BBC funding: Immoral, no matter how you slice it
Posted on October 4th, 2006 by Jackie Danicki
My favourite pro-public TV Liberal Democrat writes:
No one would dream of trying to set up a UK version of HBO, precisely because of the BBC. Yet people are being put in prison on a daily basis for refusing to fund it. There’s something profoundly wrong going on.
Yeah, because it’s profoundly wrong to force people to fund TV stations under threat of violence. It’s not really very difficult to understand that, though it seems hard for statists to accept. Nice to see that sense and morality is infecting such quarters, though.
Filed under: Law, Politics, Television, The State Is Not Your Friend
The only time I fund TV stations is when I buy TV-advertised washing-up liquid.
When They come round to ask me if I’ve got a TV I say “no” and they go away without asking me any further questions. I don’t have a TV, but I have several radios, DVD players, and computer monitors filling my flat with free entertainment. I watch what I want to watch when I want to watch it completely legally.
Well, except for certain sporting events featuring British national teams subsidised from my taxes. To see these I have to buy drinks I don’t want in pubs I wouldn’t otherwise go to because private broadcasters have bought a monopoly on their broadcast.
I do occasionally make the case for the abolition of the licence fee myself, but on free market grounds, not libertarian ones.
Damian, what do you consider the difference between libertarian and free market grounds? Do you believe it is moral to force people to pay the state a don’t-throw-me-in-prison-please annual fee if they wish to own a TV?
Do you believe it is moral to force people to pay the state a don’t-throw-me-in-prison-please annual fee if they wish to own a TV?
What, like my dad’s shotgun certificate? And road-tax, and MOT? And a fishing-rod permit? And all the other little hidden taxes in life?
Well, quite. What’s your answer, Alec?
> and MOT?
No, nothing like MOT. Unless the state are introducing a scheme whereby you have to prove your TV isn’t broken before you’re allowed to use it in public.
> The only time I fund TV stations is when I buy TV-advertised washing-up liquid.
This is a popular urban myth. Companies who advertise spend a whole heap of money on finding out how effective their advertising is. Their figures aren’t astoundingly accurate (probably of similar accuracy to TV ratings, I’d guess), but they do have some idea of which proportion of their customers buy in response to which, if any, adverts, and their budgets are set accordingly. As a rule, no-one increases their TV advertising budget in response to sales to people who don’t own TVs.
Answer?
I wasn’t aware I had to have an answer.
Like: “Modern youth disrespect us! What is the answer?”
Possibly the answer is “get over it”?
I don’t like every single instance of government regulation, in fact I don’t like many of them, and would quite like to replace some of them / experiment with:
- A PR-Elected House of “Lords” with strong mandate
- A flat road-tax for all vehicles (to enforce registration) and sky-high fuel duty (ie: taxes) to compensate for lost revenue / promote less fuel usage.
- Eradication of excise duty on biodiesel, especially homebrew (old chip oil)
- Compulsory voting at risk of modest fine (think of it as a “get out of voting tax”) with obvious space for abstention.
…and regards the BBC, if you hate it so much, why not dump your television and live off YouTube, thereby pushing the matter of eventual deregulation forwards?
As for MOT, ok Squander2 can rightly claim that it is by dint of safety not a stealth tax, but then why is the cost of a safety check paid to the Govt as opposed to merely made a condition of insurance in an open market, cf: Australia?
Should keep you busy for a while. :-)
Alec, I know how intelligent you are, so I can’t believe you mean to be taken seriously when you ask why I don’t just accept that I have no right to own a television without paying a penalty to the government. For the same reason, I think I’ll pass on addressing the rest of your comments.
I didn’t say MOT isn’t a stealth tax. I said it’s completely different to the Licence Fee. The Licence Fee, in fact, contrary to what you were implying, is highly unusual.
> shotgun certificate?
The government do not make shotguns. Well, OK, maybe the MOD do, but they’re not available to civilians. And you are not forced to pay for the manufacture of the army’s guns in order to use one made by some private manufacturer.
> fishing-rod permit?
Now, I’m positive they don’t make fishing rods.
> road-tax
They do make roads, but they only charge you if you use them. If you have a vehicle that you only ever use on private roads, you don’t have to pay to drive that vehicle on the Government’s roads.
