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Bob Metz

Hello London. It is Thursday, July 5th. I’m Bob Metz, and this is Just Right on CHRW 94.9 FM, where we will be with you from now until noon.

No, no, not right wing. Just right.

Welcome to the show today on this Thursday, July 5th, while we’re right in the middle of summer, starting to get humid out there again.

It is going to feel like summer for the next while. Before we begin, just a quick apology to those of you who might be tuning in to hear a discussion about guns, gun control, and self-defense, as I announced at the end of last week. Not to fear, though, we’re just being postponed by one week. Our scheduled guest had some unexpected events come up, and that’s what live radio is like, I guess.

We will follow up with that issue next week, again, if everything goes okay. And just before we begin, I always tend to forget this week by week, and I really have to thank Ira Timothy in the control booth. He’s running the show in there, steering the ship. He’s the guy who answers your calls if you call in to join us at 519-661-3600.

He’ll be the first guy to greet you. And today’s show, not about guns and self-defense, although maybe there might be some elements of that in this. But one ballot, two choices. We’ll be dealing with that a little later in the show about the upcoming referendum that you are all going to have to know about by October 10th if you intend to vote in that election. I’m going to talk about government doing good as well a little later on.

People think that’s the main function of government is to do good, whatever good might be perceived to be. And if we get time and I can squeeze everything in, we’ll be talking a little bit about television, TV technologies, and issues of that nature. But first, it looks like I’ve been doing this show long enough now that I can actually do enough follow-ups to issues discussed on previous shows. And one of the interesting ones that crossed my desk over the past week or two was an issue I discussed here on the show back May 24th and on May 10th, and it had to do with gas prices. And we were all complaining about the high gas prices. You notice they haven’t really gone under a dollar since then, and that means we’ve got quite a demand on those gas supplies.

But back in May, Ontario PC MPP Joe Tascona had a private member’s bill 228, which fell when the government prorogued for the season. But that was a gas prices notice act in which they wanted to force gas companies to tell you about price increases three days in advance. And I suggested at that time that’s going to cause a panic. And also later on, I also talked about the situation in Iran, and Iran is now rationing gas.

And so now I have confirmation of all of this. There is an article that appeared in June 28th, 2007 National Post by Frederick Dahl. And the headline reads, Despite swimming in oil, Iran will ration fuel. So here you have the world’s fourth largest oil exporter, Iran, imposing fuel rationing for at least the next four months.

That means probably a lot more. And in response, a lot of Iranians set 19 gas stations ablaze after government announcements were made that this was going to happen. Quote from the article, Despite its huge energy reserves, Iran lacks refining capacity and must import about 40% of its gasoline.

Nonetheless, Iranians enjoy some of the cheapest gasoline prices in the world. Now here’s the reason. Fuel subsidies cost the government at least $2.2 billion a year and leave the economy dependent on imports at a time when western countries are escalating the pressure on Tehran’s nuclear program. So on May 22nd, which was just about the time we were talking about this issue, just a couple of days after, the government raised the litre price by 25% to 1,000 rial, which is $0.115 per liter. And at the time I was talking on May 10th, it was said there were around $0.09 a liter, so that makes sense. But still, this is a fraction of its cost. In other words, even at the raised price, they’re not paying the cost of producing the fuel.

And it’s still among the cheapest in the world. But there’s talking about the president of Iran. He’s decided rationing and price rises are the only way to curb demand and help Iran to achieve self-sufficiency. So the day that they put this through, drivers rushed to fill up after the ministry said the scheme would finally go ahead after weeks of confusion. Private cars get about 100 liters of gas a month in the rationing. Now, if I think about my car, my car is a large car and it takes 65 liters if it was actually empty. And so I could fill up one and a half times a month. The irony is I don’t even use that much gas personally, but if you were driving from London to Toronto, you do that even once or twice a day. That’s it.

You got a one-day ration there and you’re done. But interesting too, since the 2005 election of the current president, inflation has risen to 30% and living standards have fallen. Now, this sends flags up, my hair goes up the back of my neck.

Really interesting observation I had. First time I ever really got interested in anything to do with history or economics or social studies in that sense. Because most of it was just unrelated facts so much. But I remember one time in high school, grade 12 or 13, they had grade 13 back then, sitting in a history class and our history teacher out of the blue says that every war is preceded by a period of inflation. Although, of course, not every period of inflation is followed by a war.

