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Debate Competition: Round 1- clownfood VS. AngelHedgie (VOTING)
Gosling
Looking Up Soccer In Mongolia Right Now, ProbablyWatertown, WIRegistered User regular
Looking Up Soccer In Mongolia Right Now, ProbablyWatertown, WIRegistered User regular
This is the first debate matchup of the competition. Quid vs. Not Sarastro. To remind everyone of the rules:
*You will be presented a topic selected at random from a large list. You will then debate that topic, using whatever position you wish (preferably your actual real-life position), for as long as you are able.
*When I deem the debate to be running out of steam, I will give you a second, and then a third topic.
*After you're done, the forum will have 24 hours to vote on the winner of the debate. The winner will be the one who is deemed to have won two out of three topics.
*There's no set length as to a response, but keep it reasonable.
TOPIC NUMBER 1: Minimum Wage.
You may begin.
*You will be presented a topic selected at random from a large list. You will then debate that topic, using whatever position you wish (preferably your actual real-life position), for as long as you are able.
*When I deem the debate to be running out of steam, I will give you a second, and then a third topic.
*After you're done, the forum will have 24 hours to vote on the winner of the debate. The winner will be the one who is deemed to have won two out of three topics.
*There's no set length as to a response, but keep it reasonable.
TOPIC NUMBER 1: Minimum Wage.
You may begin.
I have a new soccer blog The Minnow Tank. Reading it psychically kicks Sepp Blatter in the bean bag.
Gosling on
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Characterising the FMWA 2007 as 'slow' is curious though - a 40% pay increase over 2 years is a hefty and swift adjustment for businesses to make, and no employees benefit from the minimum wage increase if they are laid off in order for the company to balance their annual budgets due to a too rapidly enforced wage increase. My opponent bemoans the current rate as too low: is he suggesting we should implement the final rate in the 2007 act immediately with no regard to the practical economic effects?
I agree that the end minimum wage from the FMWA 2007 of $7.25 (ie $18,850 per year) is likely too low considering living costs in some areas; but this is an argument for weighting the wage, not for general application. So does my opponent therefore agree with me that surely the hugely variable cost of living in different states and cities suggests that the precise minimum wage should be an issue the US endeavours to decide at a local level, rather than a federal one?
And I agree that the wage should vary with the area a person currently resides in but that the rates should be decided on a federal level and not a local. Local governments are much more easily influenced by large interest groups which inevitably has a negative effect on the historically politically inactive poor. The federal government also already has an experienced track record with gauging cost of living and modifying pay as necessary with its current employees.
I am interested in the claim that local governments are more easily influenced by (presumably) business interests than the federal government. Can my opponent demonstrate this as fact? What does he think of my counter-argument to federal government deciding local rates, namely that centralised economic decisions are generally demonstrated to be much less efficient than local ones?
For example, if he reads the US Office of Personnel Management guidlines on wage weighting, he will see that the Federal government agrees: the responsibility of recommending local wage weighting is devolved down to a level of local committees. Local committees constitute local people, presumably as vulnerable to influence by local interests as any State or City level official. De-centralising this decision to a local level merely means removing transition time and a bureaucratic level of paperwork required to communicate with Washington. The same people will likely be making the decision as before, and they will be just as corrupt or honest as before.
Regarding the increased ease of corruption of local governments, I will cite the history of the United States. Mind that corruption doesn't necessarily mean taking a bribe to allow a company to use kittens as fuel, it is as simple as blatant nepotism in employment or patronage to certain groups that helped them gain their seat. Any improper use of influence or power for private gain is considered corruption. More so, anyone who's dealt with a school board is aware of how immovable their members are because of their relationships with the much smaller voter pool that a member of congress could never hope to achieve. The federal government is also observed and scrutinized to a far greater detail than, say, Goshen Wyoming. Though I will admit I lack statistics on the official corruptability quotient of the federal senate compared to the town council, the above outlines perfectly well how much easier it is for the local to be abused compared to the federal.
As far as efficiency, minimum wage doesn't need to be and shouldn't be updated more than yearly with proposals for each year preferrably decided within few months before the new year. This would allow those living on it and those paying it to plan accordingly and allow for the wage to keep with inflation like most federal salaries. The federal government already pays people at different rates across the country with pay changing in areas no further apart than by being in the next zip code. To have city and town or even state governments do the same thing is an unnecessary redundancy.
Your link to the U.S. Office of Personnel management doesn't state that it would be better for local committees to decide the wage, but rather for local wage committees to be established and to gather data from the area, then pass that information up to the agency wage committees. They in turn would pass their recommendations up to lead agencies who then pass up their recommendations the OPM, who then give their recommendations to Congress. To allow the states to run the wage committees to pass up recommendations I could accept. But I, and according to the subchapter you linked so does the OPM, believe it necessary for the federal government to exercise oversight in this matter and make the final decision.
TOPIC NUMBER 2: A la carte cable.
You may begin.
If Not Sarastro is the next person to post here, and that post consists of his rebuttal, he remains in the competition. However, if an alternate is the next to make an argument, whichever alternate responds first will replace Not Sarastro. That alternate will inherit Sarastro's performance in the minimum wage debate, good or bad, and continue on in his stead.
