TheAgitator.com
Telemarketing, Continued
Thursday, August 21st, 2003I knew that most people favor the do not call list, but I’m surprised just how vehement opposition to my Tech Central piece has been. Frankly, it’s pretty disappointing, particularly when coming from libertarians.
For most of us, it’s pretty easy to be libertarian. It’s easy for us to rail against the welfare state because few of us are on welfare. It’s easy for us to rail against sex laws, or smoking bans, or the drug war because lots of us have sex, smoke, or use drugs — or know people who do. It’s easy for us to rail against agricultural subsidies because few of us work for huge ag corporations. In short, most of us benefit directly from most all of the positions we take.
I’d like to think that’s because most of us both value freedom and revel in it.
What’s disappointing is that along comes one issue — just one — in which laissez faire capitalism imposes just a bit of discomfort on us, and the first reaction from 90% of us is to ask the federal government to come get these awful telemarketers off our backs. What a burden! We’re tested just a tiny bit — with unwanted phone calls, no less — and our first reaction is to buckle and ask Congress to come to our rescue.
How can a libertarian seriously claim he has any more a right to “privacy” from private telemarketing firms that’s enforced by the federal government at taxpayer expense, then say, for example, some destitute kid with cancer has a right to taxpayer-funded chemotherapy treatments?
No, I’m not arguing for the latter. But taking the former position certainly makes it more difficult to argue the latter. I’ve always thought most libertarians came to the philosophy out of principle, not mere self-interest. And it’s disappointing to see them all turn to the state the first time they’re tested.
Addressing a few of the objections:
1) You don’t have a right to telephone service any more than you have a right to any other utility. Therefore, once you agree to accept telephone service, you can’t invoke your “right” to get that service on your own terms. Unless you own the utility wires, the telephone poles and the switchboards, someone else made the initial investment to put all of that infratstructure in place. When you buy a phone and plug into a system someone else owns, you subject yourself to that persons rules — be it the “public,” or a private utility company. Sorry, but you’re a consumer, and you’re at the whim of the corporation that’s providing you the service.
In this case, you don’t have “rights,” because you aren’t a citizen demanding accountability from your government.
2) Local monopolies. Yes, local phone companies monopolize your phone service, if you own a land line. Get a cell phone. If you pay by the minute for cell phone service and telemarketers call without your permission (and without the permission of your service provider), then they’re robbing you of resources. Sounds like a class action suit. But it doesn’t call for an act of Congress not authorized by the Constitution. If you must, work to get laws passed at the state level.
3) The “right to privacy.” If there is one, it is from the federal government, not from your phone company. The Bill of Rights protects you from the federal government, it does not enlist the help of the federal government to protect from private corporations. When you enter into a contract with your local phone company, you submit to the terms of the contract you sign with them. If those terms allow that company to sell your phone number to telemarketers, don’t contract with them, or tell them you don’t want those terms included. Don’t agree to their terms, hook up your phone, then claim you wuz robbed because they sold your number to Fraternal Order of Police. You didn’t have to sign on to service.
Yes, telemarketers can come “right into your home,” at least in some ways. But in buying a phone, in paying for phone service, in hooking that phone up, in agreeing to the contract that allowed your number to be sold in the first place, you invited them.
If you want to keep them out, you’ll have to disinvite them. Get call screening. Get caller ID. Find another way to communicate. Someone else made the initial investment to make your telephone service possible.
You don’t have any more of a “right” to force them to deliver that service on your terms than that poor kid with cancer has a right to make you pay for his chemotherapy.
I have to say that at first, perhaps it _was_ blinded by the idea of getting less annoying phone calls, I liked this idea. But the more I thougt about it, the more I agreed with you. Just because it is self-serving doesn’t mean it is right.
Radley,
I think people who support this law are using principles that apply to a single individual or company (harassment) and wrongly expanding them to cover an entire group or industry.
If you put up a no soliciting sign on your door but I still come over every night for weeks and try to sell you Amway, surely you would say that I am harassing you. But if a different salesman from a different company came each night that would not be harassment.
Okay, Radley, that’s a cheap shot. You *know* there’s a legitimate difference of libertarian opinion on this issue — you even cited me and Julian in your op-ed. But now you’re implying that this is just a case of libertarians ditching their principles when their own selfish interests are at stake. For the record, (a) I have not personally registered for the DNC list, and (b) I am a professor at a state university who nevertheless believes and says publicly that state universities should not exist.
And James — even if it’s a different salesman every night, every one of those salesmen is ignoring your “no soliciting” sign. The issue is not harassment, it’s trespassing.
You’re so wrong it’s puzzling you don’t notice. You get a phone line, pay for it, you’re not “inviting” anyone – you’re only paying the phone company for the phone line, for the right to use it on your own terms, sure you do. It’s not a free right. You pay for it. Just like email, a web hosting space, etc. What would you say if someone started flooding your comments with ads? spamming your email? wouldn’t you complain to your ISP which you’re paying to provide you a service that is for *you* to use, not others to abuse?
