Submitted title gives the impression that he's going to do something about it. Actual article title: "FCC chief wants smartphones’ hidden FM radios turned on, but won’t do anything about it"
"“As a believer in free markets and the rule of law, I cannot support a government mandate requiring activation of these chips,” Pai said. He believes the FCC doesn’t have the power to issue such a mandate and says it’s best for the market to sort things out."
Sometimes when the rights of sellers and the rights of buyers clash, it becomes obvious that the rights of buyers should be protected by the government through regulation since the market isn't fully free due to monopolistic or oligopolistic market forces. Even Mr. Pai can see that this is stupid, but is unwilling to require manufacturers to do the right thing. This is one of those cases where libertarianism loses its appeal.
What? According to the article, "44 percent of the 'top-selling smartphones' in the US had activated FM radios". If you want a mainstream smartphone that can listen to FM radio, that is totally a thing you can just buy.
Libertarianism loses its appeal because cell phone manufacturers don't want to waste money and engineering time supporting FM radio, which almost no one listens to anyway?
There's plenty of competition among cell companies, and the market has spoken; people don't really care about FM radio on their cell phones.
"Traditional AM/FM terrestrial radio still retains its undiminished appeal for listeners – 91% of Americans ages 12 and older had listened to this form of radio in the week before they were surveyed in 2015, according to Nielsen Media Research. This data is derived from diary-collected listening information from a sample of over 395,000 respondents over the period of one week, as a part of Nielsen’s RADAR study."
You are quoting a mouthpiece for US radio broadcasters. That's a cherry picked measurement, it's clear while people still listen in cars, they listen less and less outside of their cars. Radio is losing listening hours every year and becoming less and less important, which is why smartphone makers have little incentive to support it.
The proof is in the revenues.
"AM/FM’s revenue from “spot” advertising (ads aired during radio broadcasts, its main revenue source) declined 3% in 2015, while revenue from digital and off-air advertising both posted gains – 5% and 11% respectively. This revenue pattern largely mirrored that of 2014, when spot dollars were also down 3% for the year"
I'm not quite sure that I follow your rebuttal. Are you claiming that Nielsen did not do a study of 395,000 listeners over the age of 12 using diaries? Also, could you help me understand why revenue declines for spot advertising has anything to do with the number of actual listeners to the radio on the FM band? Your original claim was that "almost no one listens to FM radio" but that's clearly not the case... failure to monetize the consumers have a particular media is not at all an indication of consumption of that media. 91% of Americans could be listening to public radio for all we know.
I listened to FM radio last week - once, for about 10 minutes.
15 years ago, I listened for an hour and a half a day. As a teenager, I'd listen throughout the day. Teenagers generally don't do that anymore - Spotify, Pandora, etc., have supplanted FM radio as the delivery channel of most music (and news).
The survey still records accurately that I listened in the last week, but I'm no longer a profitable listener. Advertising prices reflect that decline.
Because I turn on my car, and without changing anything, the radio comes on. No batteries or data plans to worry about, and there's a decent interface that's integrated into my car.
I can get the same stations through IHeartRadio. I could get a phone dock, a bluetooth device to connect to the aux input (car doesn't have BT), an adapter for power (cigarette adapter), and all that. And I'd spend 20 seconds each car trip turning on BT, opening the streaming app and navigating to the station, fiddling with volume. I could stream stations from outside of my area, but I pick up worldwide news all day anyhow. My commute's for more local stuff.
I'm just not a fan of using my phone for streaming in general.
Also FM/AM reception feels like it's more robust than DAB/LTE/3g reception - often I can still listen to FM/AM in areas where other wireless tech black out.
I think we can all predict the future here pretty easily. The instant this went into affect if anyone ever tried to create a rule (assuming it's survived court challenges, etc.) Apple would simply demand from its suppliers that they give them chips that DO NOT have FM radios.
It's not like Apple is hiding GPS functionality from users will relying on it itself, it's just a little thing that happens to be tacked onto the silicon. If the government tries to force Apple to do something they don't want, they'll just choose to buy chips without it.
At that point you're where the Radio industry tried to be many years ago where instead of asking for the thing that's on the phone to be turned on, you're now trying to mandate features into the phone to protect your business model. That's a very very steep slope to get support for.
Consumers are free to vote with their wallets, this doesn't seem to be a big deal to many of them. I don't think there's a clear public interest in requiring it the way there was GPS functionality to help locate people calling 911 for emergencies.
