Hey, Steve and All:

This is not a left-of-center discussion list; in fact, I'm not sure this
discussion belongs on this list at all.

Peter Altschul

At 06:10 PM 7/8/98 -0500, you wrote:
>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
>>
>
>+----------------------------+
>|  Steve Zielinski  (N8UJS)  |
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>
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