Categories: Capital Read, Inside the Queensway

Another radical leftist PromArt freeloader speaks!

by kadyomalley on Friday, August 22, 2008 4:46pm - 0 Comments

From an email received this afternoon:

Someone said to us that we are likely the very last Canadian artists to take our work outside the country on the Promart fund.

I also read that the Conservatives consider Promart a “boondoggle” which doesn’t achieve its aims of promoting Canada, Canadian foreign policy and Canadian artists. I would just like to tell you what Promart’s $2,000 will achieve for Canada and us. It will allow my husband and I to travel to South Africa where our film, THE GREAT GRANNY REVOLUTION has been used to change South African health policy. A change that all the power of governments and the UN could not achieve.

Two Wakefield Grannies and I took the film there in March on CHC funding. While there Johannesburg announced a whole new package of services for grandmothers raising their AIDS orphans. The City gave the film a gala screening and then it was shown four more times. We did a training workshop to teach others to set up a Granny support group.

Now, September 5th Robert and I will return – on Promart funding and we will show the film 7 times in Pretoria. One of those times as the Gala opening event. During the days we will be at the University teaching young people how to shoot, how to tell their own stories, how to use the media. We have meetings set up to discuss a co-production with one company and broadcast of our doc with another.

In South Africa we are heroes because we are willing to do this. Our activities will be covered by the media. We don’t mind donating our time, and the use of our equipment but we certainly can’t afford to buy round trip tickets so that we can promote Canada and Canadian doc makers. Without the support of Promart we would not be able to go.

www.rooneyproductions.com to see more about the film, the tour, the work.

Brenda Rooney.

Tags: aaaarhts funding, boondoggling in our time, brenda rooney, health care, promart, south africa, still more communists, the great granny revolution

More by kadyomalley

T. Thwim

madeyoulook: By that logic, Canada would never have had a railroad, a national highway system, or a national post system.

Some things are better done collectively.

But if you’re really, really chuffed about this “waste” of money, use a private courier service to send me a S.A.S.E. in order to demonstrate your faithfulness to the “no public investment where private business can succeed” line and I’ll gladly send you a penny to cover your share.
madeyoulook

T, only if your sense of “logic” prevails. If you can equate national infrastructure with buying Granny and Avi a plane ticket, and if enough people think like you, this country is in more dire need of a Maggy Thatcher than ever.
Since you mention it, by all means take away the stupid monopoly on mail distribution from the Crown corporation, and allow more private toll roads, and stop subsidizing rail travel so much. No argument there.
Let me help your sense of logic as best I can: when you are considering allowing the user to pay less than the true cost of a good or service by subsidizing it at public expense, you would do well to learn about the “tragedy of the commons.” Go ahead, look it up.
T. Thwim

I’m quite aware of the tragedy of the commons. It’s what happens when capitalists are unregulated. They often forget to mention when speaking of it that you need some sort of enforcement for private property, which requires funding agreed upon by the society.

Now that we’ve dealt with that, perhaps you look up economies of scale, and barriers to entry and get back to me with that rail-road and postal service thing.
madeyoulook

No Dice, T. Enforcement of contracts and private property rights IS a legitimate role of government. And you don’t get tragedy of the commons at all, which explains a lot of prior commentary. “Free access and unrestricted demand for a finite resource” is the tragedy of the commons that overwhelms and dooms the finite resource. That’s not unregulated capitalism, in which supply and demand determine price. You’re not even close. You really need to go look it up.
T. Thwim

And remember what the tragedy of the commons tell us? Unrestricted demand for a finite resources makes aquiring any of that resource worth an infinite amount. Because of this, unregulated capitalism will do anything it can in order to acquire the resource. Thus, the tragedy occurs, where the resource is eliminated precisely because of its finite nature, and the nature of unregulated capitalism. A properly cared for commons (whether that’s through private ownership enforced through government or through public restriction of the amount of grazing private owners are allowed to do) stems this. Do try to keep up.

However, this is an entire aside, as you still haven’t investigated such things as the rail service and highway service with an eye to economies of scale and barriers to entry. Or, take the internet service you’re currently using. Canada has a significant amount. More than the states if you examine connection per capita. Similarly teleophones. Why? Because our government believes in supporting ventures that benefit the public at large, even where such ventures are not profitable in and of themselves. For private industry, the profit involved in running cable out to far rural areas.. or even for mail service to run to rural areas, simply isn’t enough to do it. As someone who couriers a lot of things, trust me, I know, there are a lot of areas in Canada where Canada Post goes, but the couriers don’t. Why? Because it’s not profitable for them, even at exorbitant rates, to deliver stuff there or string cable. Your logic would again leave those people unconnected with the rest of Canada.

This is the same for the rails. This is the same for the national highway system. Without the collective resources of our government putting those into place, there would have been little benefit for private companies to lay out the significant resources to do so. Those ventures are simply too high risk, too low return for private corporations to bother with. There are easier ways to make money. Hence why public investment was required.

