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Politics : THE WHITE HOUSE
SPY 684.84+0.6%4:00 PM EST
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To: DuckTapeSunroof who wrote (21209)8/20/2008 12:56:45 PM
From: TimF  Read Replies (2) of 25737
 
They are "public goods" in the economic sense of the term (consumption of the good by one individual does not reduce availability of the good for consumption by others; and that no one can be effectively excluded from using the good), in terms of receiving the broadcasts , not in terms of sending them (if a powerful radio station is broadcasting near you on frequency X, it will be hard to impossible for you to also broadcast on that frequency).

Outside of economics, another sense of "public good" is essentially "owned by the government". Generally I think that's something that we have far too much of. The government should own less of the country.

To the extent the government is considered to own "the airwaves", and administers them in the interest of the people, allowing mostly unfettered speech on them, would be how I'd want them to administer them in my name. Certainly that would be much better than trying to control what is said or how it can be said in the name of "balance".

Insisting on balance will reduce the amount of political speech being broadcast, not make it more diverse. And the whole concept of balance is rather silly, since typically there are not two specific viewpoints that you could somehow balance, but a multitude of different ideas.
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