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Here's the problem: if you believe that what you watch have an impact on how you think, and you believe that the government should decide what you watch, then

by comboy 8y ago

Here's the problem: if you believe that what you watch have an impact on how you think, and you believe that the government should decide what you watch, then this democracy is less than ideal. Because the government then decides how masses vote. It's not a theoretical problem, it's a real issue in many countries, many people still watch TV to get their news and to decide who do they want to vote on. You heavily tax burger joints and then suddenly some homeless or very poor person becomes more hungry, taco business blossoms, and some other restaurants with poor quality food become more common because there's unfulfilled demand for cheap food. Society is a very complex system and it's hard to make it stable if it's not self-regulating. You can do a lot of harm having the best intentions in mind. Even with perfect, uncorrupted, most well meaning, very intelligent and highly educated government (hah), just the amount of information about all different complicated cases, latency of it becoming available to it, time needed to process it and implement necessary changes makes it very hard to provide sensible regulation in today's very quickly changing word. I'm not even going full Friedman here, I see what you mean, I just don't think this approach works well on the long run. Instead of taxing burger joints, maybe include more education about balancing healthy diet in place of shellfish classification in the school. But if you want to move forward, you must let people who make good choices be rewarded and those who make bad choices be punished. That's why you give them access to libraries, fast food joints and alcohol. And any site on the Internet they want to visit. If you force your wisest part of society to act with what you decided is best for the majority, they will flee the country or just die there without fully exploring their potential.

coldtea 8y ago
>* Here's the problem: if you believe that what you watch have an impact on how you think, and you believe that the government should decide what you watch, then this democracy is less than ideal. Because the government then decides how masses vote. It's not a theoretical problem, it's a real issue in many countries, many people still watch TV to get their news and to decide who they want to vote on.* Well, the government in this case is not deciding what the people should watch. They're deciding that they should not just be offered to watch stuff that comes 99.9% from one country, but that they should also have the chance (not the obligation) to watch their own content. If the tables were turned and Americans suddenly had 99% e.g. EU content in their TV programming and online video services, there would be riots. While Europeans watch tons of American movies, the US watches a tiny number of EU movies (and even those found tiny audiences). If it wasn't for anime (which is still a niche when it comes to mainstream audiences anyway) what Americans consume in foreign films would be a statistical error. >Instead of taxing burger joints, maybe include more education about balancing healthy diet in place of shellfish classification in the school. That doesn't have a chance with ads that hits people directly on evolutionary irrational parts of the brain -- or the abundance of fats, sugar, salt, and other substances in unheard of amounts (historically speaking) that directly create craving and addiction. Trying to get a kid to respond to healthy foods when they see a burger ad and taste a burger is like trying to talk logic to someone that tried a first hit of heroin.
- comboy 8y ago
  The last part is interesting, you could make a point that some form of entertainment or junk food are a light form of drugs. And those are illegal. Almost any substance can be abused though. Where would you draw the line? Should we ban (or put more tax) on candies? Soft drinks? Salt? Carbohydrates?* Personally I probably draw the line quite far from you, I think many drugs could be legal and it wouldn't shatter society, maybe it could even improve it. But that's disagreement about the line. My general point is that even if we would agree that people should watch more EU content, then forcing it on them is like when you have some complex algorithm (like in these coding contests), and some test cases fail. And instead of trying to rethink the algorithm, you add a few IFs, to make those test cases green. You can find examples of workarounds that would have the opposite effect (like netflix providing less content so that % matches) that people came up in minutes after reading about it. And in case of legislation it's much harder to get rid of those unnecessary IFs later on, than it is to add them. Anybody who's trying to innovate then has to navigate around them. Law is already so complex that everyday citizen can just hope he doesn't break any. He cannot be sure, because it gets created faster than you can read and understand it, even if you would make that your only hobby. It's like with cookies in the browser, yes I don't like tracking. But having to click a banner that I accept cookies on every website is not helping anybody.

by comboy 8y ago

coldtea 8y ago

>* Here's the problem: if you believe that what you watch have an impact on how you think, and you believe that the government should decide what you watch, then this democracy is less than ideal. Because the government then decides how masses vote. It's not a theoretical problem, it's a real issue in many countries, many people still watch TV to get their news and to decide who they want to vote on.* Well, the government in this case is not deciding what the people should watch. They're deciding that they should not just be offered to watch stuff that comes 99.9% from one country, but that they should also have the chance (not the obligation) to watch their own content. If the tables were turned and Americans suddenly had 99% e.g. EU content in their TV programming and online video services, there would be riots. While Europeans watch tons of American movies, the US watches a tiny number of EU movies (and even those found tiny audiences). If it wasn't for anime (which is still a niche when it comes to mainstream audiences anyway) what Americans consume in foreign films would be a statistical error. >Instead of taxing burger joints, maybe include more education about balancing healthy diet in place of shellfish classification in the school. That doesn't have a chance with ads that hits people directly on evolutionary irrational parts of the brain -- or the abundance of fats, sugar, salt, and other substances in unheard of amounts (historically speaking) that directly create craving and addiction. Trying to get a kid to respond to healthy foods when they see a burger ad and taste a burger is like trying to talk logic to someone that tried a first hit of heroin.

comboy 8y ago
The last part is interesting, you could make a point that some form of entertainment or junk food are a light form of drugs. And those are illegal. Almost any substance can be abused though. Where would you draw the line? Should we ban (or put more tax) on candies? Soft drinks? Salt? Carbohydrates?* Personally I probably draw the line quite far from you, I think many drugs could be legal and it wouldn't shatter society, maybe it could even improve it. But that's disagreement about the line. My general point is that even if we would agree that people should watch more EU content, then forcing it on them is like when you have some complex algorithm (like in these coding contests), and some test cases fail. And instead of trying to rethink the algorithm, you add a few IFs, to make those test cases green. You can find examples of workarounds that would have the opposite effect (like netflix providing less content so that % matches) that people came up in minutes after reading about it. And in case of legislation it's much harder to get rid of those unnecessary IFs later on, than it is to add them. Anybody who's trying to innovate then has to navigate around them. Law is already so complex that everyday citizen can just hope he doesn't break any. He cannot be sure, because it gets created faster than you can read and understand it, even if you would make that your only hobby. It's like with cookies in the browser, yes I don't like tracking. But having to click a banner that I accept cookies on every website is not helping anybody.