But certainly that’s a danger signal. And when you see a country having inflation, there’s something you can latch onto, a consistency, something that you can relate to. And if you’re in a country that’s having 100%, 200% inflation, you can understand the pressure on a country.

Imagine your rent going up two and three times every few months, not by a few dollars, but literally doubling and tripling. That’s going to put some pressure on a country and sometimes war is the way they settle that pressure. Iran’s population is twice that of Canada’s at about 70 million. And its economy has been stagnant for decades, which accounts for why they don’t even have enough refinery stations to refine their own material.

It’s just unbelievable. And of course, here’s the danger signal. The President blames his country’s poverty on a plot by Western powers. He says the only answer is to confront the United States and Britain. But domestic critics say economic recovery is possible only if Iran opens up to Western trade and investment.

And of course, that’s a given. You need to have that capital in order to invest in the capital you need to create the gasoline. So there’s a classic example and a demonstration of what we were talking about before. I didn’t even go to that extent where people were setting things on fire, but that’s a major danger. Now, turning to a completely different story that I’ve been watching lately, but it ties into something I wanted to cover earlier and never got around to.

And I think it’s even more timely now. There’s been a lot of talk. You’ve seen Russian President Putin has been in the United States with George Bush and they were recently over at the G8 summit. Working together and caught George Bush on BBC the other day. And he was just coming out of a meeting with Putin. And he said something like this. I didn’t get quite a sort of paraphrasing here, but he says, I looked into his eyes and saw a sincere and honest man.

And it was funny because that was in direct contrast to the story that I was going to deal with. And interestingly enough, a lot of the observers on BBC and commentaries said maybe the guy’s got a few blinders on in terms of how he’s looking at Putin. And one person who was recently right here in Canada was someone I’ve admired for a long time. And that is former Russian chess champion, Gary Kasparov. Now, he’s retired from chess for a while and he’s been actually becoming a political activist. And apparently on June 19th, he was giving a speech to the Empire Club of Toronto.

And they refer to him as the retired Grand Master. And he was really pleading for outside help to help Russia deal with its problems. Kasparov apparently now rallies opposition forces in Russia as chairman of the United Civil Front movement. And here’s what he said to some of the people that were at this event.

And this is covered by Joseph Breen in the National Post June 20th. Quote, meetings such as the recent G8 summit in Germany at which countries, including Canada, sat down with Russia as a moral equal, do great damage to the cause of real democracy in Russia.

Things are getting worse now. Russian President Vladimir Putin has learned that if he does things in small steps, the West will say little and do nothing. Mr. Kasparov said, we asked that the leaders of the free world stop providing Putin with democratic legitimacy. Now, that’s an interesting point because that’s also how I’ve often emphasized even here on the show, how we lose our freedom step by step and people don’t resist the little steps because well, it’s too much hassle to worry about who cares about whether you can shop on Sunday or not or who cares whether you have to pay that little extra tax or not until eventually you don’t have any freedoms left.

But interestingly enough too, Kasparov commented, in Russian economics, state profits are privatized while expenses are nationalized. Well, I’d hate to have to tell him it’s kind of like that here in Ontario too. Over here with Ontario Hydro, where you’re paying the debt of a company that’s supposed to be producing electricity.

So in other words, they’re not only nationalizing the expense and the debt while privatizing the profit somebody’s making money. So, I guess the big question is why should we be listening to Gary Kasparov? Well, it’s interesting back in 1989 and that period when he was in chess championship mode. He was interviewed by Playboy magazine in November of that year and it was a very interesting interview. And here’s something he said to them, quote, Russia is in trouble.

The economy is on the verge of being destroyed. It is in tragic shape. We have to take strong measures immediately. Private enterprise must be released.

Economic activity has to be open to the market and the people must be given political freedom. It’s hard for me to know whether Gorbachev is moving so slowly because that’s all he can do or because he really doesn’t want to change everything. Remember, he is still a communist, he said. And so after talking like the terminator of chess competition and always wanting to win, because if you look at Kasparov, he looked almost like Arnold Schwarzenegger in a way.

He’s a tough guy and he talks about chess like somebody might talk about fighting in a ring. And he was asked, you sound like an American, the person asked. Americans always want to be winners. Well, Kasparov replied, well, that’s not American. That’s just human. It just proves that Americans are very close to human nature. There aren’t two different types of life. And then he said, and I found this quite incredible, I’m looking for the same thing that everyone else is, a normal life where a person can live well and express himself well.

