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Greek Government Abruptly Shuts Down State Broadcaster
An anonymous reader writes "The Greek government shut down broadcasting of all TV and radio channels operated by the state-owned broadcaster ERT at midnight local time, with police ejecting journalists and other employees occupying the building. The above link is a prominent Greek economics professor's (and Valve's in-house economist) analysis of the political motivations for the move."
I wonder if that means lower taxes...
This particular article's summary just states the facts. There is no stated point-of-view in the summary! All Slashdot submissions must have a POV! Please, Help! tell me what to think! Heeeeelp!
That's kind of weird. We hear about governments shutting down all broadcast media other than state-owned media so often that the opposite is just...bizarre...
What's the rest of Greece's commercial broadcast media like? What was this organization like? The only analogues I have are NPR and PBS for "state owned" and that's not necessarily entirely accurate, and that private broadcast media here in the US is often very, very heavily biased, even moreso when they make claims to the contrary.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Most European counties have state television next to commercial television. This nothing to do with capitalism and in most cases state television (or state funded independent television) is more objective and has more integrity. For educational and cultural productions, news and documentaries this is very noticeable.
The problem in Greece is mainly due to lack of involvement of the government and too much uncontrolled capitalism.
i should tell you that i feel very happy about that decision
* They said that the "ERT tax" on power bills will be over (it was about 10-30% of the bill, depending on the size of the bill, believe it or not!)
* In the same time that they ask for minimum wage to be lower than 500euros/month, they were hiring journalists with ten times this wage in order to control them. You can read about that in Varoufakis blog.
The problem in Greece is mainly due to lack of involvement of the government and too much uncontrolled capitalism.
This is sarcasm right? It's kind of like looking at a car with a flat and claiming the problem is that the driver hasn't punctured the other three tires too. Greece didn't get into the mess it is in by unfettering capitalism, a thing incidentally that it has yet to do.
ERT was a House Of Corruption. It should have been shut down years ago.
Not only was it a propaganda station, but it was also full of employees that did not have a job description, but they were employed by politicians in order to vote for them.
2500 employees for 3 channels and 1 radio station.
Considering how often we the people in the US have our own votes stolen, I'm a bit miffed you would say they deserve what they get.
State-owned television is too transparent.
Better to have state-licensed, state-influenced, and state-monitored television... It's clearly much more effective.
Liberty cannot be preserved without general knowledge among the people.
... John Adams
Have you? There's lack of regulation in Greece. Multinationals and companies do whatever they like, for example you may find a piece of furniture in IKEA for 100e while the same piece in France costs 40e and the average salary is 30-40% more. Same goes for food, electronics and other stuff. Despite the crisis everything remains insanely expensive in greece and the government is too corrupt and disfunctional to do anything about it
What kind of regulation would solve this? Companies are allowed to sell their products for whatever they want in every EU country.
And here we have a perfect example of (one of the reasons) why Greece has the problems it has.
People so convinced that the are owed more of everything as to think that goods being sold by
private companies can be price fixed by the government so they can afford them.
Hint: if people are not buying them, the companies will lower the price if they want to sell them, its
called supply and demand.. if people want the products, the price will rise.
Surely you are not going to try and convince us IKEA somehow has a monopoly on furniture that it is
somehow using to force people to pay high prices?
The 'problem' with free markets is people reap what they (and their governments) sow, and greece
has done a lot of sowing over the last few decades (as have many other countries).
Hint: if you want a higher quality of living, you have to be either smarter, or harder working, or willing
to sacrifice more natural resources than others - not always pleasant, just a FACT.
The problem in Greece is mainly due to lack of involvement of the government and too much uncontrolled capitalism.
This is sarcasm right? It's kind of like looking at a car with a flat and claiming the problem is that the driver hasn't punctured the other three tires too. Greece didn't get into the mess it is in by unfettering capitalism, a thing incidentally that it has yet to do.
No, endemic levels of tax evasion (come on, you honestly expect me to believe you had no idea Greece was a tax haven) mixed with equally endemic levels of corruption means that Greece's tax revenues have consistently fallen below expectation. So even when the Greek minister balanced the books, the companies in Greece simply didn't pay tax.