All of this ties back to arts funding. Our government funds things that private business would not because such things do not provide objective, privatisable returns on value. One of those things is promoting art and good-will in other countries toward Canadians. When it does this, these countries deal with us better, thus allowing our private market to capitalize on the investments made by our public market.

Short developing good-will and a good view of Canadians among other countries, and you hurt our exporting businesses. Bravo sir. Hope you feel that’s worth the half-cent or so out of your personal taxes that PromArt cost.
madeyoulook

And, generous right-winger that I am, I will humour you on the next two concepts:
Economies of scale: great idea, helps economic efficiency, lowers costs, helps profits, whatever. Throw in a monopoly, however, and all hell breaks loose: overpriced products because of zero competition, no incentive for further innovation or efficiency, etc. Throw in government administration, and watch economies of scale fall to economies of politics, and unions’ collective bargaining, and corruption of public officials. Throw in both, and you’ve got VIA Rail, except you’ve lost the economies of scale entirely, because that sucker can’t stop finding ways to lose more and more money.
Barriers to entry: Thank you for proving my point: these barriers are precisely what monopolies throw up to scare off any attempt of a potential competitor to start up. Make that monopoly a taxpayer-supported monopoly, and the barrier gets even higher, since any new private competitor’s profits would be taxed in order to partially subsidize the public monopoly, so it remains a taxpayer-leeching monopoly. Then go and secure the government monopoly further by making it ILLEGAL to provide mail delivery service, and you’ve got Canada Post.
Any other misunderstood economic principle you’d like to throw around in defence of the continued rape of the honest taxpayer?
madeyoulook

T, our posts crossed, but unfortunately you still don’t get the tragedy of the commons. Capitalism PRICES IN the “finite” of finite resources. If you don’t get that, then never mind looking anything up. Just stop trying.
You point to the internet penetration across Canada as a public good that deserved the government investment. I see taxpayers lowering the true cost of a good to distort the demand. You tell me which is closer to a tragedy of the commons.
You point to the need for taxpayers and mail customers everywhere to support cheap mail service for rural Canada. I see rural Canadians getting a forced handout from urban Canadians.
The only thing you’re right about is that it does come back to arts funding. Forcing taxpayers to support artists that the marketplace would not is a necessary good to you, an unnecessary evil to me.
To-may-to, to-mah-to…
Dot

madeyoulook,

I see, unfortunately, that the Ark has docked, temporarily I hope, on a country that has internet service. When are you going to purchase a satellite modem so we can hear your drivel 24/7?

Say, do me a favour, if and when you get home, go outside and tell me – how many different companies’ electrical wires you have running to your home, how many cable companies run co-ax nearby, how many gas companies run mains down your street, how many water and sewage companies connect your home and have their own water treatment and sewage plants?

If you answered 1,1, and 1 then, by your ideology, you must be one pissed off ratepayer, because there should be multiple companies offering exactly thye same services. Needless to say, or perhaps I DO need to say, your rates would be MUCH, MUCH higher, or you’d still be in the stone age. Do you understand how capital investments work?

Honestly, your arguments remind me of the scene in Gangs of New York, c 1863 where there are multiple fire departments, and if you weren’t insured by the one who arrives on the scene to respond to the fire alarm (often the fire the result of their arsonistic actions) your house burned.

A sincere question. Do you have any real world, practical experience, or are your opinions just based upon stuff you (poorly) studied in school?
Blues Clair

“You can only hold your stomach in for so many years.”
- Burt Reynolds
madeyoulook

If the best you can do to defend the rape of the honest taxpayer to prop up pampered artists is to state that critics like me are somehow therefore against public health infrastructure like clean drinking water, sewage treatment, and police/fire protection, then do yourself a favour and give up.
This taxpayer is delighted to chip in on the necessities for which government can and must be the sole provider, like everything just mentioned. This taxpayer would hope that the government in question (municipal, provincial, federal) would do its best to apply itself to the common good to maximize the benefit and minimize the cost. Oh, and avoid silly distractions that should never trouble a politician in the first place.
We were talking, I thought, about a radical leftist PromArt freeloader defending the need for every Canadian taxpayer to be coerced into buying her a plane ticket, because she didn’t feel strongly enough to do so herself. I criticize that freeloader position, so now I am expected to shut off the water main valve in my basement?
Come on people, at least try harder. Your argument lies in the area of “enough Canadian voters WANT to steal from taxpayers to engage in this sort of activity, or at least don’t feel strongly enough about it to vote otherwise.” If you want to falsely accuse the conservative philosophy of promoting the anarchy you seem to describe, it says far more about you than it does about conservative philosophy.
Jack Mitchell

The point is, madyoulook, that the lady in question was SERVING HER COUNTRY by going to South Africa.

Apparently the idea is sickening to you. But then the right wing in Canada is as deficient in patriotism as the left is in the United States.
Style

Since cable and telephone lines can both be used to access the internet, either can provide the same services now – so there is competition between these two infrastructures. More generally, infrastructure like these are considered natural monopolies so you’re likely to find only one provider of the infrastructure at a time. That can be a regulated private company (possibly under contract for a defined period so MYL could in some countries realise the dream of having multiple providers) or a government monopoly. You might have noticed in the past twenty years that, while the phone line is still a monopoly, phone services no longer are. In the UK, the rail lines are a monopoly, but train services no longer are. And so on.