It is very important for me to try to bring normal life to my people, the daylight. When they see me in a nice Mercedes that I won after some very hard chess in Germany, I don’t want them to think I’m an exceptional case. They should understand this as normal for someone who earns it.

It’s a kind of preparation for their thinking. I am a fighter and my greatest fight here is in this country. And he says, I’m not just fighting for chess and professionalism, but for the future of my people.

Well, good luck to Gary Kasparov, totally the opposite of poor Bobby Fischer, who actually celebrated 9-11 and held America responsible for all its sins. Just a shame. But there you go, there you have it.

When we return, one ballot, two votes, and what it means to you this October 10th.

Clip (Stand-up Comedian)

That’s why I do this, I’m a stand-up comic, because I really am not good at the actual work of anything. I’m great on the interview, though. Oh, yeah, anybody who’s good on the interview knows. Have you ever been on an interview selling yourself? You know what to say, you know what they’re looking to hear, and you’re just selling yourself hard, and you get that moment of conscience in the back of your brain as you’re selling yourself when you think to yourself, I can’t believe the load of crap that is flying out of my mouth right now. Sitting there saying stuff like, I’ll tell you why you should hire me, because I’m a go-getter and a self-starter.

I don’t even know what the hell I’m talking about. That’s right, I can do all the work. I can start a job, I can finish the job, I can do all the work in the middle. I don’t need anybody’s help.

In fact, I work best when I’m alone, and yet I’m a team player. You see what I’m saying?

Station Promo

You’re listening to Just Right on 94.9 CHRW. Call in now with your questions, thoughts, or opinions at 519-661-3600.

Clip (Yes, Minister)

This country is governed by ministers making decisions from the various alternative proposals that we offer them. Is it not?

Yes, of course. Don’t you see, if they had all the facts, they’d see all sorts of other possibilities. They might even formulate their own plans, instead of choosing between the two or three that we put up. Would that matter?

Would it matter? Why? Well, as long as we can formulate our own proposals, we can guide them to the correct decision.

Can we? How? It’s like a conjurer. The three-card trick.

Take any card, then make sure they pick the one that you intend. Ours is the four-word trick. There are four words you have to work into a proposal if you want a minister to accept it.

Quick, simple, popular, cheap. And equally, there are four words to be included in a proposal if you want it thrown out. Complicated, lengthy, expensive, controversial. And if you want to be really sure that the minister doesn’t accept it, you must say the decision is courageous. And that’s worse than controversial. Controversial only means this will lose you votes. Courageous means this will lose you the election.

You see, if they have all the facts instead of just the options, they might start thinking for themselves. And the system works?

Works.

It’s made Britain what she is today.

Bob Metz

Welcome back to the show. I’m Bob Metz, and this is Just Right on CHRW 94.9 FM, where you can call in at 519-661-3600. And just a message to the caller who just called in during the break. I just wanted to pass on a very heartfelt thank you for your kind comments. And nice to hear there’s folks out there who are listening who are enjoying this perspective and listening to the show. If you like it, tell your friends and other people about it. They might like it too.

We’re not only in the London area, we’re also online at chrwradio.ca. Now, next subject. One ballot, two choices. That’s the name of the official document being put forth by the government effectively. About the upcoming referendum we’re going to have on the way we will be voting in the future here in Ontario. Now, I took a look at this document and that last clip tells me a little bit about how I feel.

Pick any card, but pick this one. And we’ve put this together as a way to guide you through your choices. And they make it sound like it’s simple, quick, popular and all that stuff that you just heard in that last little clip there.

Well, I don’t think it’s all that simple. And here’s the issue that’s really arisen here in Ontario. You might be wondering why are they all of a sudden talking about voting differently? What’s wrong with the way we’ve been voting up until now?

Is there any reason to change it and what’s driving it? Well, one of the issues that I see is that our current Ontario governments are perceiving a possible serious electoral upset under the current system. And particularly if voters choose an alternative party under the current system, which a lot of them reacted to Mike Harris as being that kind of a threat as well, which is really funny because Mike Harris wasn’t the solution that a lot of people thought he was. So, to address this issue, the government in 2005 established an all-party committee to study electoral systems.

Now, by all party, that means all the parties in Ontario except Freedom Party, the Green Party, Family Coalition Party, Core Party, Libertarian Party, Communist Party, who were excluded from the process until Freedom Party complained and got all the other parties to at least be heard before the commission. But we didn’t have very much input. But now, here’s the issue of how they look at it and what the problem is. Now, they don’t like the idea of first past the post. Right now, we have a system where the winner in a particular riding, whether he has a majority, like 50.1% of the vote or even less, but as long as he has the most votes, he takes the whole riding, and this is something that apparently they don’t like.

