Peter,
Please take your thoughts to the Ronald Reagan or Margaret Thatcher
list. I don't see how these ideas fit into the discussion areas on which
this list is based. Now I am relatively flexible regarding the broad
spectrum of topics which can cover technology and the blind, but
frankly, I don't see how your political views here fit the bill.
Steve
On Wed, 8 Jul 1998, Peter Seymour wrote:
> On Wed, 8 Jul 1998, Kelly Ford wrote:
>
> > Peter,
> >
> > >I would certainly enjoy this, but I don't want my particular needs to
> > >translate into a mandate for movie companies and theaters. If the benefits
> > >of making this accommadation exceed the costs, it will get done. That is a
> > >given of the free market.
> >
> > This is not a given at all and government mandates require many things of
> > businesses.
>
> The fact that benefits to consumers must exceed the cost to producers is a
> fact of life in the free market. The opposite, costs exceeding benefits,
> would lead to bankruptcy. The fact that the government, with its monopoly
> on the use of force, can interfere with the market with mandates,
> subsidies and the like, does not change the basic market principal. Taxes
> and regulations add friction and distortions to the market process, which
> is striving to maximize the utility of the greatest number of
> participants.
>
> The government can and does use its coercive powers to alter
> the most efficient distribution of resources in order to benefit special
> interest groups, minorities, particular occupations, and so on, but they
> do this at the expense of optimizing the utility of the greatest number of
> people in all their various pursuits.
>
> Take a look at your phone bill. Do you know that you pay a
> > tax to support the TDD relay system used by people with hearing impairments?>
>
> No, I didn't realize this, and I'd rather not pay it. I have my own
> impairment to compensate for and I'd rather have my money to spend on
> myself. Government has been heavily regulating telephones for a long time
> and so it doesn't surprise me that they have this special tax, but it is
> not provided by the market. Make no mistake, every tax has a gun behind
> it. Don't pay a tax and eventually somebody will show up at your door with
> a gun and take you away. The worst that the market can do is refuse to
> serve you if you don't pay for the product that you are demanding - but
> who can blame it?
>
> > In the United States it used to cost someone with a hearing impairment well
> > over one hundred dollars to buy a closed caption decoder simple to receive
> > closed captioning. It was a government mandate that now makes this
> > technology part of every television set sold in this country.>
>
> The miracle of dispersed taking and concentrated giving. Take an extra
> dollar from every tax payer and give it to ,me. I'll be a
> multi-millionaire and they won't miss it. Of course, I can go into
> business and strive to make a product from which I can profit by one
> dollar from millions of people, but that is difficult. I could also start
> a charity that will help to fund a need that is dear to me, but that is
> difficult too. Hence, the temptation of passing a law It passes over the
> line that separates voluntary action from action elicited under threat,
> but, if your goal is noble, God will look the other way, especially if
> everybody else is doing it, too. It's easier to eat from the government
> trough than to make a stand for an individual's right to use his time and
> money - every bit of it - in accordance with his needs and desires.
>
> > Were the free market given free run, I doubt many rural areas would have
> > telephone service even today. But when the government decided that
> > telephone service was essential to life, it mandated that phone companies
> > serve many rural areas, despite the fact that it was a more costly
> > proposition to wire these areas.
>
> Firstly, government can not decide. A dicision is a mental function that
> occurs within the brain of an individual. A politician can decide, and
> many politicians can vote, but that is not a decision. It is a peculiar
> selection process, but not distinctly different from a decision, although
> anthropomorphizing elections is a common occurreance.
>
> Secondly, how can telephone's be "essential to life" one year, but not in
> the previous year? Were the people in these rural areas dead until
> telephones were hooked up, and then they spring to life? Food and air are
> essential to life. A telephone is a convenience. Only a government, with
> its fictional decision, could get away with such a silly claim. Actually,
> it only gets away with what voters are willing to believe.
>
> Thirdly, if the benefits of rural telephone service exceed the costs, they
> will be installed, despite your conjecture. If this is not so in the
> immediate present, it may be so in the future, and free market speculators
> will get it done. Because the provision of infrastructure such as roads,
> electricity, telephones and so on, will increase the value of the land
> that is served, business has an incentive to buy the land really cheap,
> improve its value with infrastructure, then develop the plots or sell them
> at a profit.
>
> This process occurs gradually and quietly throughout the world, and it is
> very effective, Hence, another temptation of government: to pass an
> allegedly life-saving law and come off as a hero, worthy of re-election.
>
> > > Even today the reaction of many in the movie industry is, "Why would
> > someone who's blind go to the movies when they can't see?" So with that
> > attitude do you really think they are going to imagine putting descriptions
> > into movies as a default?>
>
> Probably not, but people in the movie industry are understandably visually
> oriented, and their idea of accommodating the audience is putting in
> enough sex and violence to satisfy them. People produce movies, not as a
> public service, but to enjoy the satisfaction of personal achievement and
> to turn a buck. They are not philistines. They are motivated by the same
> incentives that have caused ninety-five percent of men to put on their
> pants in the morning for thousands of years.
>
> Right now, film executives are looking at scripts and chewing their
> fingernails, wondering if, three years from now, they won't lose too much
> money by producing this movie. A major motion picture company will produce
> a dozen films each year, hoping that the profits from the one success will
> cover the losses on the other eleven.
>
> There are few movies made with elderly women featured, as opposed to young
> attractive men and women, because the first group don't attract the
> audiences and bucks. Young, sighted, english-speaking people are the bread
> and butter of the industry, and a gold rush industry like films can't
> afford to neglect this audience, and it can only cater to other audiences,
> such as the blind, after its belly is full with the bread and butter from
> the first.
>
> If there aren't enough only Spanish-speaking people to warrant the
> production of a Spanish speaking film, even with subtitles, think of how
> remote the conserns of the blind are!
>
> > Your idea about a group to attend the
> movies is fine but should I be
> > limited to socialization or watching a movie on one particular night or
> > with a certain group of people. The point is that technology makes
> > something possible for greater freedom of choice and independence. Why
> > shoot it in the foot?>
>
> Well, I'm not the one who wants to do any shooting. Remember, it's the
> government that has the guns, and I don't want to use the government. I'm
> all for persuasion, though, which leads me to an idea that emerged from
> my writings.
>
> In this context, blind people may be in the same boat as people who don't
> speak english or who are hard of hearing. What if theaters provided
> headsets that could be used for audio description for the blind, verbal
> translation for foreign language speakers, and mere amplification for the
> hard of hearing? The user selects the type of transmission that he needs.
>
> Better yet, the average movie-goer could also use the headphones if he
> prefers the superior stereo separation that headphones provide, or if he
> wants to block out the sounds of people talking around him.
>
> Now, here we've got something! With all the groups mentioned above, we've
> got the critical mass that will get the attention of movie executives.
> They'll see the dollar signs in this proposal, and its far better to
> dangle that carrot than to threaten them with the stick of legislation.
>
> I'll write up my proposal and present it to sound technologists in the
> film industry. The first test is economic viability - benefits must exceed
> the costs.
>
> Peter Seymour
>
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| Steve Zielinski (N8UJS) |
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