The argument that doing so would be cheaper is also a red herring. Because broadcasters can no longer deliver their channels as a bundle, they would need to increase prices on all but the most popular channels. In addition, the addition of significant amounts of bookkeeping on each subscriber's account (as channels would need to be blocked on an individual, not block, level) would further add to fees. The result of this is that you would be able to keep your bill steady - but only have a small number of channels, as compared to the large number of channels available under the current system. The argument that this would keep questionable content out of the home is also questionable - many of the channels that carry the sort of content railed against are the sorts of networks which would garner the large-scale support to be successful in the a la carte world, while the "wholesome" alternatives are, more often than not, the very definition of the niche network that a la carte would kill off.
Finally, one should look at exactly who has been backing a la carte. The concept has been backed by such groups as the Parents Television Council - a known pro-censorship group that wants to use its moral attitudes as a guide for popular culture. Many of the a la carte supporters are of the same stripe. When this is considered, it raises the question of whether or not a la carte is an attempt to achieve their goals by other means.
For these reasons, a la carte is a bad choice for television viewers.
Requiring cable companies to offer a la carte does not get rid of bundles, it requires them to allow people not be forced to purchase bundles or nothing. A la carte in virtually every situation has an end result of being more expensive because it is an individual item. An example is iTunes. The price of individual songs is not indicative of the price of the album. I could buy fourteen songs by themselves for fourteen dollars, or I could by the album for ten dollars. Does this mean the artist gets less money when I buy only one song rather than the album and therefore may have to quit their profession? Of course. But if they want my money they shouldn't make an album consisting of only one good song. On the bright side they're still getting my money for that one song that I probably never would have purchased if I had to buy the album to get it. If someone wants a large number of channels to choose from they could still have the option of picking from a number of bundles. This would allow them to get the channels at a discounted price and guarantee cable companies more money. If anything this could encourage bundles more tailored to a person's interests with the creation of more themed packages.
I feel you're overblowing the effect of tracking a customer's individual channels given the fact that at worst it's hiring people for data entry and at best having a computer database automatically track it and just a few people maintaining it Digital cable allows two way communication between the viewer and the cable company. I see no reason purchasing channels through that would be any worse for consumers than letting them purchase movies through it. But assuming that they have to hire extra clerks for book keeping this cost can easily be offset by adding the cost to the channels purchased al a carte.
And while that bill is being pushed by the PTC and similar groups and possibly for all the wrong reasons that doesn't mean there aren't very good reasons for it to pass. The bill should be judged based on its merits, not who's backing it. They claim it's so they can have cable channels with stronger censorship rules to keep them family friendly and I personally have no issue with this. If anything I'm pleased with them. Rather than try and have the government censor cable channels they don't want their children to see they are only asking for it to have cable companies offer them a choice rather than force them to have to pay for channels that air I Love New York when all they want is The Disney Channel and Trinity Broadcasting Network.
It's interesting that you bring up bundles and iTunes, because iTunes does indeed enforce bundling by content restriction. On major titles, it is not uncommon that some of the tracks will be listed as "album only". So, in order to get those tracks, you need to purchase the album. So iTunes uses this as a "carrot" to encourage bundle purchases. Another point which works against a la carte is that it lowers exposure to new content. Our current system affords subscribers the opportunity to sample programming they may not be aware of, simply by tuning into a channel - this makes it easy for a subscriber to find new favorites on channels they may not watch often. With a la carte, awareness of new shows on non-subscribed networks that the subscriber may actually enjoy is diminished because promotion of the new show is much harder. Considering that this mechanism is one that has become one of the cornerstones of "Web 2.0", isn't eliminating it a step backward?
Saying that maintaining the additional bookkeeping for this system is trivial mocks how complicated such a system is. If you have a dynamic system for managing channels, there are serious questions about reliability and scaling that would come with it, like what would happen if the database server crashes, or you have a mass of subscribers deciding to add/remove a channel at once. These are not trivial issues on the backend, although they will appear to be so from the user's standpoint. And again, the costs to make the system robust will increase the cost of a la carte further.
Finally, I do think that we should be concerned when groups like the PTC are supportive of some push. Many times, such groups seek to achieve the results they want by different means when it becomes clear they can't win by direct confrontation. And the PTC has made it clear that their goal is not getting content that they oppose off their own TVs, but off TV entirely - it's been shown that almost all FTC complaints have their genesis with the PTC. So yes, the fact that the PTC and its ilk support a la carte should indeed be a strike against it.
As far as I can tell iTunes only charges the full album price if you want bonus tracks and album booklets that may be available. Basically extra features the majority of consumers won't care about. If cable forced you to purchase full packages in order to get little bonuses like commentary or trivia by all means go ahead. So long as the programming, the part most people care about, stays a la carte. And consumers can still get an idea of what other channels have. With digital cable they can go through a catalog and see if there are any channels or programs that interest them. I don't really care to pay an extra forty bucks for I-might-possibly-see-a-show-I-like-and-never-heard-about-from-any-media-source-anywhere insurance. And if you want to talk about exposure a la carte would make cable more affordable for the poor. So there's plenty of extra exposure right there.