So, here’s what they basically want to do. And by the way, that system is known as single-member plurality, and that’s what’s referred to as first past the post. Right now, there are 103 seats in the Ontario legislature, but on October 10th, they will already be expanded to 107. That’s already a done deal. Now, if Ontario voters accept the assembly’s recommendation to change the way we vote, and that’s what they’re doing.

They’re actually recommending that we change it. They will add an additional 22 seats to the Ontario legislature, which will make it 129, which was how many seats we had before Mike Harris cut back on the size of government. And ironically, even though we go back up to 129, Ontario will still be the province with the fewest per capita MPPs in the country, even after the change. So, they think that our current system is unfair, etc. And they said, quote, we concluded that a mixed-member proportional system is the best electoral system for the province. We hope our recommendation will inspire your confidence that we’ll increase voter choice and produce fair election results. Now, to change the system, there’s going to be a double 60-60 threshold. It has to be approved by 60% of voters in at least 60 electoral districts, and it must win at least 60% of voter support across the province. So, that’s a tough threshold to begin with.

But I have to question the premise. Increase voter choice? I mean, if you only have two parties to vote for, how can any change to how you vote really increase your choice? The only way you get increased choice is by having more parties. And if you’re talking about producing fairer election results, fair depends entirely upon the rules, doesn’t it? Like, if the rules say winner takes all, then it’s fair because all the participants, the voters, the political parties, in the game consented to those rules. And so, what would be unfair is to break the rules, which is what the citizens assembly is actually trying to do by changing the rules of how we vote. Now, when I looked at how the procedure was going, I was astounded what was really going on here. And I realized that what’s happening is that our votes are being watered down.

Because when more people vote and vote more times, each vote has less influence than it did before. Now, this is the simple system they’re going to give us. In the new system, there will be 90 local members. In other words, they’re going to reduce the number of ridings. But they’re going to increase the number of seats in the legislature by an additional 39 list members. So, in other words, the legislature would be made up of 90 members elected from ridings and 39 list members selected by political parties on an advance list, and they get to appoint them. Now, you might think this odd, me being involved with a political party, I don’t like this idea. I don’t think political parties per se other than loose affiliation that you have with the ideology should actually have an official role in politics generally.

And that’s almost what it is. I remember we talked about this many times on left, right, and center, and even Jeff Schlemmer acknowledged that it’s very much an issue of convention, the whole political party system. Unfortunately, this new system literally cuts out any sort of independence in the sense of having a party list to vote for.

But what’s interesting is they will split this up. And so what happens is when you get your ballot, you’ll be looking at a ballot and on one side will be a party, and then the other side will be the candidate you want. But what happens is suppose you vote for a liberal candidate and you vote for a liberal party as well. You might think that that vote’s staying in the riding, but it isn’t. That party vote gets allocated province-wide for the list members. Whereas you really only get to keep the local vote for the actual candidate inside the riding. So what is actually happening is that our votes are being watered down in a very dramatic way. You get influence over the local member and partial influence over the list.

You know what this is like? This is like taking a $5 bill from you and giving you five loonies and telling you you have more choice as a result of that. That’s almost the shell game that’s being played with trying to change the system. It may sound fair, and I know it bothers a lot of people that sometimes we have governments that aren’t majorities, but this is very clear. If a government cannot govern, or if a political party and a group of people can’t govern as if they were a majority, then they can’t govern morally by whatever their own moral code might be.

It doesn’t matter whether they agree with me or not. They will always be compromised with the other parties, which as the Fraser Institute points out, means more spending in the long term, fewer freedoms, more laws, because everybody’s trying to jump in on that government gravy bandwagon. It’s like perpetual minority government. There is the real danger. So just a quick warning on that. I have so much more I could have said on that. I could have talked about this subject on the show for two hours. But when we return on the other side of these messages, we’re going to be talking about government doing good and does it really.

We’ll be back soon.

Clip (Stand-up Comedian)

So I’m flying here right from Alaska, and there’s a guy sitting next to me, and I could tell he really wanted me to shut up. And I could tell that.

Because he kept going, shut up! Could you shut up? Because I’m chatting and chatting and he’s busy flying the plane, and he’s like very, very…

We want more of that from you on feedback.

Call in with your questions, thoughts and opinions at 519-661-3600.

