Greek Government Abruptly Shuts Down State Broadcaster 230
An anonymous reader writes "The Greek government shut down broadcasting of all TV and radio channels operated by the state-owned broadcaster ERT at midnight local time, with police ejecting journalists and other employees occupying the building. The above link is a prominent Greek economics professor's (and Valve's in-house economist) analysis of the political motivations for the move."
Full story at, err, 11? (Score:2, Interesting)
I wonder if that means lower taxes...
Re:Full story at, err, 11? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Full story at, err, 11? (Score:5, Insightful)
We have those same 4 channels in Greece too. It's just that we lost the one that didn't show them.
New Media Boom? (Score:3)
So they shut down the quality-news-broadcast network and set free a pile of professionals, some of them well known I guess.
Will that mean that Greece will now emerge getting a professional quality-news-podcast-network and will that mean that there has to be a reason to shut down the internets, too?
Re:New Media Boom? (Score:5, Insightful)
Since when do "state run" and "quality" belong together?
BBC.
In the UK, switching from BBC1 (main state-funded TV channel) to ITV1 (main commercial broadcaster) is like going from a Michelin-starred restaurant to McDonald's.
State-funded is different from state-run. Allegedly this Greek broadcaster is the former, but I don't know how far it swung in which direction.
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Re: New Media Boom? (Score:3, Insightful)
You are the the state, jackass.
As a New Yorker I wish I could pay the license fee to get bbc broadcast access.
Re:New Media Boom? (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, I'd say unless you have a government bent on controlling the news, state media usually provides the most neutral less "hyped" information. I know in the US it's all about "nothing should be state owned" but beyond the rethoric in many instances state media have provided the best quality TV, certainly in terms of information. Too much of private TV news is entertainment. The CNNisation of news is a terrible tragedy.
I cannot say what the situation was in Greece, but if it is similar to what I have experienced when I have been in Western Europe, greeks have probably lost their best source of news.
Re:New Media Boom? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yep, many surveys have shown that NPR/PBS consumers tend to be more well informed when compared against extremely politicized sources like FOX and MSNBC and also when compared against consumers of mainstream mass market news sources. Right wing extremists have been complaining about liberal bias at NPR/PBS for years but it seems to be the same kind of liberal bias as reality has =)
Re:Full story at, err, 11? (Score:4, Insightful)
meanwhile, in USA, I have 4 channels that are showing the Kardashians at this very moment.
Panem et circenses...
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What does that mean?
Eruditionis legere Latine.
Re:Full story at, err, 11? (Score:4, Insightful)
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But you keep pushing that liberal agenda. Because it is the "right thing to do". "It is for the good of the country". Or whatever lies you tell yourself.
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Just last week we were talking about an Oregon county that was so poor they couldn't hire police.
What's the name of the county? Sounds like my kind of place. Fuck the police.
Re:Full story at, err, 11? (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know why you were modded "troll" but I'd have modded "overrated" because the comment is completely inaccurate. The poor pay few or no income taxes, but a very high percentage of their meager income on gasoline taxes, tobacco taxes, alcohol taxes, and other federal excise taxes. The middle class is taxed at twice the rate of someone whose income is from gambling on the stock market. Plus, the more you earn the more loopholes you have.
This [rollingstone.com] is why they're despised. You think it was the poor and middle class who destroyed the economy?
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And they're gambling with money that has already been taxed at least once
They're not being taxed on what they gamble but what they win; IE, their profit. I'm taxed on what I earn and am taxed on what I spend (by state government). You should get a tax break for buying lottery tickets or losing at the poker table? That's absurd.
And I'm sick of hearing about "risk." All they risk is a little money that they already have plenty of unless they're stupid enough to gamble their entire fortune on one stock. Meanwh
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the minority you appear to berate aren't the majority of tax payers
What? I'm not berating the minority of people who pay most of the income taxes. I'm simply pointing out that it's a minority of people who do pay the vast majority of the income taxes.
What am I supposed to think!!!??? (Score:3, Funny)
This particular article's summary just states the facts. There is no stated point-of-view in the summary! All Slashdot submissions must have a POV! Please, Help! tell me what to think! Heeeeelp!
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repeat after me... "apple is gay"
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I'd have modded that "funny" but funny comments are dangerous to your karma. Thin skinned Apple fans are surely not going to laugh at it, and they get mod points, too.
