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PaperclipPerfector  2yr ago (text post)   38556 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 10, 2023

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Yeah, NPR is offensive to me in two independent ways, one of which is related to it being state-media and one of which is not: First, I don't like its political and cultural biases, which NPR happens to share with almost all other sources of news media regardless of funding source. I don't see NPR as significantly more pro-state than most of its privately-owned peers. Removing the public funding is not likely to improve NPR's reporting in any noticeable way.

But I also strongly object to the fact that I'm forced, at gunpoint, to contribute to the salaries of people who hate me and my values. It's not that state funding is necessarily corruptive of the final product (though it almost certainly is, to at least some extent), so much as the American people should not be forced to subsidize a news network that seems to actively despise them. Subsidies are bad regardless of whether the recipient feels obligated to the subsidizer or not.

These are two bad things about NPR, but only one of them has anything to do with its source of funding.

But I also strongly object to the fact that I'm forced, at gunpoint, to contribute to the salaries of people who hate me and my values

A fact check I skimmed implies that, generously, 23% of NPR's revenue is apparently ~ $309M. US federal govt revenue $4.90 trillion. That's 0.001450408163265306% of federal revenue - if you paid $50k in taxes, 72 cents of it went to NPR. Given half of the US loves NPR's values, "my tax dollars!!" isn't a good objection here. It's better for something like welfare

All you've done is demonstrate the pernicious problems associated with the distributed costs and concentrated gains of government subsidies. It may not be much individually, but in the aggregate, a lot of good/harm can be done with $309 million. At what point am I allowed to start caring about my tax dollars being spent on things I morally disagree with? Am I not allowed to oppose the government torturing people in my name (water boarding and attaching people to car batteries isn't exactly expensive)? It's not really about the money, it's about not providing implicit support to things I oppose. The government shouldn't be spending any amount of money producing politically charged propaganda aimed at its own citizens; the fact that I'm not personally bankrupted by it doesn't make it any less objectionable.

Who are you to decide how much @thorouglygruntled needs to pay for taxes before he can object? How much of his money goes into other people pockets, by force, before he can be against that?

It's not a numbers argument but a moral one.

Government spending is, inherently, going to be somewhat wasteful. The amount that goes NPR is entirely dwarfed by the amount that goes to things like agricultural subsidies or foreign wars. There are plenty of left-wingers who are as mad as he is about those. And since money is fungible, we can just split it up, and say - "none of the NPR funding and more corn subsidies came out of Thoroughly's taxes, and all of the NPR funding and less corn subsidies came out of @AnarchoBidenist's taxes.

"forced, at gunpoint, to contribute to the salaries of people who hate me and my values" sounds bad, until you remember that half of the country shares their values, at which point small amounts of govt support for them is just a natural and inevitable consequence of politics, where your problem is entirely with the values and not at all with taxes or the govt

And since money is fungible, we can just split it up, and say - "none of the NPR funding and more corn subsidies came out of Thoroughly's taxes, and all of the NPR funding and less corn subsidies came out of @AnarchoBidenist's taxes.

Well, this is way better argument in my opinion. The other one is a judgment call on how much money is it okay to take from someone before it's objectionable.

What i find interesting about your second paragraph is that it applies really well to people who want to defund the police. People shouldn't have to pay the government for the government to buy guns and train guys to come point the guns at you. Maybe worrying about government programs that literally entail pointing guns at citizens is more salient than being upset that the state is funding propaganda, gesturing in the direction of some theoretical gun being pointed.

You're allowed to oppose the government funding more than one thing at a time.

no doubt, but its a bit tone deaf to whine about uncle sam's gunmen coming to collect the tax money when those gunmen never actually shoot tax evaders and frequently do shoot other people.

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