It was cheaper to pay off the tax collector than to pay tax. Essentially companies could do what they wanted as long as they kept the right palms greased (which is cheap for any multinational).
Next thing you're going tell me is that your shocked that some Thai girl offered to have sex with you in Bangkok when prostitution is illegal in Thailand.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
In TFA, Varoufakis talks about the value of the Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation, or ERT to Greece.
In light of the well publicised financial problems faced by the government in Greece today, can Greece affored to keep it open?
The government's excuse is thus :-
Government spokesman Simos Kedikoglou – a former state TV journalist – described ERT as a "haven of waste". He said its employees would be compensated.
Kedikoglou said in a televised statement aired on the state broadcaster: "At a time when the Greek people are enduring sacrifices, there is no room for delay, hesitation or tolerance for sacred cows.
"ERT is a typical example of unique lack of transparency and incredible waste. And that ends today," Kedikoglou said. "It costs three to seven times as much as other TV stations and four to six times the personnel – for a very small viewership, about half that of an average private station."
ERT has long been seen as a bastion of quality programming in a media landscape dominated by commercial stations. But it was also used by successive governments to provide safe jobs for political favourites, and, while nominally independent, devoted considerable time and effort to showcasing administration policies.
Source here
Granted the government's self-interest is to spin this story in their favour, but unless they are lying, given the fact that there are more urgent public sector needs that need to be met (eg. hospitals, food kitchens etc) the reasons they gave seem fairly reasonable in the circumstances.
Ok so here's a bigger picture of what led to the shut down.
1) The ERT (National Radio) was a way for decades for the goverment to reward supporters with well-payed tenured jobs.
2) As a result, there are hundreds of people working there who get payed for menial tasks.
3) The Troika has demanded that about 2500 people working for the public sector will be fired before the end of June. 150.000 before the end of 2014.
4) A large privatisation programme that was a requirement from the Troika to continue the Greek bail out failed on Monday (http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2013/jun/10/greek-gas-supplier-selloff-gazprom )
As a result shutting down ERT hits two birds with one stone: It allows them to fire more than the minimum 2500 that was required, and also distracts the public opinion from mondays failure that is sure to bring more austerity measures. The goverment claims that the shutdown was justified because of the corruption and thriftlessness of the organization, while the governing party was the one that helped create them.
I do not speak Greek or are able to evaluate the quality of the public TV-station there, but I know that in Germany the public TV plays an important role in fighting dumb TV for the masses with some of their information programs (even though they also provide shows which can only be watched if you had a lobotomy, just like the US TV ;-)). So from that point of view, I think this is a bad move for Greece. The Greek should start a new public TV station funded by the public and controlled by a council where every group of the Greek population has a seat in (no payments) and they have to agree on consensus on elections for directors. that will realize an independent media house, which is in high demand in Greece (and the rest of Europe).
BTW: I personally do not like the way Greece have been treated by the rest of the EU, especially Merkel, but I also think, they should get rid of their present politicians and demand more public influence in all processes. A little like Switzerland.
There's some problems here. Countries only have so much power to set pricing, without turning into authoritarian states. Australia, for instance, has long had problems with stuff costing much more there than in the US and other places. For a long time, they just accepted it because of the usual excuses of it being a smaller market (1/10 the population of the US), and the long distance away. However, now with so many digital goods and cheap shipping, it's become glaringly obvious that many sellers are just greedy and inflating prices because they can, such as with digital downloads costing more in Australia than in the US, even though it's the same product and there's no extra cost to provide a download to someone in another country as in the US. The Australian government called many software makers on the carpet to explain this ridiculous state of affairs. As I recall, the software makers didn't have much to say about it in their defense, didn't change the prices, and nothing was done. The government can bitch and complain, but the Australian government is still a western democratic country (probably a constitutional republic like most other such countries), not an authoritarian regime, so like most other places, unless there's some compelling public interest for the government to enact specific regulations or worse, a regulatory system (like they do with public utilities), sellers can charge whatever they want for goods and services. It's not up to the government to look at every business and every item their selling and determine if it's fairly priced or not.