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There is a point of view there, expressed in terms of which facts they included and which ones they left out. It's just that it doesn't tell you whom to hate, which is what "point of view" has come to mean in America.
Whisky Tango Foxtrot? (Score:5, Insightful)
What's the rest of Greece's commercial broadcast media like? What was this organization like? The only analogues I have are NPR and PBS for "state owned" and that's not necessarily entirely accurate, and that private broadcast media here in the US is often very, very heavily biased, even moreso when they make claims to the contrary.
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What's the rest of Greece's commercial broadcast media like?.
There you have it [wikipedia.org]
Re:Whisky Tango Foxtrot? (Score:5, Informative)
The only analogues I have are NPR and PBS for "state owned"
BBC in the UK, ABC/SBS in Oz. Note that there is an important distinction between "state owned" and "state controlled".
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Why exactly do you want to shut down the BBC? My understanding is that the existence of the BBC is widely supported by people living in Britain, despite serious incidents (e.g. Jimmy Savile) and grumbling about licensing fees, because it has a world-wide reputation for accurate, relatively unbiased, and high quality reporting.
The alternative to the BBC is Rupert Murdoch's News International, who's most recent claim to fame was hacking the phones of murder victims and politicians in order to break stories ab
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BBC news has repeatedly been shown to be biased.
[...]
The quality of other programmes is generally very poor.
In both cases, compared to what other broadcaster?
I don't see a commercial broadcaster in the UK, waiting in the wings, that's more balanced than the BBC. All newspapers have a bias (which their readership likes), and so would any commercial news broadcaster that popped up to fill the void left by the BBC.
The BBC is usually accused of bias by right-wingers who would like it to be more sympathetic to right-wing views. As a left-winger, I find it often too sympathetic towards right-wing views. That's a sign o
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See my answer to AC for more details but the BBC news has repeatedly been shown to be biased.
The BBC are consistently biased, but that bias swings in every direction.
Overall there's inevitably going to be an element of bias, but on the whole I think they cover most issues from most angles and give a lot of airtime to very conflicting viewpoints.
I hate paying the licence fee but I'd rather keep the BBC completely independent of commercial necessity - sadly they're not completely independent, but by not having to compete with the other commercial channels they've kept the average quality of UK TV ve
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because it has a world-wide reputation for accurate, relatively unbiased, and high quality reporting.
A reputation that is has long-since lost the justification for. Maybe it's unbiased compared to Fox News, but that only shows how utterly pathetic mainstream US media is.
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because it has a world-wide reputation for accurate, relatively unbiased, and high quality reporting.
A reputation that is has long-since lost the justification for. Maybe it's unbiased compared to Fox News, but that only shows how utterly pathetic mainstream US media is.
What TV news broadcaster do you feel is less biased than the BBC? I can't think of one.
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I love the BBC; I love its funding model. But I love it least when it's doing programming for minorities, and least when it's trying to compete with commercial broadcasters.
A commercial broadcaster could bankroll Strictly Come Dancing, or even Doctor Who so the BBC should step aside and let that happen.
A commercial broadcaster is unlikely to produce something like Precision: the Measure of all Things [bbc.co.uk]. I would rather have a state mandated licence fee, and have that kind of thing made, than not.
Without the BB
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The thing with a state sponsored broadcaster is that they can fund programs that otherwise will never air.
We all like to complain about the crap on TV, but guess what? That crap makes money, and TV stations and networks are in it to make money. Anything they can use to sell eyeballs they will do it. If it means doing a Fox News, so be it.
But that neglects the positive aspects of TV - it can be a source of useful information. A lot of state-sponsored media is considered higher quality - BBC, CBC, PBS, NPR be
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And "state supported". NPR and PBS are neither owned nor controlled by the government; they simply get some (not all) of their funding from it.
Re:Whisky Tango Foxtrot? (Score:5, Interesting)
What's the rest of Greece's commercial broadcast media like?
same as the rest of the worlds: Owned by the rich and serving their interests by promoting political views and pressuring the government "in the right direction"
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As opposed to state-owned media, which are owned by poor governments, don't serve the interests of their owners, and don't promote political views.
At least if the station is privately owned, there are several of them with somewhat different owners. And you can turn them off without being forced to pay for them.
