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Comment by lynx23 | Hacker News Reader

Not just in the USA. YouTube is my only vvideo source. And to add insult to injury, local legislation has it that I have to pay 60E/month for the local, basically state-controlled TV/radio/news station, although I dont consume its content. YouTube, which is what I use daily, only costs about 1/6th of that. Oh, and there is only one democratic party against this practice. The far-right. All the others seem to love this practice. Thank you democracy, you're useless.

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What country is that? That's a lot. At least in the UK if you don't watch regular TV you don't have to pay the licence fee (£159/year).

We used to have an the ability to opt-out from TV and only pay for radio, which is what I did for many years. However, since January this year, the system has been reformed and the ability to opt-out from TV was removed. So now I pay 35/mo more for a service I dont use. Besides, I am blind. So billing me for TV is a joke by itself.

>The far-right. All the others seem to love this practice. Thank you democracy, you're useless.

If you poll the voters, and the non-far-right voters generally approve of this, then democracy is working as intended. Just because you don't like the results doesn't mean the majority of your countrymen don't.

Its not that simple. Since the only party opposing this practice is far-right and mostly non-votable, nobody in their right mind has the option to vote for a party which does not support this practice. That is when democracy fails. When all the parties team up to support something they want done, and the people basically have no option to vote against.

Surely the option, if you live somewhere with a reasonably plural system, is to run for office and see if anyone else cares about this issue sufficiently?

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