It's football season, and one of the most ancient and hallowed traditions of the season is complaining about... well, whatever suits you. For me, it's rule changes that were put into place to shorten college football games, ostensibly to reduce the risk of injury but really to be more accomodating to TV schedules (3 hours is better than 3.5 hours). The new rules mean that the team trailing in the 4th quarter has a much more difficult time getting back in the game. The game is shortened by 10-20% - less football for more commercials. The BCS already proves that the NCAA is more interested in advertising $$ than competitive sporting events. This is just another example. I consider signing an online petition to generally be a pointless strategy, but it gives me a feeling of satisfaction to register my frustration somewhere.
This is the site for the petition. I find it interesting that they get e-mail addresses for confirmation and delete duplicates. That's closer to a real petition than I've seen before online. Not that it will do any good.
Friday, September 08, 2006
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2 comments:
This is just a tiny example of the bad results you get from a market economy.
Reality t.v. is an obvious second example.
Bad results?
Reality TV, much as it pains me to say it, is popular. It may not be a pleasing choice for everyone, but it is a pleasing choice to a lot of people, and ends up being the most profitable. And that - not the creation of a culture acceptable to sophisticated tastes such as yours - is why TV exists.
Think you can do better? There's a huge pile of cash to be made if you (or anyone else) can.
Market economies don't meant everything is perfect. They do mean there is a strong feedback mechanism ($$) to correct truly bad moves (as hopefully the shortened NCAA games will prove to be). It is that feedback that central planning lacks. Homeland Security might be a joke, but lacking a strong feedback mechanism, the incentive to change is weak.
[I did, in fact laugh at your post. I rather hope you meant it to be taken that way. But I answer you in case there are those who don't get the joke.]
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