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And they're all called Rubert Murdoch.
No, you can't. Apart from direct subsidies there's the whole licensing system that allocates spectrum to those stations, and requires enforcement - can't have unlicensed pirate stations, after all. And as a completely unintended side effect means that stations only operate as long as they get the government
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No, you can't.
Don't be stupid, yes you can. No one is forcing you to watch TV. I can't even remember the last time I watched broadcast TV; my TV does nothing these days except to serve as a Netflix viewing device.
Apart from direct subsidies there's the whole licensing system that allocates spectrum to those stations, and requires enforcement - can't have unlicensed pirate stations, after all. And as a completely unintended side effect means that stations only operate as long as they get the government's b
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Please mod this man +1 informative. I have not posted in months but I cannot but admire the accuracy and simplicity of this post. Please note that these channels also are the ones broadcasting a lot of turkish soap operas, which seem to be the official state ideology vehicle in recent years. If the state channel was the one broadcasting the Suleiman series, I'd expect more than three million people protesting in Athens today and several more millions across the country.
PS. Please forgive all the greeks pos
As a Greek (Score:4, Interesting)
i should tell you that i feel very happy about that decision
* They said that the "ERT tax" on power bills will be over (it was about 10-30% of the bill, depending on the size of the bill, believe it or not!)
* In the same time that they ask for minimum wage to be lower than 500euros/month, they were hiring journalists with ten times this wage in order to control them. You can read about that in Varoufakis blog.
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As a Greek myself I have to tell the world that you are lying!
10-30%??? it is more like 4 -5 euros per bill which comes 6 times a year.
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WOW that is cheap. In Germany you pay 18 EUR per month for public television and radio.
House Of Corruption (Score:5, Informative)
ERT was a House Of Corruption. It should have been shut down years ago.
Not only was it a propaganda station, but it was also full of employees that did not have a job description, but they were employed by politicians in order to vote for them.
2500 employees for 3 channels and 1 radio station.
Why pay for cow when you can have the milk free? (Score:2)
State-owned television is too transparent.
Better to have state-licensed, state-influenced, and state-monitored television... It's clearly much more effective.
Night night liberty (Score:3)
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I am pretty sure that John Adams was not talking about television or radio.
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He would have been if he had known what they are.
Sad, but can Greece afford it? (Score:3)
In TFA, Varoufakis talks about the value of the Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation, or ERT to Greece.
In light of the well publicised financial problems faced by the government in Greece today, can Greece affored to keep it open?
The government's excuse is thus :-
Government spokesman Simos Kedikoglou – a former state TV journalist – described ERT as a "haven of waste". He said its employees would be compensated.
Kedikoglou said in a televised statement aired on the state broadcaster: "At a time when the Greek people are enduring sacrifices, there is no room for delay, hesitation or tolerance for sacred cows.
"ERT is a typical example of unique lack of transparency and incredible waste. And that ends today," Kedikoglou said. "It costs three to seven times as much as other TV stations and four to six times the personnel – for a very small viewership, about half that of an average private station."
ERT has long been seen as a bastion of quality programming in a media landscape dominated by commercial stations. But it was also used by successive governments to provide safe jobs for political favourites, and, while nominally independent, devoted considerable time and effort to showcasing administration policies.
Source here [guardian.co.uk]
Granted the government's self-interest is to spin this story in their favour, but unless they are lying, given the fact that there are more urgent public sector needs that need to be met (eg. hospitals, food kitchens etc) the reasons they gave seem fairly reasonable in the circumstances.
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There's nothing reasonable about pulling the plug on a national broadcaster, without notice, in the middle of the night, and turfing every employee out unilaterally onto the street. This is industrial relations amateur hour.
The bigger picture (Score:5, Informative)
Ok so here's a bigger picture of what led to the shut down.
1) The ERT (National Radio) was a way for decades for the goverment to reward supporters with well-payed tenured jobs.
2) As a result, there are hundreds of people working there who get payed for menial tasks.
3) The Troika has demanded that about 2500 people working for the public sector will be fired before the end of June. 150.000 before the end of 2014.
