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$26 billion-a-year by 2011, the internet advertising market is lucrative to venture capitalists who want to invest into companies that help target online advertising. Between 2007 and 2010, venture firms invested $4.7 billion in 356 online-ad firms. "Its a huge market and it's growing," Chris Fralic at First Round Capital says. Fralic's company has backed 33Across, which analyzes users' social networks, and Demdex, which has a "behavioral bank" of user profiles. Ethically, user on-line privacy is at issue. I contend that user privacy can be protected from dangers of concern to users while willing users can benefit as consumers from information regarding products that they want and would not otherwise know of.

According to The Wall Street Journal's "What They Know" report, the top fifty American websites installed thousands of "cookies" and other tracking technologies on people's computers in 2010. The purpose was to create sophisicated dossiers on people's personal activities and to track them in real time. At the end of 2010, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission urged the creation of a "do-not-track" system and the Obama administration backed an online "privacy bill of rights." At the same time, the EU and its states were grappling with the same issue.  One issue there was whether a user simply turning on his or her computer and going online constituted consent to "cookies."  The relative lobbying power of the industry with the vested interest could be seen to differ between states (e.g., Britain and France).  In other words, governmental restrictions can not necessarily be counted on to protect privacy and thus obviate the ethical problem. Accordingly, I now turn to an ethical analysis, putting the question of government regulation aside.

As of 2011, Americans spend 28% of our media time online. Also, online-ad start-ups do not require a lot of money relative to start-ups in other industries. Many of the online ad start-ups attracting funding connect website operators with advertisers who want to capitalize, according to The Wall Street Journal, "on the Web's ability to target individual users." According to Nick Sturiale at Jafco Ventures, "Advertisers want to buy individuals." We are bought, in other words, by being targeted even in our social networking. In short, in going to where people are, there is a lot of money to be made by bringing ads to the people most likely to buy from them. To be sure, consumers benefit when they are made aware of products of particular benefit to them. In business terms, connecting people with products they want is like water going downstream: money is naturally to be made, so it will.  Hence even government-constructed channels or dams are apt to be subtly worked around as money-seekers inevitably seek out sources in more efficient ways. The ethics of privacy do not translate except if there is a financial backlash from actual or potential consumers spurring the ads (i.e., voting for privacy with their wallets and purses). I suspect that few users will spur online ads, however. First of all, consumers who would like to buy a new product tailored to their interests may not all object to the loss of their privacy. Enabling users to allow or disable cookies would allow consumers to make this decision. Secondly, users may not object because the fact that they have been researched and targeted is not typically transparent to them when no one uses the information against them in particular. The loss of privacy is abstract where one has no knowledge of it happening in real time and one does not feel harmed. Indeed, where such breaches are widespread, the use of the data uncovered is routinized and contained.  For example, if a given user's search of porn sites is just one among millions, the individual user can have comfort in the relative obscurity of numbers.  However, what if a potential employer gains access to such information?

The danger with respect to privacy could be if a business shares its "behavioral bank" with organizations with an interest in a particular user.  Such use would not be necessary even in the case of users who want ads tailored to their particular interests. Someone who regularly watches porn might want to know if there is a new sex toy on the market, for example. But should a potential employer such as Walmart be able to access a "behavior bank" to gain personal information on people who have applied for employment?  What if Walmart owns the company that has the bank?  Would not the information then be the property of Walmart?  Furthermore, what if an agency of the federal government were to cite national security to gain access on particular users? Privacy concerns are really oriented to such access concerning particular individuals, typically by third parties, rather than to marketers using pooled data to further segment markets. Legislation ought to be focused accordingly.

