Monday, August 10, 2009

How much am I paying for free radio?

Riddle me this: what is the national, or public, purpose of NPR? What critical function does NPR perform that a privately owned station can't? If its programming is prohibitively unprofitable, what does that say about the value of the content?

I caught a few minutes of Market Place this evening (brought to you by American Public Media). The host, Kai Ryssdal, was interviewing a Univ. of Nevada professor about the impact of global warming/climate change on supply-chain management.

Here's a sample:

RYSSDAL: Let me test the hypothesis here that climate change and global warming will inevitably affect the traditional supply chain that we have.

CARTER: That's probably a very, very strong hypothesis.

Okay, so how will global warming affect supply chain management? Will rising sea levels swamp the ports? Will F7 tornadoes and Cat-9 hurricanes wreck both rail and ship? What does all this have to do with UPS?

Nothing. It's not The Day After Tomorrow that's going to slow us down, it's the increased costs caused by cap-and-trade and myriad other regulations making fuel and shipping more expensive. Looks like the cure may cost more than the disease; is there a price at which the proponents of climate intervention will back down and say that this is all just too expensive?

Back to the conversation:

RYSSDAL: Do you suppose this trend that we're seeing might accelerate with the Copenhagen summit on climate change coming up in December, and more pressure frankly on this issue.

CARTER: Oh, absolutely. Companies are very, very aware of the issue. And there's a lot of uncertainty, too, in terms of when oil prices will rise again, not if because they certainly will. And also what kind of regulatory structure we might have here in the United States in terms of a cap-and-trade system.

Now there's an anthropogenic problem for sure!

But don't worry, Mr. Ryssdal is looking out for you:

RYSSDAL: Would there be do you suppose any economic benefit to the United States? I mean the corporations will benefit for sure, but what about the rest of us?

Yes, Mr. Ryssdal, the rest of us. Thank you for looking out for the non-corporations rest of us.

And thank you, public radio, for giving me as much as I'm willing to pay for. A true bargain!

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