4) A large privatisation programme that was a requirement from the Troika to continue the Greek bail out failed on Monday (http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2013/jun/10/greek-gas-supplier-selloff-gazprom )
As a result shutting down ERT hits two birds with one stone: It allows them to fire more than the minimum 2500 that was required, and also distracts the public opinion from mondays failure that is sure to bring more austerity measures. The goverment claims that the shutdown was justified because of the corruption and thriftlessness of the organization, while the governing party was the one that helped create them.
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Meanwhile this doesn't just affect the thousands of people directly employed by ERT, and their families. It affects every drugstore, cafe, grocery those people shop at; their landlords and mortgage lenders. Sizeable local economies build up around a big employer like that, and that one has been wrecked in one fell swoop.
Greek needs new public TV/Radio/Internet-Station (Score:4, Interesting)
I do not speak Greek or are able to evaluate the quality of the public TV-station there, but I know that in Germany the public TV plays an important role in fighting dumb TV for the masses with some of their information programs (even though they also provide shows which can only be watched if you had a lobotomy, just like the US TV ;-)). So from that point of view, I think this is a bad move for Greece. The Greek should start a new public TV station funded by the public and controlled by a council where every group of the Greek population has a seat in (no payments) and they have to agree on consensus on elections for directors. that will realize an independent media house, which is in high demand in Greece (and the rest of Europe).
BTW: I personally do not like the way Greece have been treated by the rest of the EU, especially Merkel, but I also think, they should get rid of their present politicians and demand more public influence in all processes. A little like Switzerland.
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I'm curious about the ability he had to do this. The Prime Minister in the UK could push a bill through parliament cancelling the BBC's charter and/or its funding, but couldn't actually shut it down. If he sent police in to clear the building then the police would be acting illegally and I'd expect them to refuse.
So it's interesting that the Greek PM didn't face such barriers.
Three things about ERT (Score:4, Interesting)
1. It was one of the worst channels on greek TV and I doubt anyone will miss it
2. Since always everyone was complaining about the fee they had to pay for it every month. Saying I dont want to pay for state television is the same as saying it should close down. Now all the people who side with the ones fired from ERT are just a pretentious mass. They didn't support ERT when it was working, now they can't act all high and mighty and on their side because it closed
3. ERT was another corrupted part of the public sector. It was a channel with horrible censorship and with people in higher positions paid more than they should've been. There were more than a few incidents when ERT refused to show things in the news that ALL the other channels were showing. As someone put it "ERT, you weren't there for us when all of that was already happening to us for years now, why should be there for you?"
4. Comparing ERT to the BBC/CNN is a horrible insult for both of these channels. ERT was worse than FOX news and people complaining about how greece is left only with private channels don't seem to understand that all those private channels are and have always been much better than the mess that ERT was.
Re: How silly. (Score:4, Interesting)
Most European counties have state television next to commercial television. This nothing to do with capitalism and in most cases state television (or state funded independent television) is more objective and has more integrity. For educational and cultural productions, news and documentaries this is very noticeable.
The problem in Greece is mainly due to lack of involvement of the government and too much uncontrolled capitalism.
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The problem in Greece is mainly due to lack of involvement of the government and too much uncontrolled capitalism.
This is sarcasm right? It's kind of like looking at a car with a flat and claiming the problem is that the driver hasn't punctured the other three tires too. Greece didn't get into the mess it is in by unfettering capitalism, a thing incidentally that it has yet to do.
Re: How silly. (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem in Greece is mainly due to lack of involvement of the government and too much uncontrolled capitalism.
This is sarcasm right? It's kind of like looking at a car with a flat and claiming the problem is that the driver hasn't punctured the other three tires too. Greece didn't get into the mess it is in by unfettering capitalism, a thing incidentally that it has yet to do.
No, endemic levels of tax evasion (come on, you honestly expect me to believe you had no idea Greece was a tax haven) mixed with equally endemic levels of corruption means that Greece's tax revenues have consistently fallen below expectation. So even when the Greek minister balanced the books, the companies in Greece simply didn't pay tax.
It was cheaper to pay off the tax collector than to pay tax. Essentially companies could do what they wanted as long as they kept the right palms greased (which is cheap for any multinational).
Next thing you're going tell me is that your shocked that some Thai girl offered to have sex with you in Bangkok when prostitution is illegal in Thailand.
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Next thing you're going tell me is that your shocked that some Thai girl offered to have sex with you in Bangkok when prostitution is illegal in Thailand.