And hey, yeah, it could very well be tough to change their system to accommodate the new tracking. Doing so would require time and investment, though I myself certainly don't know. However, I don't want a la carte for everyone right this minute. The companies should definitely be given time to work something out. But saying it's going to be hard and cost money to update the way things are done is a poor excuse to charge people for stuff they don't want.
And you're right. The PTC has campaigned for years to get shows off the air they found offensive. Several have won, several have been knocked down. This could very well just be something they want for their own reasons that happen to have a positive effect for others as well. Broken clocks are right twice a day.
As for your "I don't pay a fee to use a small portion of some product" argument, I'd recommend taking a look at the business model of Netflix. This is exactly how Netflix works - you may not want access to all of the Netflix library, but chances are that you'll want access to some part of it. In addition, the fact that you do have access to the entire library at no additional fee dramatically increases the chance that you may branch out of your personal preferences. Which leads into my next point - while yes, having previews may encourage people to pick up a network, it's nowhere near the pickup rate that unused access has. Whereas choosing to watch a show on another network has a low barrier due to no further costs, determining to pick up a new network does have barriers to entry. The result is that while people may be willing to try new networks that they already have access to, they will be much more reluctant to pick up new a la carte channels.
Again, a la carte won't save nearly as much money as you would think. Already most cable providers have a very basic tier that has the major networks, public broadcasting, and a couple of very popular networks available at a low price - this is the cable floor, so to speak. Beyond that would be your a la carte system, and it becomes pretty clear, once you start factoring in increased network costs, that consumer buying power would in fact be cut, not increased.
You note that you're ignorant of the complexities of running large scale systems that have to have acceptable rates of performance that are very high, but then say that's no excuse. If you understood how difficult this was, you wouldn't be so dismissive. Considering that we're talking TV, this is going to be something that has to "just work". This means that you're talking a system that has the mythical "five 9s" uptime - which means the need for a heavily redundant system. Just look at the recent breakdown of Xbox Live at the end of December to see what would happen if this control system went down for any length of time you'd see mass criticism, lawsuits, and ultimately the need for expensive mea culpas.
Finally, I would be concerned about anything the PTC recommends because they are that dangerous. Playing into their hands is something that's very worrisome, and as such, we should be careful of doing so.
So Quid is out of the competition, godspeed to him. I'm trying to decide, at this point in the matchup, if I'm going to move AngelHedgie through or if an alternate would like to hop in and inherit Quid's arguments. (If an alternate does wish to join, please post, otherwise I will move AngelHedgie through to the second round.)
In any case, topic 2 is closed.
TOPIC NUMBER 3, TO DEADONTHESTREET AND ANGELHEDGIE: Class action lawsuits.
You may begin.
EDIT: Make that clownfood and AngelHedgie. clownfood has shown up, he has priority. deadonthestreet, I'll put you in the pool for next time.
Class-action lawsuits are one of the ways that those wronged by the great and powerful can even the odds against them - by working together to right a wrong experienced collectively. Many of the "flaws" attributed to they system are forwarded by groups that have a vested interest in breaking the system of class-action lawsuits. We should remember this when we hear that class-action lawsuits are "broken" - because the only people they're "broken" for is the corporations and powerful individuals who face them.
Belief that the system is flawed is not an opinion that is only held by groups that have a vested interest in breaking the system. Various criticisms have been noted due to misconduct of those represented those that have been wronged by the great and powerful. For instance, a class action suit was filed as an action for money damages, but the settlement provides no monetary award for the class members. For example, in a case involving a vehicle subject to rollovers, class counsel negotiates a settlement in which a class member receives only an inspection of his vehicle to determine if it has been modified since the date of manufacture, a warning sticker for the visor saying "watch out," and a toll free number they can call for a free tow if their vehicle rolls over. At the end of the proposed settlement, the class members are still left with dangerous, unmodified vehicles and provided no compensation for the defect. Yet the class counsel contends the settlement is fair and worth millions in fees.
The choice for those in situations where class-action lawsuits are certified is not work together for a pittance or work apart for a windfall, it is either work together to gain justice, or work apart and gain nothing. Your focus on the monetary amount ignores that these women, collectively, forced a major corporation to admit to sexist hiring and promotion practices. Furthermore, they were able to punish that corporation for doing so in a manner that will force the company to improve their practices. Remember that most civil lawsuits have two goals - while they do seek restitution, they also seek to act as a punitive measure for misconduct.
Finally, appeals to malfeasance are red herrings. Malfeasance can and will occur in any human endeavor where there is the potential for exploitation. This is no reason to abandon honorable pursuits where the wicked may find something to exploit - it is instead a call to arms to root out, expose, and punish those who would abuse our trust.
Now to the voting. PA forumers, it is now your job to vote on who you believe has won the debate: the pairing of Quid and clownfood, or the pairing of Not Sarastro and AngelHedgie. Please vote for who you believe to have won two out of three topics. Margin of victory is not to be taken into consideration.
Mods, I need a poll, set the clock at 24 hours.