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I Asked, Don’t Call

Friday, June 27th, 2003

So not only did President Bush sign the government-meddling telemarketing “don’t call” list legislation, he gave a speech to celebrate the signing. Yeah, I know, I’m not going to win many friends defending telemarketers. But would a true limited government conservative really celebrate the federal government applying what really amounts to yet more constraints on business (not to mention charities)?

And take note, John J. Miller points out that, as usual, the final version of the bill exempts politicians and political parties from the same rules they’ve applied to everyone else.

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This entry was posted on Friday, June 27th, 2003 at 12:14 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

18 Responses to “I Asked, Don’t Call”

  1. #1 |  Anonymous |  June 27th, 2003 at 1:06 pm

    yeah, but are you going to sign up?

  2. #2 |  Steve |  June 27th, 2003 at 1:30 pm

    From a business standpoint, I *sort* of empathize for the telemarketing businesses. I would have a lot more sympathy if they would have a coherent industry policy that had a means of stopping calls when I did not want them (one that worked!). I pay for my phone line – I should be able to determine who absolutely may or may not call me. I am tired of these people wasting my valuable time.

  3. #3 |  Jane Galt |  June 27th, 2003 at 2:02 pm

    Perhaps I’m not a real libertarian. But telemarketers impose substantial costs on the 99.999% of people who don’t want to buy their crap in order to reach the one person who does, with all the benefit accruing to the telemarketer. They also take pains to hide their identities in order to facilitate their ability to disturb us. And the relatively low transaction costs enabled by dialing technology make a market solution unlikely. Are you opposed to laws that, for example, forbid your neighbor from lighting up the neighborhood with a rock concert at 3am? There is a legitimate libertarian case for limiting negative externalities such as the waste of time represented by telemarketers. Especially since this list is totally voluntary — the telemarketers are not being allowed to call people who’ve said they don’t want to be called. Are you saying that the telemarketers have some sort of God-given right to call people who don’t want to talk to them?

  4. #4 |  anarchismo |  June 27th, 2003 at 2:41 pm

    I am a libertarian, and I think I agree with Jane

  5. #5 |  Pete |  June 27th, 2003 at 2:47 pm

    Personally, I think it’s a good thing for the telemarketing industry. They will no longer need to waste their energy marketing to people who will never buy their products no matter what they do. Now, they will automatically know who the people are who are receptive to their marketing – or at least neutral to it. Isn’t that the type of information that all marketing lists attempt to gather?

  6. #6 |  Will |  June 27th, 2003 at 4:55 pm

    I consider myself to be a libertarian, and frankly I don’t see how this is terribly different than posting a “trespassers will be presecuted” sign on your property.

  7. #7 |  Bobby |  June 28th, 2003 at 6:37 am

    I guess the list is fine since it is voluntary, however, I will not be signing up. Some of the charities that I like to support such as firefighters, police officers, veteran’s association, etc. would be excluded by the list. As for those hard-selling junk, I just say no and if they persist I hang up.

    To each his own. I don’t get as annoyed as many others (my wife for one) so I will just let it be.

  8. #8 |  Terry |  June 28th, 2003 at 12:00 pm

    Call monitoring with caller ID works wonders. Although here in Indiana it took several years for caller ID to be allowed–the arguement was that it was an invasion of the privacy of the caller for me to know who was calling. Never could understand that—I don’t have a right to know who’s calling me? that was taken care of by allowing ID blocking, but then call monitoring will stop it from coming thru without the caller identifing themselves.

  9. #9 |  Frank N |  June 29th, 2003 at 5:41 am

    …but where will I buy my vinyl siding?

    More government regs for business with loopholes for the government, sound like DC is running on all cylinders.

  10. #10 |  clay |  September 3rd, 2003 at 10:55 pm

    This is a late comment, but after getting my mail today, I wonder if there isn’t a “do not mail” list.
    Half (or more) of my mail everyday is “resident” of “carrier sort”, both of which are from lists that are from the postal service.
    How mthe hell do I get off that one??

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