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Comment by anigbrowl | Hacker News Reader

So what? Why do people think they should get a precise share of the value in public utilities? A public good has a calculable value, it's not simply the aggregate of everyone's private good. I'm so sick of this zero-sum mindset which has no rational basis in economics but rather demonstrates ignorance of anything beyond the individual's own economic activity.

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Why don't we just have public food? And why only CBC? Why have consumer choice at all?

I'm willing to listen to that economic argument when it's hard to calculate the value you get from something or when you may have a large unexpected cost, but with things like this that have a clear use to value proposition and are completely optional, it's pretty clean cut.

I disagree about your assessment of the use to value proposition. I find a distinct value in being in a population that has a base level of awareness about public affairs, which awareness is likely to be much better supported by a publicly owned broadcaster than one that has to be responsive to the needs of its advertisers. That remains true even if I don't listen to or watch said media myself.

> which awareness is likely to be much better supported by a publicly owned broadcaster than one that has to be responsive to the needs of its advertisers

Do you have any evidence to support this position? Especially with a biased source like CBC, it seems a pretty big claim.

Biased is entertaining.

I do, and I'm delighted you asked. There is some academic evidence (linked below in a relevant news article) but I would have held much the same attitude anyway having grown up and lived in countries with a public broadcaster and then moved to the US which doesn't really have one in the same way. My personal impression is that US consumers enjoy massive choice but that most of the products in he media market are total crap. Consumers are entertained, but that's like saying that consumers who eat a lot of fast food are satisfied by the taste; we can point to a legitimate economic preference, but we're fooling ourselves if we think that a Big Mac is high quality food.

Quality in media is hard to define, but I'd say it means delivering a decent awareness (in the aggregate obviously) of current affairs, sufficient cultural literacy to know a basic history of art, science, and nations, and somewhat greater familiarity with the history of the home country, stuff like that. It would be nice if there were no bias or ideological slant, but that's probably an unachievable goal, and only through the lens of history can we have much certainty about who was objectively right on any given topic. A charter should aim to minimize bias, while accepting its existence as an unavoidable trade-off of media organizations in general, and aiming for measurable improvements in functional knowledge among its consumers.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2013/10/1...

I can't disagree on them being biased, i don't watch enough of them to say one way or the other. But they are one of the better news stations in Canada by far.

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