Even if the groups got their way, there are so many ways for Apple and others to wiggle out of it that I don't see how this would ever work.
On a side note, in the US there's no actual requirement for cell phones to have GPS. They can use triangulation off of cell towers, so long as they can get the required accuracy.
Huh. I remember hearing that a lot of phones would cut back to 2G (this was a couple of years ago) when you were calling 911 so that they didn't have to use GPS to get the required accuracy which I guess was only required at 3G or 4G connections.
If something takes out the 215,000 cell towers in the us, I wonder if that something will affect the 27,000 FM Radio towers as well - some of which are co located on the same masts.
Granted, it's easier to broadcast FM and be received
> If something takes out the 215,000 cell towers in the us, I wonder if that something will affect the 27,000 FM Radio towers as well - some of which are co located on the same masts.
After Hurricane Sandy, all the cell towers in Lower Manhattan were out of service - between my roommate and me, were were unable to get any signal on Verizon, AT&T, or Sprint.
Fortunately he had a hand-powered radio (electricity was also out) and we listened to that to determine when it was safe to go out, when the cabs were running, etc.
> FCC chief wants smartphones’ hidden FM radios turned on, but won’t do anything about it
That's a principled stand: 'I want to do something, but I do not have legitimate authority to make sit so.' It's actually amazingly principled for someone in Washington.
Political communication is not about transferring information or truth, but about manipulation. You and I aren't consumers of it or citizens, we're targets. Another way to think about it is the old poker advice: "If you look around and don't know who the sucker is, it's you."
Many like him (I don't know him in particular) want to appear to appeal to our principles in order to manipulate us into support or at least quiescence, so they use the words that accomplish that. Meanwhile they are enacting policies (and ideologies) they desire, including enriching big business and other wealthy constituents of his party. It's like watching a magician - don't watch where they're directing your attention, look at the other hand. Or, 'follow the money' - who benefits?
These messages are carefully crafted - literally; experts are hired to compose them, messaging is tested like marketing, and people are trained in what to say (talking points). For example, you may recall that in the debate about cutting estate taxes the GOP started calling them "death taxes" and taking about the cost to small farmers and businesses; all that messaging was composed, using the process I described, by a guy they hired in the 1990s - and sure enough, 10 years later people I know were repeating it like it was gospel.
but death taxes suck. government coming in during time of grief and taking people's money that likely was already taxed one or more times. cold, heartless, calculating, disrespectful. everything we hate about government.
Disagree. It's fine for the government to take half of anything I've saved beyond $5.45 million when I die. If this does serious additional psychic damage to the recipients of my estate, I've probably done a terrible job raising them and it might be better if they got nothing. Nobody needs that kind of money.
> money that likely was already taxed one or more times
That describes all money everywhere, to a great degree. Think of it this way: The money you have, unless you printed it, came from someone else. And unless that someone else printed it, the 'same' money came from somebody before them. Unless you print it, all money comes from someone and circulates endlessly.
A lot of macroeconomics is based around this circulation of money. Think of this: When I buy dinner at your restaurant, I'm out $25 from my microeconomic perspective. But from the _macro_economic perspective, from the perspective of the national economy, no money is lost at all - it merely shifts from my pocket to yours. (This ignores some other significant issues, of course.)
Almost all taxation occurs when the money changes hands. I don't see why massive estate transactions should be exempted.
> death taxes suck
Well all taxes suck, but so does my electricity bill and everything else I pay for. I have no problem paying my share of the national bills; I'd be ashamed to try to shift my share onto others.
> Almost all taxation occurs when the money changes hands. I don't see why massive estate transactions should be exempted.
Currently, yes. There's no reason why we couldn't have wealth taxes or land-value taxes rather than transaction taxes, of course.
It's also offensive that the estate tax is punitive: I believe that current tax is 40% on everything over a certain amount. That is, IMHO, insane: the State is declaring that it has a 40% stake in all of someone's financial success, despite having taxed every penny of that when it was earned in the first place.
Finally, you're missing the point: we tax money at transactions because it's at those transactions that value is created: I pay you $25 for dinner, and I get $25+x value from that meal, while you pay $25-y to create it, leaving the economy $x+y better. I think it's reasonable to attempt to capture some of the value of those transactions to fund the government whose security & stability make them possible (e.g. your restaurant need not hire guards, because we have police; I need not pay for a road from my house to your restaurant, because one has been provided, &c.). But there's no value created at death: it's just a transfer, and to tax it (particularly at punitive rates) just seems like grasping greed.