When did that happen? When I spent a year there in the USAF 40 years ago, hookers were respected and honored for their service to society.
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Didn't investing in Goldman Sachs toxic assets contribute to their problems?
The problem in Greece seems to be an artificial scarcity of money imposed by the EU central bank and the IMF. The solution is to get out of the EU and stimulate individuals to innovate with a basic income, and challenges.
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The problem in Greece seems to be an artificial scarcity of money imposed by the EU central bank and the IMF. The solution is to get out of the EU and stimulate individuals to innovate with a basic income, and challenges.
By EU, I think you mean the Eurozone, which is not the same thing as the EU. The UK, for instance, is in the EU but not in the Eurozone seeing as we still have our own currency.
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You mean, covering shortages by printing money can possibly have a positive effect? That's news to me.
The EU works hard to help Greece here, and to stop the politicos' attempts to give handouts right during a collapse (like your average CEO, all they think about is short-term gains). If you're facing an incoming bankruptcy, the solution is not to go on another spending spree.
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It turns out that cutting 1 euro of government spending shrinks the economy by 1.7 euros, not the 0,5 euros they thought
So by your logic, setting the tax rate at 100% and giving all that money to whoever pays a cut to the politicians in power, will make us all rich?
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Have you noticed this observation counts money passing through the layer upon layer of shell companies as the volume of transactions? It takes quite a few layers of indirection to skirt the law safely, all without any actual commerce.
No actual productive work comes from most government spending: it's either broken window fallacy, or outright pocketing. The money that changed hands can be just as well spent by its rightful owner as by the crony whom it ended up with. All the extra "economy" was generated
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Don't blame the EU for not throwing even more money into that bottomless abyss, if you want to blame the EU and international finance, blame them for not shutting off the free money 20 years ago when the debt was still manageable.
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This nothing to do with capitalism and in most cases state television (or state funded independent television) is more objective and has more integrity.
Like the BBC and Jimmy Savile, right?
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As it happens (as it 'appens) although I strongly support the BBC, I think Top of the Pops, an echo chamber for music that was already popular, is exactly the kind of thing that should be on a commercial station.
But do you imagine for one moment that if, in the 1970s, a commercial broadcaster had handled Top of the Pops, and the country's main pop music radio station, that Savile and the others would have had less access to young girls, or taken any less advantage of them? No. That unfortunate culture was n
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Re: How silly. (Score:5, Insightful)
What kind of regulation would solve this? Companies are allowed to sell their products for whatever they want in every EU country.
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There's some problems here. Countries only have so much power to set pricing, without turning into authoritarian states. Australia, for instance, has long had problems with stuff costing much more there than in the US and other places. For a long time, they just accepted it because of the usual excuses of it being a smaller market (1/10 the population of the US), and the long distance away. However, now with so many digital goods and cheap shipping, it's become glaringly obvious that many sellers are ju
Re: How silly. (Score:5, Insightful)
And here we have a perfect example of (one of the reasons) why Greece has the problems it has.
People so convinced that the are owed more of everything as to think that goods being sold by
private companies can be price fixed by the government so they can afford them.
Hint: if people are not buying them, the companies will lower the price if they want to sell them, its
called supply and demand.. if people want the products, the price will rise.
Surely you are not going to try and convince us IKEA somehow has a monopoly on furniture that it is
somehow using to force people to pay high prices?
The 'problem' with free markets is people reap what they (and their governments) sow, and greece
has done a lot of sowing over the last few decades (as have many other countries).
Hint: if you want a higher quality of living, you have to be either smarter, or harder working, or willing
to sacrifice more natural resources than others - not always pleasant, just a FACT.
Re: How silly. (Score:5, Insightful)
And here we have a perfect example of (one of the reasons) why Greece has the problems it has. People so convinced that the are owed more of everything as to think that goods being sold by private companies can be price fixed by the government so they can afford them.
The point of regulation is to prevent companies from market manipulation. Companies will naturally move to maximize profits and will, if allowed, perform any action to do so. Competition gets eaten up while at the same time no room is left for new players. Eventually, the market dies.
So regulation is required to facilitate a healthy market. Rules are put in place to ensure that established companies can not prevent competition from entering a market. Limits to what monopolies can do are instigated. Everybody is forced to play fair in an attempt to maximize competition and the benefits of capitalism.