It’s so obvious telemarketers are those in the wrong and it’s got nothing to do with free market or libertarianism. You can’t take abstract principles and apply them regardless to a situation where the abuse is clear.
If someone flooded my comments box with ads, I’d turn the comments off, or block the IP addresses. If it was the same guy or the same company, and reached the point of harassment, I’d see if there were legal action I could take, just as you can do with harassing telemarketers.
And you’ve proven my point. I *would* complain to my ISP if someone spammed my email account incessantly. And if my ISP or whoevenr is hosting my email account didn’t protect against viruses or outfit me with some decent anti-spam software, I’d switch ISPs.
I would not lobby the federal government for an anti-spam law or an anti-comment-spam law.
Radley, you wrote:
“If you pay by the minute for cell phone service and telemarketers call without your permission (and without the permission of your service provider), then they’re robbing you of resources.”
So, presumably, this would apply to landline service as well, if it were paid for by the minute? Don’t some people in the US actually pay for landline service by the minute? I’m fairly sure it’s common in other countries to do so.
Yep, I paid for phone service by the minute for awhile when I couldn’t afford the basic plan. Of course I couldn’t afford caller-ID either, so I ended up just not answering my phone unless I was expecting a call.
Thankfully I’m not in that position anymore, but it wasn’t long ago. Maybe 5 years or so ago.
with a land line you only pay for the minutes you use when YOU make the phone call….incoming calls are free (i used to sell at&t….sorry)
So if by paying by the minute of phone service I can legtimately complain about telemarketers because it robs me of tangible resources (money).
But robbing me of intangible resources (time) is ok.
Yeah good idea.
Libertarian smackdown
Radley Balko and Pejman Yousefzadeh have dueling articles in Tech Central Station over whether the Do Not Call registry — about which I’ve posted here — is consistent with the libertarian credo. Start off with Yousefzadeh’s original TCS essay. Then…
The worst part of the problem is the do not call list attempts to fix a problem that didn’t really exist.
I haven’t revceived a telemarketing call in more than two years. Why? Because I was on the DMA (Direct Marketing Association) Do Not Call List.
With a working privately run national do not call list already in existence, why in heavens name did we need a tax payer funded government one?
I just don’t answer the phone.
“But robbing me of intangible resources (time) is ok.”
-Lee
How are they robbing you of time? You are the one that _chose_ to answer the phone. The onus is on you.
“I just don’t answer the phone.”
-eric
Bingo.
Radley: but there *are* anti-spam laws, doh! that’s what gives you the right to complain to your ISP. Because spam is officially recognised as abuse, violation of privacy, abuse of a service you pay for, etc.
Same with telemarketing, only it happens by phone, not by email or web.
So, Radley, no, I havent proven your point, and *you* haven’t proven it either.
All you seem to do is denounce this do-not-call list as some sort of violation of libertarian principles of the free market, starting from that abstract idea, without considering the real case you’re talking about here.
And to answer this point:
“If someone flooded my comments box with ads, I’d turn the comments off, or block the IP addresses.”
You can’t do that will calls, so you need another kind of intervention than just your own or your ISP.
“If it was the same guy or the same company, and reached the point of harassment, I’d see if there were legal action I could take, just as you can do with harassing telemarketers”
Well I don’t know what instances you have there, but it’s very hard to bring a legal case against telemarketers, and the *principle* is wrong – you don’t give others free reign to abuse your paid services AND then you’re the one forced to start a legal suit. Their abuse should be made illegal from the start, and prosecuted by law. It’s not a case for you to prove they did wrong, but for them to abstain from doing so.
Privacy is not something to be left to legal suits to protect.
Why Me?
Another company refused to take my phone number off of their records, even when I told them that I am not a customer and they are making unwelcome phone calls. They flat out hung up on me when I “refused”
No privacy concerns involved – every solicitating phone call costs me money, just like every spam does.
When you pay for phone servic, the phone company charges you based on its expected costs. Some of those costs (probably a pretty large amount, actually) vary with volume (volume capability, actually). When 50% of the volume is created by voice spam (telemarketers), they should bear 50% of the cost (of the costs that depend upon volume), but they don’t. I have to pay moree for the increased volume capability to carry that voice spam to me. It’s the same principle as with faxes… spam faxes is illegal because it costs the faxee money (for ink and paper).
Also, many telemarketers would disguise or block their ID or sometimes even claim to be someone else (both on the ID and in person) to get you to talk to them – that’s fraud.
Lawsuit: 1. proving this stuff in court would be nigh unto impossible (for one thing, most or all jurisdictions will throw out recordings unless you informed them that you are recording them…) 2. Um, if it’s fraud or theft (which it is), it is already illegal (and wrong, from a libertarian perspective), so laws to make that more clear (and easily enforcable) are just an update of existing law – criminal, not civil.
Oh, and the DMA DNCL is a joke. Don’t know where you live, etc, etc, but IME, it doesn’t help worth diddly.