> I have no problem paying my share of the national bills; I'd be ashamed to try to shift my share onto others.
I really hate this tone from supporters of high taxation, for two reasons: first, at least this proponent of changing our tax system doesn't object to paying his share; second, I believe many tax supporters want to raise taxes on somebody else.
We tax money because we have services to pay for which are important enough that no individual or corporation alone should have exclusive control over, or more commonly, for "the common good". We as a voting people decide (via elected representatives) how we want to raise this money. We do it in a way that seems least painful for (hopefully) the largest number of people.
The exact definition of what's a good trade-off between services afforded and who to tax how much differs from one person to another, and one government to another. The common undercurrent, though, is that there is stuff to pay for, and that the decision lies with the people (via elected representatives) and not some arbitrary set of principles such as "because value is created".
We adopt laws based on such principles because they seem like a good enough solution that many can agree on. Many can also agree that taking money from someone who's dead is doing less harm than taking more money from someone who's still alive or cutting services (which also amounts to taking from people who are still alive). Many also agree that the deceased should have some say, pre-mortem, in how their legacy gets allocated.
That's why you have the right to bestow money upon your chosen heirs at all, rather than it all going to the state, or the king, or the first rando who happens to loot your home. Not because we follow unchangable principles, but because enough of us agree that it's the right thing to do. It's a subtle distinction.
A constitution is the lowest common denominator that a large enough majority of people can agree on. The US Constitution does not go into detail about what to tax and why. If there is a subsequent decision by the Supreme Court that acts as authoritative source for your argument, I'm happy to see it. Otherwise, your interpretation is just that, an opinion that people may agree with or disagree.
If, collectively, the people decide that the dead person's untaxed non-charitable donation rights are more important than the living's tax rates and/or services, I'm sure we can find a way to reduce or eliminate estate taxes.
This is the one and only issue where I agree with Ajit Pai (smartphone makers should not restrict access to the FM radio that is built in to the Bluetooth chips on many devices).
However, I believe his reason for not doing anything about it has less to do with his principles about the free market and more to do with being in bed with the big media companies who would love nothing more than to remove any free alternative to paid streaming media services. Pai has had no qualms wielding executive power in gutting net neutrality to pave the road for tiered Internet schemes and zero-rating. He does it under the guise of being some sort of free market evangelist, but it's really all about the money he gets from lobbyists[1].
He's going to retire from government work a filthy rich man, and he's doing so by eroding consumer digital freedoms.
> Pai has had no qualms wielding executive power in gutting net neutrality to pave the road for tiered Internet schemes and zero-rating
He's not "using executive power" to gut anything. He's choosing not to exercise the executive's authority to actively enforce rules that would be necessary ensure net neutrality.
You and I may not like it, but it's not ideologically inconsistent like you make it out to be.
> "I’m optimistic that last month’s election will prove to be an inflection point—and that during the Trump Administration, we will shift from playing defense at the FCC to going on offense," Pai said in a speech yesterday before the Free State Foundation in Washington, DC, said. The commission "need[s] to remove outdated and unnecessary regulations... We need to fire up the weed whacker and remove those rules that are holding back investment, innovation, and job creation," he also said.[1]
He is planning to remove net neutrality regulation, not just decline to enforce it.
Again, you and I both disagree with his assertion that enforcing net neutrality is not within his authority. But it's not inconsistent for him to make that assertion and also to remove net neutrality regulations that his own agency previously issued, replacing them instead with a different set that requires less power to enforce.
When you're talking about the executive branch, "removing regulation" means issuing guidelines (and executing them). They have the authority to do this one way or the other, and he is choosing to issue rules that involve a smaller display of executive authority when enforced.
Except in a very abstract linguistic sense, it makes no sense to say that "removing regulations" is a more "active" use of authority than actually actively enforcing regulations.
Right. He's simply expressing his own opinion without trying to force the law around it.
This isn't really any different from a police sergeant disagreeing publicly with something but saying he still going to enforce the existing laws around it or he doesn't think would be legal to make a law to cover it. For example, flag burning. Lots of people think it should be illegal, lots of people know that that would be unconstitutional.