The EU could do it with airlines because airlines are already a heavily regulated industry (being so safety-critical, after all). Furniture sales is not a regulated industry.
Finally, as I understand it, the whole point of the EU was to basically be a trade confederation, where there was free trade between member states, and a common currency, and a few key things done at the EU level, but where the member countries mostly kept their own sovereignty. If you have the EU government setting up regulation for pricing furniture and other such things, then basically you've given up on the idea of member countries having any sovereignty at all, and have decided to make the EU into a single country, just like the US, only worse (our US federal government does not regulate furniture pricing, and AFAIK there's nothing stopping companies from charging 3x as much in stores in Maine as they do in stores in California).
Of course, if it's that much cheaper to buy furniture or other things in other countries than Greece, what's keeping people from setting up new businesses where they buy the stuff from stores in those other countries, then drive it over to Greece and resell it there at a markup smaller than the difference that the original seller has in place? After all, that's exactly what would happen here in the USA if IKEA tried selling stuff at such a severe markup in one state for some weird reason. Heck, you could make a business just advertising IKEA stuff on the internet (without even having any stock), along with appropriate shipping costs, and then when people buy it, you run out to your local IKEA and buy it, then ship it to them.
And here we have a perfect example of (one of the reasons) why Greece has the problems it has. People so convinced that the are owed more of everything as to think that goods being sold by private companies can be price fixed by the government so they can afford them.
The point of regulation is to prevent companies from market manipulation. Companies will naturally move to maximize profits and will, if allowed, perform any action to do so. Competition gets eaten up while at the same time no room is left for new players. Eventually, the market dies.
So regulation is required to facilitate a healthy market. Rules are put in place to ensure that established companies can not prevent competition from entering a market. Limits to what monopolies can do are instigated. Everybody is forced to play fair in an attempt to maximize competition and the benefits of capitalism.
People go on and on about how capitalism and regulation are polar opposites. This is ludicrous. Without regulation the benefits of capitalism do not exist. The invisible hand is an idealized concept which, much like communism, ignores reality and is doomed to failure. A market without sufficient regulation will not optimizes overall efficiency. Of course too much regulation also reduces efficiency - but a certain amount is always required.
So this isn't about the Greek people wanting the government to fix prices - this would obviously not work. It's about opening up the markets that have been sewn shut by the current players. This required effective regulation - far easier said then done.
Next thing you're going tell me is that your shocked that some Thai girl offered to have sex with you in Bangkok when prostitution is illegal in Thailand.
When did that happen? When I spent a year there in the USAF 40 years ago, hookers were respected and honored for their service to society.
Free Martian Whores!
So this isn't about the Greek people wanting the government to fix prices - this would obviously not work.
But the Greek people have - for a long time - been demanding all sorts of things that obviously don't (and can't) work, and that's why they're in such a mess. Endless entitlement-minded demands from the Nanny State are self destructive, and ... Greece has indeed self destructed.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
1. It was one of the worst channels on greek TV and I doubt anyone will miss it
2. Since always everyone was complaining about the fee they had to pay for it every month. Saying I dont want to pay for state television is the same as saying it should close down. Now all the people who side with the ones fired from ERT are just a pretentious mass. They didn't support ERT when it was working, now they can't act all high and mighty and on their side because it closed
3. ERT was another corrupted part of the public sector. It was a channel with horrible censorship and with people in higher positions paid more than they should've been. There were more than a few incidents when ERT refused to show things in the news that ALL the other channels were showing. As someone put it "ERT, you weren't there for us when all of that was already happening to us for years now, why should be there for you?"
4. Comparing ERT to the BBC/CNN is a horrible insult for both of these channels. ERT was worse than FOX news and people complaining about how greece is left only with private channels don't seem to understand that all those private channels are and have always been much better than the mess that ERT was.
