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by davej 5258 days ago
By the way, almost every country in europe has a TV licence. It definitely can be a good thing, most brits would accept that the TV licence is a good price for the BBC. They provide quality television/radio for minority groups and tend to invest heavily in industries like documentary film-making which might otherwise be ignored in a purely capitalist TV industry.
2 comments
orcadk 5258 days ago
I agree that a public television channel may be a good idea, and I agree that BBC produces great content, just as our DR does. I also see that your license is ~145£ while ours is ~265£ - not that that makes the argumentative difference though.

My problem is that everybody pays exactly the same, the poor, the students, just as the rich. Everything else in our society is based on a progressive tax, just as most "extras" besides your tax is completely optional. The license on the other hand, that's a flat "tax" that everybody has to pay. With the current rules, very few can honestly say they don't need to pay it. As such - let us pay it over the tax and I'd be fine with it.

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davej 5258 days ago
Population is obviously a factor because the cost of producing/broadcasting television content is not proportional to population. £145 * 60 million people is a lot more money than £265 * 5 million.

The BBC also makes a lot of money selling it's programming around the world, presumably most Danish TV is in the Danish language so it would be difficult to sell on.

Having said all of this, I'm in Ireland not in Britain. :-) Our TV licence is €160/annum but out national broadcaster airs commercial ads (unlike the BBC).

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fennecfoxen 5258 days ago
As the US supreme court noted early in its history, the power to tax is the power to destroy. You will surely forgive me if I am a little skeptical of the government having the power to destroy radio, television, and other communications; note that it's actually been done before.
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drumdance 5258 days ago
Meh. The government also has the power to drop nuclear bombs and has done it twice before. Shockingly, we're all still alive and procrastinating on the Internet.

The the typical libertarian appeal to fear of tyranny IMO sheds more heat than light.

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