Clip (Walter E. Williams)

Good. Now, ladies and gentlemen, the primary justification for the attack on private property, individual freedom, and I might also add privacy as well, can be found in people’s desire for government to do good. What do we say? We say that government should help the disadvantaged. Government should help the elderly.

Government should help failing businesses. Government should help college students. Government should help senior citizens. Government should help other deserving segments of our society. Well, that’s all well and good to say that, but we must recognize that government has no resources of its very own. Now what I mean by that, those programs coming out of Washington to help many citizens or coming out of your state capitol, they don’t represent congressmen and senators and state legislators reaching in their own pockets and sending out the money. Moreover, there’s no tooth fairy or Santa Claus giving them the money.

When you recognize that government has no resources of its very own, that forces you to recognize that the only way the government can give one American citizen one dollar is to first, through intimidation, threats, and coercion, confiscate that one dollar from some other American.

Bob Metz

Welcome back. I’m Bob Metz and this is Just Right on CHRW 94.9 FM where you can join us at 519-661-3600 and we’re talking right now about government doing good. And that was Dr. Walter Williams giving a speech back in 1995 in the state of Kentucky at that time where he was enunciating some of his concerns about what happens when government is constantly trying to do good and how it seems to backfire all the time. And this is a very sensitive issue for some people and I understand that because to even suggest that the government shouldn’t be helping the poor, shouldn’t be doing certain things is just contrary to the way a lot of us think or even feel. But there again, it comes down to process and you have to identify what government is and what government can and cannot do.

And what is the real motivation often behind what we would call altruism on an international scale? It’s interesting. We’ve been recently watching all the stuff happening at the G8 summit and all this stuff and I remember in one of the pieces covering the G8 summit they were referring to, oh this was in London Free Press actually, back in June. And they had this full page article I recall with all these little charts on it. And one of them pointed out that Africa, its share of world trade has fallen to 2%, which is alarming, down from 6% in 1980. So between 1980 and now, their share of world trade has actually dropped, which is not a good thing.

You’d think it should be going up. And we might like to think that we’re helping the continent of Africa by sending them aid. But in fact it’s because we send them foreign aid so much, instead of trading with them, that Africa is in this kind of trouble. And labor in Africa is so cheap compared to Western wages that our own leftists here are in some way indirectly responsible for what’s going on there.

They need law and order and a contract society and a little bit of capitalism. They don’t need a lot of money pouring in to protect local labor so that we don’t have to compete with them. You’re hearing the same thing coming from China today. Something like in China, it’s 83 cents an hour to help put together a car, whereas in the US it averages $73 per hour when you take into account wages and benefits and all the rest. And of course the argument is, oh, we shouldn’t let them in, some kind of slave labor, which it is not. You can’t compare currencies like that. Obviously China has millions and millions of people who are not employed and they have apparently 10 million a year constantly added to the labor pool.

So obviously labor is going to be cheap and where you make money is on capital and you need capital investment. I remember I had a visitor to my office one time from Ghana and I actually walked in my office as a taxi driver and he came in and I asked him, since you’ve been there so recently, what is missing in that country? And interestingly he told me the same thing. He says, we want to know that when we sign a contract it’s good and it’s going to be protected by the government. We want to know that a deal is a deal.

A promise is a promise. And that really is what he saw as the major issue. Which leads me to someone I haven’t really talked about on the show here, an author that lived over 100 years ago now and her name is Isabel Paterson and she wrote a monumental book called The God of the Machine which basically explains how stuff works in terms of life and human endeavor. And she wrote an essay in there called The Humanitarian with the Guillotine. And it talked about, and it made an astounding statement and this was it, it really was challenging. Quote, most of the harm in the world is done by good people and not by accident, lapse or omission. It is the result of their deliberate actions long persevered in which they hold to be motivated by high ideals towards virtuous ends. And she says this is demonstrably true and it couldn’t be any other way.

Because she says the percentage of positively malignant, vicious or depraved persons is necessarily small. Because no species could survive if a majority of its members were that way.

If they were all habitually bent on destroying each other. And she points out that destruction is so easy that even a minority of persistently evil intent could certainly exterminate the unsuspecting majority of well-disposed persons. Keep that in mind when we’re talking about terrorism and what terrorism can do. Because any one of us, if we went nuts, we could do a lot of damage and that’s just the way it is. We’ve got technology that can make an individual as powerful as governments used to be. For heaven’s sakes, the computer on your desk gives you more power than the average government had a hundred years ago. You can contact anyone in the world in seconds without a cost.