People go on and on about how capitalism and regulation are polar opposites. This is ludicrous. Without regulation the benefits of capitalism do not exist. The invisible hand is an idealized concept which, much like communism, ignores reality and is doomed to failure. A market without sufficient regulation will not optimizes overall efficiency. Of course too much regulation also reduces efficiency - but a certain amount is always required.
So this isn't about the Greek people wanting the government to fix prices - this would obviously not work. It's about opening up the markets that have been sewn shut by the current players. This required effective regulation - far easier said then done.
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So this isn't about the Greek people wanting the government to fix prices - this would obviously not work.
But the Greek people have - for a long time - been demanding all sorts of things that obviously don't (and can't) work, and that's why they're in such a mess. Endless entitlement-minded demands from the Nanny State are self destructive, and ... Greece has indeed self destructed.
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The point of regulation is to prevent companies from market manipulation....So regulation is required to facilitate a healthy market. Rules are put in place to ensure that established companies can not prevent competition from entering a market.
A couple of points, first, the effect of regulation is to make it harder for new companies to compete with established companies in a particular market. So, in reality rules are put in place to ensure that new companies cannot enter a market to compete with established companies (unless the new companies are larger than the existing companies in the market).
Second. how exactly do established companies prevent new companies from entering the market to compete with them? Please list only those which are not
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So regulation is required to facilitate a healthy market.
But in Greece, too much regulation has destroyed the economy. The World Bank Doing Business Index [doingbusiness.org] had Greece's "distance to frontier" (a measure of 0-100 where 100 is scored by the countries easiest to do business in) was 62.0 (compare with the US at 85, or Azerbaijan at 62.8). This measure is not just about tax rates, but more about the bureaucracy required to run a business. Even high-tax countries like Norway and Sweden scored in the 80's.
The He
SUVs (Score:2)
*cough* USgasolinesubsidies*cough*
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No, supply and demand logic isn't broken at all. If the company found that people on one side of the border are willing to pay more, then that means there's more demand on that side. Simple economics 101 dictates that prices rise with higher demand and a fixed supply. Sounds like everything's working just fine where you are.
If people are that mad about it, what's keeping someone from going to the other side of the border, buying up lots of Nexus 4s, then driving to the other side and reselling them for l
Re: How silly. (Score:4, Interesting)
Again, it's simple supply and demand. Sellers will always try to price things as high as they can, to maximize profit. Why wouldn't you? It'd be stupid not to. Sellers are under no obligation to lower prices just to be nice (unless you're dealing with an essential good or service with little or no competition, like a utility, in which case the government jumps in and regulates the market, for the good of society as a whole). But they lower prices in response to lower demand. Excessively-high prices cause low demand, so you reduce prices to increase demand, and increase sales volumes. If you lower prices too much, you get excessively low profits (or at an extreme, no profit, and instead a loss). In the middle of that curve there's a local maximum where profit is maximized.
If a seller finds that buyers in one country are apparently gullible fools and are willing to pay excessively-high prices for a product (more so than in another country), why shouldn't they raise prices there? If you don't like it, you're free to not buy the product. You do not need a Nexus 4 to live. You can buy a competing device, or an older device, or just do without. Or you can just go to another place where it's cheaper and get it there (or just order it on the internet from someplace cheaper). As long as the government doesn't put up artificial trade restrictions preventing you from exercising these options, there's no problem. If people continue to be stupid and willingly pay higher prices, that's their problem.
In fact, why aren't more people just buying on the internet? We've had the same problem in the USA: local brick-n-mortar shops charge high prices on consumer electronics, especially in more rural areas. So, people just go to amazon.com or newegg.com and buy it at a much lower prices. The brick-n-mortar shops bitch and complain, but too bad. If I can buy something from Amazon for so much less than locally, that I end up saving a lot of money, even after paying sales tax (Amazon charges it now) and shipping fees, then obviously the local shop is charging too much. In the end, the local shop goes out of business, and I really don't care. Of course, a bunch of people bitch about how this is driving the "wonderful" local mom-and-pop shops out of business, that people should be happy to pay 50-100% more for the same product just to get the "service" that local shops offer (yeah right), it's "unfair", etc. Do people say the same things in your country when people drive over the border (or order on the internet) to avoid paying local prices?