You must live in the USA
No I don't. Around here (Denmark), a liberal is just a slightly less extreme version of a conservative, and both would be placed securely on the right side of the scale. I don't follow US politics very closely, but to me it seems the democrats and the republicans are pretty much the same thing - corporate apologists.
... whatever
So they shut down the quality-news-broadcast network and set free a pile of professionals, some of them well known I guess.
Will that mean that Greece will now emerge getting a professional quality-news-podcast-network and will that mean that there has to be a reason to shut down the internets, too?
When you're poor, stop spending money on non-essentials.
That's common sense when you're talking about an individual, or a household. The problem is that that people extrapolate that to whole economies, or governments.
Money goes around in loops. At the level of a household, the loops have little significance. If you spend $10 on a movie ticket, that money's spent, and the route that connects it to your next piece of income is so long that it has no bearing on your decisions. At that scale, you might as well think of spending as a sink, and earning as an unending source.
But at the level of corporate and government spending, the loops are very significant. Pay 1000 roadworkers $20,000 dollars each, that money will go into a chain of transactions, most of which are taxed, keeping dozens of people in work.
*Don't* employ those 1000 roadworkers, and they'll spend less, slowing down the entire economy.
Again, it's simple supply and demand. Sellers will always try to price things as high as they can, to maximize profit. Why wouldn't you? It'd be stupid not to. Sellers are under no obligation to lower prices just to be nice (unless you're dealing with an essential good or service with little or no competition, like a utility, in which case the government jumps in and regulates the market, for the good of society as a whole). But they lower prices in response to lower demand. Excessively-high prices cause low demand, so you reduce prices to increase demand, and increase sales volumes. If you lower prices too much, you get excessively low profits (or at an extreme, no profit, and instead a loss). In the middle of that curve there's a local maximum where profit is maximized.
If a seller finds that buyers in one country are apparently gullible fools and are willing to pay excessively-high prices for a product (more so than in another country), why shouldn't they raise prices there? If you don't like it, you're free to not buy the product. You do not need a Nexus 4 to live. You can buy a competing device, or an older device, or just do without. Or you can just go to another place where it's cheaper and get it there (or just order it on the internet from someplace cheaper). As long as the government doesn't put up artificial trade restrictions preventing you from exercising these options, there's no problem. If people continue to be stupid and willingly pay higher prices, that's their problem.
In fact, why aren't more people just buying on the internet? We've had the same problem in the USA: local brick-n-mortar shops charge high prices on consumer electronics, especially in more rural areas. So, people just go to amazon.com or newegg.com and buy it at a much lower prices. The brick-n-mortar shops bitch and complain, but too bad. If I can buy something from Amazon for so much less than locally, that I end up saving a lot of money, even after paying sales tax (Amazon charges it now) and shipping fees, then obviously the local shop is charging too much. In the end, the local shop goes out of business, and I really don't care. Of course, a bunch of people bitch about how this is driving the "wonderful" local mom-and-pop shops out of business, that people should be happy to pay 50-100% more for the same product just to get the "service" that local shops offer (yeah right), it's "unfair", etc. Do people say the same things in your country when people drive over the border (or order on the internet) to avoid paying local prices?
So regulation is required to facilitate a healthy market.
But in Greece, too much regulation has destroyed the economy. The World Bank Doing Business Index had Greece's "distance to frontier" (a measure of 0-100 where 100 is scored by the countries easiest to do business in) was 62.0 (compare with the US at 85, or Azerbaijan at 62.8). This measure is not just about tax rates, but more about the bureaucracy required to run a business. Even high-tax countries like Norway and Sweden scored in the 80's.
The Heritage Index of Economic Freedom scores Greece at 55.4, behind Senegal at 55.5. Again, Norway, Sweden, and the US score in the 70's.
Here is some text from the Economic Freedom index regarding Greece:
A great anecdote about doing business in Athens can be found here:
I'm curious about the ability he had to do this. The Prime Minister in the UK could push a bill through parliament cancelling the BBC's charter and/or its funding, but couldn't actually shut it down. If he sent police in to clear the building then the police would be acting illegally and I'd expect them to refuse.
So it's interesting that the Greek PM didn't face such barriers.