Just amazing. Now she points out too that it has to be understood that when she talks about good people, she means good people. Not people who of their own conscious intent would hurt their fellow men or procure wanton acts that are just a personal benefit to themselves. And she’s also not talking about what she called a transvaluation of values where people might suggest your good is my evil, my evil is your good. No, she’s taking it given the benefit that we’re talking good people. So she says there must be a very grave error in the means by which people seek to attain their end.

Something is terribly wrong in the procedure and what is it? Now of course Dr. Williams just alluded to part of that. He says government has no resources of its own when we send them. We’re taking them away from other people. And thus impoverishing them a little bit. And there seems to be a belief constantly that when it comes to issues of poverty and helping people that we live in a fixed pie world, which I think is the greatest economic and social illusion that has caused untold damage to people’s thinking, it just doesn’t work that way. The things that we have today, the technologies we have today, were literally undreamt of in days past.

It’s funny. I’m a fan of science fiction and you’d think science fiction could predict anything that was coming up in the future, right? But until the internet came along in reality, there were no internet references in previous science fictions.

All of a sudden every science fiction time travel story had to get in some reference to internet so they could make it. They didn’t even predict this. They predicted rockets.

They predicted space flights, but they didn’t predict something like the internet that would put such power in the hands of individuals. But Isabel Paterson goes on in terms of addressing what she sees as the political motivation to get into the business of altruism, which isn’t the proper business of government anyway, because really, it’s not charity what the government does. It’s just taken from one person and given to another.

I could do that if I wanted to get in the government and just grab your money and give it to even the most needy people. Does that really justify it? But Paterson pointed out that the lust for power is most easily disguised under humanitarian or philanthropic motives and that it appeals naturally to people who feel a sentimental uneasiness for the misfortunes of others. And then they mix that with a craving for a little unearned praise.

Most especially points out Paterson if they are nonproductive. And she points out a little fantasy that we might have all had as kids. An amiable child might wish for a million dollars, but they usually intend to give a chunk of that away to their friends so that they can be nice to their friends and their friends will like them.

But she points out the twist in that little fantasy is that it would have been just as easy to imagine that our friends also had a million dollars instead of us having to give them and share our million dollars. See, we like to put ourselves in the middle there. We like to put ourselves in a situation where we are the giver. So the child doesn’t conceive that persons in need of help can also imagine having a million dollars for themselves and that the double gratification is innocently stipulated. You want to have power through doing good. And Paterson points out that if you carry this through adult years, this naive self glorification turned to hatred of any suggestion of persons helping themselves by their own individual efforts by the non-political means which imply no power over others or compulsory apparatus.

Now, I have tested that idea in the marketplace so many times I just can’t tell you how people will be livid with you, especially if they’re really committed to the left, that you even suggest that people can help themselves. And of course, it’s the same thing. Howard Bloom in his haunting book, The Lucifer Principle, points out that we explain that our foreign gifts are for development funds and all this. But forgetting that in many cultures, giving things to people is a way of humiliating them. And I think that’s a big problem we have in some parts of the world because inherent in the giving of things is that technique to draw attention to the recipients’ lowliness on the hierarchical ladder and that when you give them something, you’re actually saying in a way, oh, we’re a little bit superior to you.

You can’t do it. So there’s these kind of motivations in the lust to do good with government. That’s all I will say on that subject. You’ll hear a little bit more from Dr. Williams as we go to this break. And when we return on the other side, we’re going to talk a little bit about television, but perhaps not in the way you might be expecting.

Back after this.

Clip (Walter E. Williams)

But do-gooders fail to realize that most good done in the world is not done in the name of good. For example, let me, you may ask me, if you ask me, Williams, what’s the noblest of human motivations? What’s that motivation that gets good things done? I would say greed. Now I’m not talking about ripping off people and robbing and fraud and misrepresentation. I’m talking about people trying hard to get more for themselves. Now, some people say to me, well, Williams, since you’re trying to win friends and influence people, don’t use terminology like greed.

Why don’t you say instead, enlightened self-interest? Well, that’s okay. I like greed. Now, let me give you, because you people don’t think of how good greed is. I mean, you have Texas cattle ranchers running down stray cows in the dead of the winter at night, trying to feed them, maybe getting kicked in the face by the cows. They’re doing this to make sure that New Yorkers have beef on their shelves.