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Ok, yes, those things can affect the equation greatly, but (I don't know if you're the same AC as the one above) the person above was complaining about sellers charging "too much" for items on one side of the border. Well, the first three things you listed are all things that are solely under the control of the government, so if you don't like the prices you're being charged, and you think government policies are the cause, then you need to take it up with your government, not the sellers. With the last t
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please explain price of digital goods such as music, movies and e-books for which supply is close to illimited and people are "pirating" instead of buying because the prices don't go down ...
That is the result of government regulation. Copyright is really just a government-granted monopoly. By definition, you are minimizing competition.
it's just because some economist found out that in my country people are statistically willing to pay a bit more than our neighbours.
Taking your facts at face value, there is still supply and demand. "Tablets" are the market, not "Nexus 4s". Are all the tablets more expensive right across the border? If so, then either you are correct about supply and demand being completely broken or there is another force at work.
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That's a pretty harsh strawman you've put together there. There's a minute a mile between "this isn't working" and "the opposite must be true." It's the realm of rational debate.
On the off chance you're not trolling, but actually looking for a response, here it is: No, I don't think that a single public company turned private would solve the Greek crisis. Nor do I think that the public sector is entirely to blame. But there are two approaches to dealing with revenue shortages. One of them is spending
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Which means that shops get less business, which means that more will go bankrupt, which means that more people fall into poverty, etc.
The main problem with austerity is that it creates a death spiral. A government can't save its way out of debt, because every time it cuts spending the economy shrinks even more, cutting income and sending people into poverty. Either Greece stops austerity measures, or there's going to be an open rebellion at some point
Re:How silly. (Score:5, Interesting)
When you're poor, stop spending money on non-essentials.
That's common sense when you're talking about an individual, or a household. The problem is that that people extrapolate that to whole economies, or governments.
Money goes around in loops. At the level of a household, the loops have little significance. If you spend $10 on a movie ticket, that money's spent, and the route that connects it to your next piece of income is so long that it has no bearing on your decisions. At that scale, you might as well think of spending as a sink, and earning as an unending source.
But at the level of corporate and government spending, the loops are very significant. Pay 1000 roadworkers $20,000 dollars each, that money will go into a chain of transactions, most of which are taxed, keeping dozens of people in work.
*Don't* employ those 1000 roadworkers, and they'll spend less, slowing down the entire economy.
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Considering how often we the people in the US have our own votes stolen, I'm a bit miffed you would say they deserve what they get.
Re:who cares? (Score:4, Insightful)
You must live in the USA
No I don't. Around here (Denmark), a liberal is just a slightly less extreme version of a conservative, and both would be placed securely on the right side of the scale. I don't follow US politics very closely, but to me it seems the democrats and the republicans are pretty much the same thing - corporate apologists.
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Yep, you got it exactly right.
Wow, that's pretty depressing. I thought Denmark was supposed to be a lot better than that. At least you guys have the most bike-friendly city in the world, and a decent healthcare system.
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From what little I know about Danish politics (gleaned from Borgen, and from a nice lady who gave us a walking tour of Copenhagen, including Folketing) - the many parties have drifted so far from their original positions over time, that the names of parties are essentially meaningless.
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Well the naming part is very much true, but that is because the people naming parties are idiots. The parties don't drift, the scale changes beneath them.
We have a party named "left" that is very much on the right. Originally they were the left party, and their opposition was named "right" - but then came those pesky communists and their labor unions and all of a sudden, left was on the right and the commies were on the left :) At least the original "right" party had the good sense to change name to "conser
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You mean "Dansk Folkeparti"? The Republican Party would condemn it as wildly racist.
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You mean "Dansk Folkeparti"? The Republican Party would condemn it as wildly racist.
No, I don't mean DF. What I mean is, that if you project the entire political spectrum in Denmark (or any country inside the EU, I suspect) over onto a line, and plot in all the parties you get a line with pretty evenly spaced dots on it. If you then take the republican party and the democratic party and plot them on the same line, they would both land somewhere to the right of the middle.
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... which of course is a government-owned broadcaster, so we're back where we started.
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The BBC is not owned by the government. It has a Royal Charter and a Licence and Agreement from the Home Secretary. Parliament set the license fee.