People don’t merely object to the Licence Fee because it’s a tax. There’s a whole raft of other issues involved. It is not like other taxes.
> sky-high fuel duty
We already have that.
Actually, I am quite serious about your option of not having a TV; why do you need one?
As for licenses: the Government are defacto entitled to make rules about what people can have (kittens), or may be licensed to have (guns, rods, cars, tv), and cannot have (nuclear weapons) - and the people are contrawise entitled to lobby to have those rules changed and amended.
However I don’t know any unalienable right to a “Free TV” (as in “Free Beer”) enshrined in law, so perhaps you should lobby to have one put through the European Commision?
You could take a “thin edge of the wedge” argument here and say “what if they licensed radios too, and computers?”, but the truth is they don’t license the former, and they almost tried the latter (ref: 1990s crypto wars) and now the private sector tries to do the same (Trusted Computing) which I would be a lot more scared of.
With the Sky box I bough from the store, I pay Sky 25 quid/month to get endless Simpsons re-runs, and (more importantly) the Discovery Channel.
With the TV that I bought from the store, I pay Capita 12 quid/month for the BBC, which frankly I watch more of than I do the Sky channels, so I’m paying Murdoch way too much.
But structurally, where’s the diff? Oh, maybe you *could* just watch DVDs (so use a laptop) or Sky Channels (which provide the BBC as default because of the license fee).
Or you could frumpily refuse to watch BBC or BBC-sourced programmes out of spite.
But I’ll bet you don’t.
Aside: perhaps Squander2 would acutally like to explain what’s so terrible, rather than just handwave “People don’t merely object to the Licence Fee because it’s a tax. There’s a whole raft of other issues involved. It is not like other taxes!!!1!1!!!”
(extra punctuation added for dramatic effect and emphasis) :-)
For me and others, there are many issues where we have to allow democracy (and efficiency) to trump liberty: for example National Insurance contributions (which you are forced to pay even if you don’t have a job); owning a car, a house, a boat, shares in a public company, even at one point owning a dog all require some kind of licence and/or carry a burden of tax in this country. Trying to evade any one of these is more likely to get you in jail (and more swiftly) than failing to license your TV.
Much as they’d appreciate not having to pay their licence fees, the vast majority of Britons would be livid if the public funding of broadcasting stopped tomorrow. Like the NHS, for all its wastefulness, it’s more efficient than any privately-funded alternative; the result, in aggregate, is also mostly of better quality.
When I visit the US many consumer services seem superior to their equivalents in the UK, but the two that always strike me as being pretty consistently inferior are personal banking and television—and I’m not just talking about the crap screen resolution.
I don’t know how to respond without sounding sarcastic, so I think I’ll hush for the time being…
> perhaps Squander2 would acutally like to explain what’s so terrible, rather than just handwave
Well, I did give a point-by-point rebuttal of what was wrong with every supposed parallel you drew, which is what is was referring to when I said that there was more to opposition to the tax than its mere taxishness. Maybe you missed that.
> the two that always strike me as being pretty consistently inferior are personal banking and television
Personal banking isn’t provided by the UK Government, and I’ll have to disagree with you on the TV. Biggest British sitcom of the 90s? Men Behaving Badly. Biggest US sitcoms of the 90s? Friends and Frasier. The only thing the British do consistently better than the Americans are wildlife documentaries.
> Like the NHS, for all its wastefulness, it’s more efficient than any privately-funded alternative
Define “efficient”. You’re not using the word the way I use it.
> there are many issues where we have to allow democracy (and efficiency) to trump liberty
I’d agree with that. Over here, we still have dog licenses, of which I thoroughly approve. I also have no problem with driving licenses or road tax (though I’ll certainly argue about how high road tax is and what the revenue should be spent on, I have no objection in principle). But licensing, in most cases, is used to exercise control over the ownership of dangerous items, such as dogs and shotguns, or to manage potential scarcity, as with fishing permits. I don’t think TVs are dangerous or that broadcasts are scarce.
