TV – A Basic Human Right?
Today I read an article describing how the Australian government views being able to watch television as a basic service that is a right. They are therefore proposing subsidising set top boxes for “the poor”, which encompasses people who cannot afford to convert over to digital television.
Moreover, Senator Conroy, who has the somewhat Orwellian title, Minister of Communications, promises that poor viewers will not just get a voucher, but will also receive assistance in installing their new taxpayer funded set top boxes.
I’ve recently read that the US has a similar scheme for their introduction of digital television, but the US scheme is not means tested.
Read on for my view on this idea.
Two sides of this issue
There are two sides of this issue. Firstly, we have poor people in our society, and they suffer every day. The elderly and sick may be housebound. The move to digital television might deprive people who are stuck at home from any contact with the outside world.
The second side is whether subsidising television viewing is a proper function of a government. This involves taking money from taxpayers, who include self fund retirees, people in small businesses, working mums, and others, and moving it to others. Another facet of this is that television is largely broadcast as a profit making venture. Subsidies of digital set top boxes is in effect a subsidy to the media industry.
The moral argument
My immediate reaction was focussed on the issue of using taxes to fund television watching. In addition, there is the overhead of setting up a system to distribute the vouchers, and the number of public sector employees need to administer it.
In a high taxed country like Australia, if you work in a tough job and get paid a bit more, your family doesn’t see much of it – most is taken away in various types of tax. This is the money that taxpayers expect to be used to fund infrastructure, schools and health care rather than subsidising television watching.
Why is the government so keen to keep people watching television? There is the issue mentioned above which relates to the ability of everyone to participate in interaction with others. Whilst television viewing is not as interactive as a computer or a telephone, I can understand that being completely cut off from human contact is not ideal. A television is contact with the world, even if it is on a very limited scale.
At the same time, television is essentially a tool for maintaining the status quo. It keeps those who are not part of the formal economy at home and entertained and contented and minimises their propensity for causing unrest. It keeps them out of sight and out of mind.
In this way, television tends to disenfranchise the poor and weak rather than allowing them to become a part of society.
What is a right?
The next question is to consider what is a basic service, or a right. In my view, the government’s basic services should be defence and justice. Basic services are functions that need to be centrally and commonly provided, where there are no private enterprise alternatives. Basic services do not entail taking something from one person and giving it to another. I think that it is stretching it a bit to classify access to television as a basic service.
A human right is not something that is bestowed upon individuals by governments. Human rights are not given to you, you already have them. Freedom is a human right, and this includes freedom from crime and war. Living free from tyranny and free from arbitrary confiscation of your goods to pay bribes to another part of the population to keep someone else in a job is a human right. Basic government functions fulfill these rights. A set top box is not a human right. In fact, if it involves taking something away from someone else, it is an anti-human right.
Put this in an example. A young family work hard and save their money. They are not eligible for a government handout. The government decides to start giving away benefits to people who don’t want to work, as well as other people who are not well off (perhaps through illness or other causes). The government spends the money. Now inflation is a bit higher, so the hard working family’s money doesn’t stretch as far. The child now may not be able to go to the school selected by his parents. Perhaps the family will not be able to travel overseas to see their sick grandparent. That is the human price of confiscating what someone has earned to pay for something (either through inflation or taxation) for someone else.
Conclusion and recommendation
In summary, I believe that government is acting irresponsibly in giving free set boxes to the poor, even though there are some valid reasons to do so. The main reason is that the rights of taxpayers (many of whom are far from being well off themselves) are ignored and the media industry gets a subsidy off their back. It is inefficient to use government to do this.
The larger issue is that television tends to weaken the poor and reduce their involvement in society (rather than increasing it), whilst conveniently allowing us to avoid the issues of alienation and disenfranchisement that cause the problem in the first place.
I recognise the importance of everyone being able to be part of society. If we really care about the poor, and those who are unable to be part of mainstream society, we will help individuals that we come across and be inclusive rather than excluding them. This is a more valid response than simply outsourcing the job to government, and feeling virtuous about spending someone else’s money.
One way to do this is to help involve others in our own lives, by reaching out through groups that have members across a range of society, such as church groups. This offers a richness of interaction that is missing from television. While we are at it, perhaps we can be sensitive to their needs and offer to help in other ways, including fixing up their television or buying them a set-top box and helping to install it.
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