The BBC

Does not do economics. Does not believe in it. Anything vaguely related to economic reasoning is alien to anything that has anything to do with the Beeb. Check this one out:

The likes of Jonathan Ross and Chris Moyles are not receiving salaries above the market rate, according to a review of how the BBC pays its top names.

That’s not taking into account the fact that the BBC has massive price-setting power, being by far the biggest broadcaster in the land (and controlling 2 of the 5 terrestrial channels, only one of which has anything near it’s market share)... I would also think that Jonathan Ross, Chris Moyles, etc pretty much ARE the supply side of the market for extremely well-known and trustworthy TV presenters.

So, over-simplifying but just a little, the report says that the BBC does not pay more for its stars than what the BBC pays for its stars. Nice.

And ignoring market structure completely, they utterly fail to understand what the law of one price implies. ‘The BBC does not pay more than others’ – what’s the alternative? That they paid more than ITV for the same thing just for the fun of it?

I want my license fee back! And yes, I love Dr. Who and Have I Got News for You, but £130 a year?

The bunny boiler!

Bluematter TV brings you The Bunny Boiler! (wikipedia). Not quite work-safe, but you'll enjoy watching it at home.



More episodes here.

Will the iphone blend?

Literally speaking - this is one hell of a blender, watch what happens to Chuck Norris, IT infrastructure, and a video camera.

I love the aesthetic (youtube kitsch?) and, of course, don't breath this!

US evangelist Jerry Falwell dies

From BBC News:

In 2002, he sparked anger across the Muslim world by calling the Prophet Muhammad a "terrorist". He later apologised.

Shortly after the 11 September 2001 attacks, he said that gays, atheists, civil-rights activists and legal abortions in the US had angered God and "helped this happen".

In 1999, he denounced the BBC TV children's show The Teletubbies, because he believed one character, Tinky Winky, was homosexual.

Rest in peace. Comments are closed.

Is recycling a scam?

Google 'recycling' and what you get is a series of articles quoting scary statistics about the amount of waste we generate every year, tips for more effective recycling and calls to join the 'green revolution'. Combine recycling with almost every other search term you can think of ('recycling statistics', 'recycling facts') and you still get pretty much the same picture.

There is, however, a unique combination that will yield quite different results: 'recycling costs'.

Recycling is expensive. Even without taking into account the demands it places on people's time (a valuable resource), I think it is fair to say that most recycling programmes are loss making operations. While I could go on and on naming one local authority after another, the fact that private recycling operations are nowhere to be seen - with very few exceptions - neatly settles the argument.

When you read about a recycling programme 'paying for itself', what you see in effect is a covert tax on residents. When you see a recycling programme losing money, what you are witnessing is a public subsidy to the tree-hugger in all of us.

All the while, and completely discounting current welfare ('financial') considerations, it is at best debatable that recycling lives up to its purported raison d'etre - saving the planet. The environmental costs of recycling may well be far in excess of simply dumping waste. Extra trucks are needed on the road to collect the recycled bins, pumping tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. For many materials, the environmental cost of the energy used in recycling them is more than the environmental cost of simply tapping on nature's reserve to replace them.

Since the consumption of virgin materials or energy is not priced at marginal social cost, it is impossible to say with certainty whether a specific recycling operation is good for the environment simply by looking at the profit and loss account. For most materials, however, the available evidence seem to suggest that recycling is like shooting ourselves in the foot, all the while feeling we are doing the planet a great service.

Addendum: While looking at recycling, I came across this Wired article about GPI Atlantic's costing of the recycling programme in Nova Scotia. The headline finding was that Nova Scotia saved 'anywhere from $25 million to $125 million a year'. Here's more:

Simply adding up the costs of recycling and the revenue generated from sales of recycled materials would show that the program cost the province $18 million a year more than just throwing trash into landfills.

To get an accurate picture of the real value of Nova Scotia's recycling and composting program, the report considered a number of factors, including [...] the direct and indirect value generated from new employment in the recycling sector.

I assume that the recycling programme hired only chronically unempoyed, or even better, unemployable people - and I hereby petition the government to extend this beneficial policy and hire loads more in loss making public enterprises at subsidised wages. The direct and indirect value generated from employment of this type is surely worth it.

Why is fashion lagging in poorer countries?

This is real-time reporting, live from the trenches.

I am watching the Eurovision song contest - for the benefit of my international readers, this is an annual pan-European 'kitsch-fest' - the BBC's words - where countries rate each other for the year's best song. For my European readers - what's wrong with me, I know. Blame tradition and peer pressure.

I have an anthropological observation with economic implications to make here, and Eurovision (as well as the recent movie Borat) will act as evidence.

Have you noticed that the poorer the country, the further behind fashion is lagging? I am at a loss to explain it. It's not that fashion is simply different, it is that it seems like a $10,000 lower GDP per capita is associated with fashion lagging five years behind. Latvia's fashion is Austria's fashion 10 years ago.

To call on my primary evidence, you can't mistake a Eurovision song for any other, as the competition seems to attract a very particular kind of entry. Eurovision is sure kitsch, but the most striking thing is that it is somewhat old-fashioned kitsch. Not as old-fashioned as in Kazakhstan, and not as trendy kitsch as in the UK. And I'm talking about both clothes and music here.

It's not that old-fashioned clothes, or old-fashioned music for that matter, are cheaper to make - fashion doesn't work this way. A communist past won't do as an explanation either - this is a global phenomenon. The only thing I can possibly think of is limited exposure to television and international hit shows such as 'Friends'. But why do poorer countries get access to the old international hit shows then? And at any rate, even if this could form part of an explanation in the case of Kazakhstan, it can't account for Romania.

Any thoughts or ideas, please email me at bluematterblog-at-gmail.com; comments, as always, are also open.