My objection to the BBC is the huge gap between its supposed raison d’etre and the reality. If we really were funding the creation of programs that the private sector are “incapable” of, well, I might well still object in principle (Channel 4 proved years ago that the private sector are very much capable of obscure stuff for minorities), but the tax is small enough that I wouldn’t much care. But we aren’t. The license fee is used, among other things, to give millions of pounds to Hollywood studios for the rights to broadcast their films and sitcoms, and to create a particularly bad soap opera, make-over shows, and daytime talk shows in the mould of Oprah. Why is so much of the money that we are forced to pay for stuff that the private sector “can’t” provide handed over to the private sector or used to make copies of private-sector stuff? And then why are the bloody DVDs so expensive, when we’ve already paid for their production? And why do the BBC object as strongly as private producers when British subjects, most of whom have licenses, download their shows off the Web? In short, we don’t get the promised benefits. The License Fee is taken under false pretences.
that’s a rebuttal? it looked to me like you were trying to qualift the facts, none or which qualifications i argue with, and which qualifications i struggle to see how they are relevant?
For instance: “Now, I’m positive they don’t make fishing rods” - so you imply you have to make something to tax it? If so, that’d be called “selling” not “taxing”.
As for saying “we already have sky-high fuel duty”, your argument is… ?
Or you just are generally ill-disposed to taxes?
The rest is a response to PooterGeek, of which I largely agree with your “we still have dog licenses” argument, other than to agree licensing includes restricting dangerous things, managing scarce resources, but extend it to “funding stuff” - and when someone says “but that’s what taxes are for” I shall direct them to the point that licenses, like fines and many other “big brother takes money from you”, are *also* stealth taxes which not uncommonly fund their own enforcement too.
ps: False pretences? you’re bang on, i agree with you totally about that.
but that is also largely why we have a “ministry of defence” rather than a “ministry of war”.
Alec, it was you who said
> What, like my dad’s shotgun certificate? And road-tax, and MOT? And a fishing-rod permit? And all the other little hidden taxes in life?
… thus implying that the objection to the License Fee is that it is a tax like any other. I then pointed out the ways in which these are really bad parallels, in order to make the point that the License Fee is not a tax like any other. You’re now saying that you don’t disagree with any of those points, so I’m not sure what your problem is. You seem to be trying to assess my rather basic comment as some giant life-changing argument, and I can understand why you wouldn’t be able to make head or tail of it in that light, because it isn’t one. It’s very simple: you said “like”, and my point was “No, not like.” That is all.
> As for saying “we already have sky-high fuel duty”, your argument is… ?
Again, what’s your problem here? You said that you would like to introduce “sky-high fuel duty” and so I said that we already have sky-high fuel duty. That is my argument; no more is required. The same argument would be just as valid if you said that you want to introduce a network of three-lane roads with 70mph speed limits connecting all of Britain’s major cities. We already have it, so introducing it is pointless.
> that is also largely why we have a “ministry of defence” rather than a “ministry of war”.
Not really, no. Everyone knows what “defense” means in a political context, and, even if they didn’t, the MOD still has a well defined and publicly available remit which actually corresponds to what it does. The BBC has a well defined and publicly available remit that directly opposes most of what it does.
> so you imply you have to make something to tax it?
Look, Jackie says you’re intelligent, and I’m willing to take her word for it, so I can only assume you’re being deliberately obtuse in order to rile.
I’m not trying to rile anyone, so I must just be stupid in a different way - though I am seeing a lot of that recently as I run into more people who think differently from me.
Perhaps some illustration of where I am coming from would help:
Petrol and diesel at three pounds a litre. That’s what I call sky-high duty, and I would not be annoyed to pay if I actually thought the money were going into better services, better roads, and less/near-zero road-tax.
But your comment “we already have sky-high duty, that is my argument, no more is required” above, progresses neither your or my position. You’re not making an argument with that statement.
To be honest, it sounds rather like the Python sketch:
“This isn’t an argument!”
“Yes it is.”
“No, it’s not.”
“Yes it is.”
“No, it’s not. An argument is a connected series of statements that establish a definite proposition”
“No, it isn’t” …
…
In this case an argument from your end might be something like “replacing road-tax with 350% fuel duty would not be an effective solution for funding transportation infrastructure because [insert premises and conclusions drawn from them]”
Just saying “we already have sky-high duty”, does not constitute an argument.
Similarly: I suspect we both agree that the license fee is a “spun” tax, to pay for the BBC.
I object to the spin, but I don’t object to the license fee itself. It’s merely a tax that is earmarked for a special purpose, just as the euphemistic “National Insurance Payment” is a sliding-value tax meant to pay for the NHS and Social Security.