You have Idaho potato farmers getting up early in the morning doing backbreaking work, bugs biting them, sun beating down on the neck, getting dirt underneath their fingernails, making all these sacrifices just to make sure that New Yorkers also have potatoes on their shelves. Now, why do you think they’re doing that? You think they’re doing that because they love New Yorkers. I mean, they may hate New Yorkers. I’m not that wild about New Yorkers myself.

They may hate New Yorkers, but they make sure that beef and potatoes get to New York every single day. Why? Because they love themselves. They want more for themselves. Now, ask yourselves, how much beef and potatoes do you think New Yorkers would have if it all depended on human love and kindness?

Clip (Star Trek: The Next Generation)

I feel sorry for New Yorkers. New Yorkers Anything so far? Not yet. Although we have come across some very intriguing, televised broadcasts.

Take a look at this. It’s a form of entertainment called a soap opera. The exploration of human relationships is fascinating.

You will now see me again. I can’t imagine just watching the story and not being a part of it. That’s because you’ve been spoiled by the holodeck.

There’s something to be said for non-interactive stories like this being swept away in the narrative. Oh, I can’t wait to see if Blaine’s twin brother is the father of Jessica’s baby. Good work. Keep me informed and don’t get too swept away. Uh, I shall. Nobody will know the difference. I’ll know, Sharon. He’s my brother.

How can I face him knowing that our son is his son? All you need to know, Jack, is that I love you.

Bob Metz

Welcome back.

This is Just Right. I’m Bob Metz and you’re listening to CHRW Radio 94.9 FM where you can call in 519-661-3600 if you want to join in the conversation. Don’t know what you’re watching on TV these days. I’ve been looking through the TV times and TV guides that I get my hands on and it looks like a pretty dry summer so far this year. I’m practically watching nothing in terms of what is being offered on my cable package right now. Partly, I guess, because I got a lot of that stuff already on my own DVDs or I’ve seen the shows.

I mean, how many times can you rerun Star Trek over and over again on the space channel? But that’s not what I’m talking about today. Today we’re going to talk a little about not what you watch on TV, but how you’re going to be watching it and the technology changes that are coming very soon. That will affect us all, but most of us might not notice the changes depending on how modern our home technology is. And there are issues that are going to affect perhaps even the types of shows you watch.

I’m hoping they’re going to correct some issues. I’ve in the past talked about some of the problems faced by the television industry and my frustrations in even trying to follow a show during a season. I noticed that ratings have been down, especially for the major over-the-air broadcast networks, because apparently reruns in the past season have accounted for 34% of programming, which is up from 19% the year before. Which is quite a bit and a lot of this is blamed because they have more competition. They’re not getting enough people to justify the advertising rates for those first time showings. And they have competition from specialty channels, many of whom only run reruns. They’re just playing old shows or shows that were created by other networks in the past.

So the market is busy adjusting and CRTC is busy regulating and deregulating and technology is changing and the industry is trying to look at different things. And this is an issue I wanted to deal with a couple months or so ago. So I have been putting this off. Nothing’s changed. I’ve got a bunch of articles here all from around the mid-May period of 07 from the Financial Post. And there are articles talking about everything’s going digital, about how they’re going to change the rating systems, how they’re going to allow unlimited advertising on regular broadcast TV. No more limits to how much they could literally, you could have a show 15 minutes long with 45 minutes of advertising.

Hmm, wonder if that can actually happen. But here are a few changes that are coming up. Also in the past when I expressed my frustrations about finding the shows you want, I personally thought a great way of resolving that issue was pay as you go. Pay one show at a time, go online and grab the shows you want for a very cheap and nominal price.

You can have your TV show and pay directly for it. But apparently that’s not what the market thinks. They’re not generally agreeing with the way I was looking at it. And there’s an article called Death to Video Downloads, which, people do want to watch their shows on TV. They don’t want to watch them on their computer. But even so, with other bridging technologies that were coming in to take care of that problem, they’re discovering that evidence is emerging that the whole video download idea is not really what it was originally cracked up to be. Paid video downloading, according to a new report from the research firm Forrester, is apparently becoming a dead end. Even though they’re doing a quarter billion dollars worth of business this year, but they think it’s peaking now and going down. And they said that people simply aren’t biting. Instead, some networks are more likely to stream their shows for free on their own websites, and embed commercials in those shows. So that was an interesting little thing that came a little unexpected to me. Another interesting item is they’re saying that if you’re still one of the 10% of people who has rabbit ears on your TV, you’re actually going to have a little advantage coming up soon, because by the year 2011, all signals in Canada have to be digital.

