Desirability

I liked Page 8. On Page 8, the authors point out that "Public broadcasting is desirable, so therefore we should fund it," is not good argument for funding public broadcasting. In fact, it's not even a valid argument for funding public broadcasting, at least from an economic standpoint.

If every decision is made based on costs, we have to consider all the costs of funding public broadcasting, including opportunity costs. That is, what is not funded by funding public broadcasting. The argument shouldn't be that public broadcasting is good, but that it is more cost effective than any substitute recipient of funding. In other words, we'd have to show what good is produced by it, or what value it creates, then weigh that against the cost of funding it and the opportunity costs of other public endeavors that would not get funding.

This is why arguments about the future of news go nowhere. They always have some element like this: "News is good, so we should have it!" In fact, we are not making a valid argument until we can say something like, "News produces a measurable impact on participation in public life, which has been shown to be an important determinant of the success of a Western democracy." Then we could probably all agree that a stable government is worth having and we can have some sense of the value that news provides. Then we have to asses the costs associated with it, including government information subsidies like PR offices, waste produced by countless newspapers, postal subsidies, and whatever else. Only then could we begin to have a productive discussion of whether news is actually valuable.

Or at least that's what economics says.