DISQUS

"It is important to remember that the rationale underlying most of these old regulatory mandates was that we lived in a world of scarcity and regulated monopoly."

It's important to remember that the scarcity rationale was never anything but a rationalization, not a reason. It's unrealistic to expect them to abandon it one instant before the courts stop accepting it.

I guess I can see where they're coming from: The only thing saving the dead tree publishing industry is valuable information that somebody has to buy a pound of wood pulp to obtain. Think of it as a copy protection mechanism.

Digitize all those books, and one clever hacker could turn what [i]had been[/i] a few million dollars in inventory into worthless cardboard.

Still, given the actual text of the Constitution with respect to copyright, "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;", it's certainly arguable that you've passed beyond constitutional bounds as soon as copyright becomes a obstacle to progress. Of course, it's arguable that they passed that point when they started extending existing copyrights, making the "limited time" clause toothless.

Customers whose preferences happen to match a pre-existing bundle pay less under a system of bundling. Customers whose preferences are a poor match for the bundles offered pay far, far more under bundling, because they must purchase many bundles in order to assemble the bundle THEY want from bits and pieces of the others.

I agree, it's not a matter that ought to be addressed by legislation. I merely object to the claim that the specific people asking for ala carte are being irrational. THEY would be better off under such a system, even if the average consumer might not be.

And I'd argue it's an empirical question whether even the average consumer is better off under bundling... The assumption you're making is that the cable company is TRYING to design bundles to satisfy as many consumers as cheaply as possible. There are other strategies they could pursue, that aren't so beneficial to the customer.

Your example is highly simplified, to the point that it's incapable of exibiting the features that cause people to object to bundling, and demand ala carte.

Let us say that the cable station carries not two, but 100 channels. And you want to watch not one, but ten channels. The station offers ten bundles of ten channels each, which you must pay separately for.

If the list of channels you want to watch happens to corrispond to one of the pre-existing bundles, you're in hog heaven: You pay for ten channels, and watch ten channels. Peachy.

However... What you actually find in practice is that the bundles are cunningly composed so that each bundle only contains perhaps one or two channels you actually wish to view, while most of the channels in a bundle you either have no interest in, or find actively obnoxious. And so you have to buy, and pay for, maybe seven separate bundles of channels, in order to get the ten you really want to watch. The promise of ten channels for a low, low price turned out to be a cheat.

It's rather as though you went into a Chinese restaurant, intending to eat sweet and sour shrimp, with an egg roll on the side, and a pot of tea. Only to find that the food is bundled so that in order to get the tea you must order the Peking Duck dinner, the egg roll is only available with the Mongolian beef, the shrimp is a side dish that comes with an order of egg foo yung, and the sweet and sour sauce has to be drained out of a serving of sweet and sour pork.

And so, to put together your perfectly ordinary lunch, you have to order, and pay for, a feast for four, most of which you have to throw away. While the guy at the next table, who luckilly wanted tea with Peking Duck, eats the same amount of food for a quarter of what you paid.

Oh, and don't tell me it would be insanely expensive to administer ala carte; They've already got the necessary tools in place, in order to handle pay per view.

"But is it just me or is it not that case that campaign finance laws continue to get more complicated while the political process remains just about as "corrupt" as it has always been?

Well, maybe I'm just a cynic about the political process in general."

You're not cynical enough. The purpose isn't to suppress corruption, it's to disadvantage challengers. And it's working just fine.

Prior to the BCRA decision, I'd have said that you couldn't get such regulations past the Supreme court. Now I'm not so certain. The current Court doesn't have a lot of respect for that phrase, "Congress shall make no law..."

On the other hand, they DO seem more respectful of sex than of political speech, so I suppose the Court might draw a line, so long as nobody had the nerve to mention a candidate or officeholder...

The nice thing about coherent ideologies is that you can test them against reality. Then if they fail you can modify them. But trying to be without a coherent ideology is like trying to do science without theories; You're just a kid randomly mixing things from your chemistry set, and even if you hit on a success, you won't know how to replicate it.

"Will the Democratic Party stand up and assert themselves as the party of free speech and the First Amendment, or will they go along with the agenda set by social conservatives in the Republican Party?"

A most amusing question, in as much as the Democratic party is the primary force behind the REAL threat to 1st amendment rights today, camapaign censorship laws. An attack not on the margins of freedom of speech, but instead the very core of what it's supposed to protect.