You can’t have analog signals anymore, which apparently you can still pick up with your rabbit ear antenna, and it will make your picture clearer. It has a high quality improved signal. Now the CRTC says that the main reason for killing off over-the-air analog was to spur Canadian broadcasters into developing advanced services to prevent Canadian viewers from getting hooked on those bad U.S. cable networks south of the border. They say this is just like when color TV came in in the 1950s and 60s, and Canada was about five years behind development in the United States, which to me is not that big a deal. I imagine there were areas in the U.S. that were five years behind as well.

It’s just a metropolitan area that you’re in, and where the market is, where the most development can take place, especially in a mass media situation such as this. But apparently what was happening then, people used their antennas to pick up the signal south of the border, so they pushed the industry locally to catch up to get people to tune back into our stations. And apparently it’s going to be a worldwide phase out. U.S. is phasing out analog in 2009. Now if you really don’t know what analog and digital is and how that’s different to you, not a big deal if you’ve got the right equipment. But where you really notice the difference is when the signal goes bad on you.

Analog is more like a signal on a vinyl disc or even on the old audio tapes, but when you get signal interference, it’ll weaken the picture or phase it out temporarily. You get that buzz, but you can still hear the voice, and the picture’s kind of snowy, but you can still kind of make something out. And you might hear the sound, or you might, it could be anything. You get a fuzzy picture, good sound, bad sound, fuzzy picture. So even when you got a bad signal, you could sort of make out what was going on. But digital being strictly a binary code, it’s either on or off, just like a switch, when your signal is weak and it doesn’t work, you’ll see pixelation.

Or the picture will cut out completely. You get this all or nothing signal, which is perfectly consistent with the concept of digital. Now, I don’t know if you’re watching it over the air. I think that might be a little more frustrating, because I remember if the signal was really weak, you could at least make out what was going on in the plot, and you wouldn’t miss certain key sentences. Whereas if digital goes out on you, as good as the picture is when it’s there, I have actually watched shows where four minutes or so just zapped right out, and they have this nice little warning on the TV that says, poor quality picture. Well, it’s real nice.

Why can’t I at least see the poor quality picture? But there’s that. And then another issue there, getting rid of all television ad limits on broadcast television in Canada, which are now apparently limited to 12 minutes per hour.

That can go up to anything. But I think this is going to be a test of the marketplace. Are you really going to tune into a station that’s going to have 45 minutes of ads and 15 minutes of programming? You might.

You never know. Somebody might pull that off, but I don’t see that as being the big thing to attract people. One other thing coming up just before we go with regards to television and how you watch your entertainment, introducing a new lingo to television called Live Plus Three, which is a different way of measuring TV viewership in homes with the new technologies that let people watch TV and skip commercials and things like that. So they want to revise the traditional system of measuring TV ratings, which only counts live viewership of programs. And I think what they’re talking about now is when they talk about ratings, they want to include the first three airings of something in the advertising ratings. Now, of course, that’s not for everybody because some advertisers can’t afford a wait time for a second or third broadcast, especially if their message is time dependent. And they want you to attend that football game or go to that event the day after tomorrow. Playing that ad again on a second broadcast of the show a week later isn’t going to be worth that much to them. So you can understand why there are some advertisers who do demand those very high audiences. And it’s unfortunate that sometimes the show doesn’t give them what they want in that sense, but that’s the way it is.

You lose some good shows that way. That is it for today. We hope you enjoyed the show and that you’ll tune in again next week. Hopefully we will be talking about guns and self-defense and issues of that nature. So until next week, we hope you will be joining us again when we will continue our journey in the right direction. Until then, be right, stay right, do right, act right, and think right.

See you then.

Clip (Stand-up Comedian)

First of all, they’re not quite as tall as you thought they were because of the kind of mystery shoe pant combination floating underneath them. What is that? Five feet of shoe in three inches of woman?

What is that? And they know how to use makeup and color their hair to look a certain way in a certain light and they can cover up little imperfections, make their eyes look bigger, their lips look fuller. It’s just an illusion. And they know how to use fabric and color and cut to draw your eye away from what they don’t want you to look at and over what they might want you to look at and they know how to cover things up and tuck things in and push things out and it might not even be real things for all you know. It’s just an illusion. And men are all about delusion. It doesn’t matter what a guy looks like, he’s going to look at a woman like that and go, I think I got a shot.