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Comment by eru | Hacker News Reader

Things like documentaries are mostly watched by already well-off people (mostly middle class and up).

In Germany, public TV is paid for by (nearly?) every household. [0]

Forcing everyone, including poor people, to subsidize rich people's taste for documentaries seems a bit.. off?

Similar arguments apply to public libraries and opera houses, though at least there the financing is done mostly via progressive taxation.

Of course, you can argue that we sophisticated people know what's good for those unwashed masses, and if only they watched their documentaries like they are supposed to, they would soon see the light. Colour me skeptical.

[0] As far as I am concerned, private broadcasters can and should do what they feel like.

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People choose from what is presented to them. That's consumerism. It's not like people get to pick what gets produced. If more public interest material is available and advertised, it'll get watched more. The alternative is to watch less TV and engage with society directly more. Both of those outcomes would be preferable to the excessive production and consumption of entertainment.

Private broadcasters do not pick material based on public interest or even their judgment of what is good. It is far more mechanical and influenced entirely by market forces. Herman and Chomsky discuss this in Chapter 1 of Manufacturing Consent.

https://ia802700.us.archive.org/31/items/pdfy-NekqfnoWIEuYgd...

> The alternative is to watch less TV and engage with society directly more. Both of those outcomes would be preferable to the excessive production and consumption of entertainment.

I agree. And economically, if you want less of a good to be consumed, ceasing to subsidize its production with tax payer money is a good first step. If you want to go further, perhaps even tax its production.

> Private broadcasters do not pick material based on public interest or even their judgment of what is good. It is far more mechanical and influenced entirely by market forces.

How do market forces differ from public interest?

Or rather, what do you mean by 'public interest'? It's what the general public is interested in?

Market forces come from people.

Market forces come from people.

Market forces tend toward baseness. It takes active intent to elevate society above the lowest possible level. Just as one doesn't want to hire at the median skill level of their company lest the average continue to drop over time, a society has to aim higher than what the impulsive market optimizes for, or it will decay.

Revealed preference is just code for exploitation of vice.

'Market forces' are just what people want and are willing to pay for.

Of course, there are always enlightened and sophisticated people like yourself that know better what's good for the unwashed masses.

Well, when people complain about a growing wealth divide, and those who are doing okay financially say that childhood access to public libraries and documentaries made them who they are, shouldn't those things receive funding?

“You wasted $150,000 on an education you coulda got for $1.50 in late fees at the public library.”

- Good Will Hunting

edit: btw, speaking of libraries, copyrighteousness is destroying our society

Of course, Good Will Hunting is wrong.

Receiving education isn't about learning. At least not primary. It's about getting a piece of paper at the end.

Public libraries and free internet resources are one argument in this direction. Another: professors are usually more than happy for you to sit in on lectures, even if you don't pay any tuition.

That's a bit like asking healthy people. You'll get answers ranging from things like exercise to homeopathy.

Answers from people can be used to suggest avenues for investigation, but shouldn't make you fund expensive stuff outright. (Assuming here that homeopathy is obvious nonsense, that people still swear by.)

And, of course, public libraries and documentaries don't have to just produce good effects. In order to justify public funding, you'd need to do a whole cost-benefit analysis and look at opportunity costs.

So look at what you get from public libraries vs libraries financed from private charity _plus_ whatever other good things the public money saved could do (including just outright giving it to poor people).

I deliberately picked public libraries here as a provocative examples. I suspect they might actually pass the cost-benefit test without too much contortion of metrics and data.

I am much less sanguine about the bang-for-buck of publicly financed opera houses, theatres and symphony orchestras, which Germany is quite fond of. And of course, publicly financed radio and TV broadcasters.

Without US public broadcasting, I and countless others would have grown up on GI Joe instead of Mr. Rogers.

Further, I generally strongly oppose charity as a component of future plans (leaving aside whether charity is good or necessary in the present). We should never be building society such that it depends on the funding whims of rich philanthropists.

Sure, there should be some kind of analysis of benefits, but some things simply have to exist for a society to be a society, because without them, the loss of their intangible and second-order benefits will cause a society to implode Idiocracy style, and nobody will know why.

And I am suggesting we should do careful cost benefit analysis, instead of just assuming that our favourite pet causes will surely come out ahead.

On top of cost-benefit analysis, you will have to explain to everyone whose life trajectory was meaningfully improved by a resource what alternative path you are providing so that future people can also find their way to a better life.

When I was first living on my own barely making rent, PBS documentaries were the most interesting thing on broadcast TV. Infinitely more entertaining than drivel like the Bachelor. Other than available time and offered free content I doubt preference of documentaries is different among income classes.

It's crazy how many people believe being poor means you're stupid. Not true! Thank you for pushing back!

Who said anything to that effect?

Are you implying that people who have better things to do than watch documentaries are stupid?

Social class is correlated with income, but it's not the same.

Similarly, entertainment preferences are correlated with social class (and with income), but again, they are not perfect predictors of each other.

So a few anecdata wouldn't undermine anything here. Though in fact, your example actually strengthens the argument I am making: you are the kind of person that prefers watching documentaries over other drivel, and you are the kind of person who managed to get themselves out of poverty. That's likely because you have the preferences, habits and skills of someone who is at least middle class in a social sense, even if your income took a while to catch up.

(Keep in mind that we are talking about social class in a rather abstract fashion here. German middle class mores are different from American middle class mores.)

Wow, that is some overt classism right there. The world is a much better place is you just see people as people. Everybody is trying to achieve the same thing regardless of their "class". Security and safety for self and loved ones by whatever means are available to them with their skills and knowledge.

> Things like documentaries are mostly watched by already well-off people (mostly middle class and up).

assuming a normal distribution, wouldn't this then be the majority of people?

This question would benefit from some empirical data.

Arguing from definitions won't help us. (Keep in mind that 'middle class' doesn't mean 'median income' or something statistically simple like that.)

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