🚀 go-pugleaf

iain@io.org (Iain Grant) wrote:

>timmer@io.org (Remain Calm!) wrote:

>>You have hiliighted the flaw in your own (and Coren's) reasoning:
>>Democracy is *not* based on who has or spends the most $.  Democracy
>>is a representation of all the people, not just the ones who buy pizza

>Staying with food for just a second, does that mean that everyone
>should have steak, because not everyone can afford it, but it's good ?

>Choices are good, but choice involves paying, either coming or going.
>Choice of radio station formats involve paying via listenership,  or
>via taxation.   Bottom line, freedom of choice is one thing, but that
>doesn't mean there should be 300 options, 275 never touched,  in order
>to ensure that 'choice' is available.

Well, you illustrate the extreme, but consider my point as this:
The pursuit of the "bottom line" and the largest "common denominator"
breeds neither diversity nor quality.  It results in a bland, broadly
accepted, painfully conventional and uniform glut of sameness.
Whether in entertainment (us television) or food (Mc'whatever) or beer
(molson/labatt taste free alcohol beverages) you end up with a great
deal of mediocrity and very very little quality.  Indeed, the mediocre
behemoth inevitably crushes whatever quality it finds.  This in the
name of the "bottom line".

The CBC is probably doomed by this trend as it has become the new
religion (monetarism).  Public institutions are too often portrayed as
external and alien to the public when in fact they are owned by the
public (as opposed to corporate execs and shareholders).  Demonization
of public institutions has become popular among the new right and it
is just dandy with the boardroom types.  However, it is the height of
Orwellian newspeak to portray corporations as democratic institutions
being repressed by authoritarian public institutions.

If you have a problem with the CBC (and there are many) I think it
should be discussed and debated but I believe that Coren and his ilk
engage in grievous dishonesty and deception when they invoke the
jingoism of this war against public institutions.



--- 
Timothy Gleason           Adventure? Excitement?
timmer@io.org             A Jedi craves not these things.