Economists usually use the fire department example, like police departments, to explain free riding and why it is bad. But it’s okay if Gangs of New York uses it differently.

All of which is interesting, but not really tied to the question of whether the Conservatives were wrong to increase Heritage’s grants and contributions by only $215M rather than by $219M to protect the apparently under-used programs that have been cut. The total Heritage budget for this stuff is now $1.1B a year. And that’s before the increases in the most recent budget. If anyone’s curious, the Main Estimates for 2003-04 and 2007-08 are my source and they are published online at http://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca.
madeyoulook

Jack continues his streak of missing the point, and brings in the patriotism canard again. PromArt is not about serving one’s country in one’s own narcissistic mind, or in Jack’s. It is about supporting the promotion of one’s artistic work. I call that a business subsidy, and a bad idea.
The lady wanted to go on a nice trip, in order to feed her vanity, but she didn’t feel strongly enough about it to cough up two thousand bucks. So naturally, we all must. Multiply this over and over and over and here we are.
The debate that is raging over this most modest of cuts to bloated government is extremely telling. Now it’s unCanadian (thank you Jack) to even attempt such a minuscule effort to trim wasteful fat. You a member of the Liberals or something, Jack? That’s a favourite line of theirs.
Jack Mitchell

madeyoulook, I’m not a Liberal – though it goes to show how incredibly narrow-minded you are that you suppose so.

“The debate is raging” – yeah, right. This was clearly pandering to the philistine bedrock of Harperite populism – anonymous cowards on comment threads, you know the type.
madeyoulook

Jack, asking a question (“You a member of the Liberals or something?”) is NOT a narrow-minded supposition, it is an open-minded question. And your answer is appreciated. Now, let me offer you this suggestion: if you are comfortable hurling charges of treason against your opponents in a political debate, you really should inquire about membership in the LPC; they’ve developed that into an art form.

You are correct about one thing. The Harper government was indeed pandering with its choice of cuts. Granted, accepted, true, conceded, take your pick. His error was in conceding the virtue of the program in the first place. His opportunity was to say, ALOUD, “what a dumb idea it is to keep propping up an industry that will continuously need the propping — how can we Canadians best cut our losses?”

If you are prepared to tire of resorting to childish unjustified insults as a debating technique, I might be prepared to care about what you may have to say in the future.
Dot

I hope for madeyoulook’s sake, the Pierian spring never gets privatized.

Indeed, a little learning IS a dangerous thing.
Jack Mitchell

“I might be prepared to care about what you may have to say in the future.”

Sorry, Dot, madeyoulook has surpassed you for funniest line in recent days.
Dot

You don’t have enough categories.
sf

“The point is, madyoulook, that the lady in question was SERVING HER COUNTRY by going to South Africa.”

Ha, that’s a good one! That made me laugh. Next time I’m sunning myself on a beach I will remind myself that I am serving my country.

The entitlement elitists here sound straight out of medieval times, where kings and queens justified their pampered lives in lots of interesting and hilarious ways.

Thwim, your alternate reality economics are creative, just like the creative cultural freeloaders. Keep up the good work, there are still a few state-planned economies around flailing away with your theories of central planning. Even the Chinese have given up on central planning, but don’t worry, there does remain a few.

The same people who claim that corporations are too large and powerful also claim that we need government to do things that nobody else will do, except when corporations do it, except then it’s bad cuz they’re too big and powerful. Only the government is allowed to be big and powerful, to keep all those horrible citizens in line, except the artists and the people with government connections who need to serve their country at the expense of those horrible people working at those horrible corporations. Something like that anyway.
madeyoulook

Careful there, sf, look around at all the folks nodding their heads up and down at that last paragraph of yours. Your mocking tone went right over all those collectivist heads. You may wish to end such a comforting lefty lullaby in the future with a big loud shrieking “NOT!” right at the moment that about a third of the crowd was snuggling off to a comfortable sleep.

Just a suggestion. Proceed as you will.
Jack Mitchell

“Next time I’m sunning myself on a beach I will remind myself that I am serving my country.”

Wait, was this ironic? Seems pretty much to articulate the rightwing point of view. A bit of sunscreen and presto! you’re a patriot.
sf

Jack Mitchell: the first step to serving your country is to “not” be a burden upon others, to actually pay your own way or to even “give” to others, rather than “take” from others, forcibly, regardless of the fact that you think you know better than everyone else.

Conservatives know who has served our country, those people who have fought for our freedoms, not those who wish to remove them.

Dot: You confuse teaching with patronizing. There is a difference.
sf

madeyoulook: you have a good point, you throw out some mocking, or even some joking, and the next thing you know someone puts quotes around it and calls it conservative logic, or worse, it goes right over their heads. Sort of like Jack did with my comment that a taxpayer funded vacation is not “serving the country”, in the same way that my own vacations, in which I pay my own way, is also not “serving the country”, but at least I’m not making other people pay for my sun-tan.