If you’re looking for something I don’t like about taxation, I *do* begrudge the fact that I get taxed for the “benefit” of my company subscribing me to a private healthcare scheme, so that I am less likely to be a cost on the NHS but pay more for the privilege.
But I have no objection to the BBC license fee, and those who object to it should just dump their TVs. In the end this will bring-about catastrophic change because there will be no TVs to license, and matters will *have* to change, at which point I will watch with interest to see what happens.
> I’m not trying to rile anyone, so I must just be stupid in a different way - though I am seeing a lot of that recently as I run into more people who think differently from me.
It’s got nothing to do with thinking differently. Look, are you honestly saying that, reading my comments, in context, you genuinely think I’m saying that the only reason for the Government to tax something is that they manufacture it?
> I *do* begrudge the fact that I get taxed for the “benefit” of my company subscribing me to a private healthcare scheme, so that I am less likely to be a cost on the NHS but pay more for the privilege.
Well, I agree absolutely about that. Have you met any lefties who tell you that you in fact are using up valuable NHS resources when you go private? There are a lot of them about.
> Just saying “we already have sky-high duty”, does not constitute an argument.
Well, it doesn’t constitute an argument against the extra points that you’ve just made, but I’m not sure it’s fair to criticise me for failing to respond to things that, at the time, you had not said.
My argument against replacing road tax with 350% fuel duty is, you’ll be thrilled to hear, that we already have that. Petrol is currently taxed at about 65p per litre, the total price being around 85p and the cost to manufacture it and get it to the pumps being between 17p and 20p. 350% of the current pre-tax cost of petrol is, therefore, about 65p. So you want to replace the current 65p tax with a new tax of 65p. Radical.
Oh, forgot to say…. To be fair, you did say three pounds a litre, so I imagine the 350% is just a miscalculation on your part. So here’s my objection to £3 per litre: it would cost me my job and my house. I don’t think that my circumstances are particularly unique, so I’m sure plenty of other people would also lose their jobs and houses. Don’t tell me: you live in London, right?
I once had a similar argument with someone who, insanely, wanted to multiply existing fuel duty by 10. His response was that it was irresponsible of me to live with such a tiny financial margin that such changes could have such a major effect. In case that’s also what you think, here’s the maths. I currently pay about £100 a month for petrol. (I’d rather use public transport, in case you’re wondering, but that is not an option where I work.) You want to raise my fuel bill to over £350 (that’s 100/85×300). I earn, after tax, about a grand. No, I don’t think most people will or should put aside 25% of their income just in case of a tax hike.
Oh, but you’d get rid of road tax! £120 a year reduction to offset a £250 a month increase. I can see why the Treasury would like your idea; the public, less so.
Yes, I admit I wildly underinflated the percentage statistic because it was late at night and not a good time to be doing maths; you can pick up on that good and expand horrendously upon it if makes you feel good.
As for where I live, it’s a small village halfway between Basingstoke and Camberley, about 7 miles from my workplace. I drive a diesel Skoda and make about 55MPG, which I’m nerdy enough to track. I do about 12,000 miles per year - so you can do the math for me.
I would do less milage and cycle to work more, if fuel was more expensive.
Jackie’s off somewhere from what I gather, so this probably won’t get read and I’ll keep it brief: go back and re-read comment number 8.
Tell me that it doesn’t sound like someone who’s complaining about taxation of non-Government sources items, in sentences like for instance:
[[[
The government do not make shotguns. Well, OK, maybe the MOD do, but they’re not available to civilians. And you are not forced to pay for the manufacture of the army’s guns in order to use one made by some private manufacturer.
They do make roads, but they only charge you if you use them. If you have a vehicle that you only ever use on private roads, you don’t have to pay to drive that vehicle on the Government’s roads.
]]]
…not that I particularly care about that point of the thread; I was merely justifying my answers from comment point number 3, specifically that there exist a set of ownership-licenses which are not TV licenses, lack of which can get you thrown in prison, viz: that TV is nothing special.
How about you re-read the first paragraph of Comment 8 as well? You know, the introduction to the other bits that I’m about to write, which makes it pretty clear that what I’m talking about are ways in which the License Fee is different to other taxes. And then there’s the bit later on where I said that I don’t have a problem with road tax. That would be a clue that I’m not complaining about it.
ultram er ultram er