these things are taught and developed. Any country can become good at any of these service or manufacturing jobs. China is a manufacturing powerhouse, but so is the US, Germany and South Korea. China and South Korea both had extremely clear strategies set forth by their governments to develop a manufacturing base over the past 30 years. What point in there in some comparative advantage theory? Nothing is innate and unchangeable. Just good economic policy.

smadge 8y ago

Culture is not a commodity. Culture is also not simply entertainment. Stories are vehicles for a society's values and values between societies are different. So stories are not exchangeable in the way that you could exchange some steel for some textiles.