In terms of ethical theory, "buying" and "targeting" online users so as to gain and use information that they regard as private violates Kant's "Kingdom of Ends" version of his categorical imperative.  For those of you who have lives and thus do not read Kant, the principle here is that people, being rational beings (i.e,, having the capacity to use reason), should be treated not just as means, but also as ends in themselves. This principle limits exploitation or manipulation of others because using them should not violate treating them as ends in themselves. The reason Kant says for the "ends in themselves" comes down to reason itself having absolute value because we use it to assign value to things.  Just as the sun is the source of light in our solar system, reason is the source of value, according to Kant.  As the source, reason must have absolute, or undefined, value. Incidently, when I get on a topic like this--boiling Kant down and applying his principle to a real-world topic--I think of possibly teaching in spite of my multidisciplinary background (which does not jive well with cubbyholes). Anyway, the rational beings at the online advertising firms seem to be ignoring what the rational nature of online users entitles--specifically, to be treated as an end in oneself rather than merely used.  To be sure, using others is not entirely blocked, as long as it is consistent with treating others as ends in themselves.  In the present issue, users who do not want to be tracked even though that could mean they do not get an informational benefit as consumers are not treated as ends in themselves if they are tracked anyway. We might call it a "boundry issue" on the part of business managers.

In abstract terms, selfishness and greed can prompt a rational being to treat oneself as an end in itself while treating other people as objects. I suspect that this is the root complaint against business managers: that they view humans exclusively as resources while in the role of manager. The problem is that greed is like water running downstream to find wealth below, so an ethical obligation or duty to go around ends in themselves can easily be ignored. Normative constraints do not compute in the business lexicon of greed. I find that people outside of business tend to erroneously project moral principles onto the restricted technical domain of cost/benefit analysis in business. Hence moral claims are made and perceived to be ignored, and a business climate can become toxic. Hence, legislation is typically sought by the general public, even though that route cannot mandate treating others as ends in themselves. We settle, in other words, for temporary dams tantamount to an ethical injunction. In the end, for being moral beings, we humans are remarkably immune to our own nature in the pursuit of what we perceive as our own interests.  In terms of privacy and online data on users, interests particular to a given firm do not recognize "personal boundaries" even as the latter have become salient in modern society. In other words, besides business ethics, business and society comes into play, and of course business and government tends to be the domain in which force or power swoops in to mop up the mess, albeit with thumbs and externally only.


Source: Scott Thurm, "Online Trackers Rake in Funding," The Wall Street Journal, February 25, 2011, pp. B1-2.

See my related essay on the regulation of cookies in the EU: http://thewordenreport.blogspot.com/2011/02/business-and-european-integration-case.html

Typically, responsibility is something people working in a business presume applies to the other guy…whether a customer, supplier or distributor.  The idea is that then the other guy will pay for the problem.  That someone working in the business might have been at fault is not even considered, at least outwardly, in this mentality of otherness-responsibility.  Responsibility here means “I won’t pay; you must pay!”  It is essentially immature self-centeredness and cheapness used as a weapon.

In general terms, responsibility follows, or depends upon, there being some action thought to be required of someone.  Only if Susan is to pick Billy up at practice at 4:30pm is it her responsibility to do so.  The attribution of responsibility depends on the premise that Susan is required, or has agreed, to make the pick-up.  Were it unclear whether she or say Mary were to make it, Susan could reply to someone’s claim that she is responsible for picking up Billy that she is not responsible because it is Mary’s turn.  The attribution of responsibility depends on an agreement as to function or action coupled with a particular agent.   In the case of a businessperson telling a customer what the customer’s responsibility is, the customer could reply “I did not agree to do X so I am not responsible for it; in fact, you are responsible for it because your advertisement states that your firm does X.”  So disagreements about responsibillity are actually disagreements as to who does what.

Corporate Social Responsibility as a movement presumes that managers do X beyond their respective firm’s maximizing or satisficing shareholder returns.   The managers have a fiduciary responsibility to act in the interests of the owners of the wealth that is the corporation because it is a requirement that the managers do so.  Expanding the managers’ functions beyond maximizing returns (and minimizing cost consistent with those returns) is a matter on which reasonable people can disagree because the question is really about what sort of society we want.   However, using responsibility as a way of imposing such an expansion beyond that which has been agreed to is to use the term prescriptively—meaning that there is over-reaching involved.   I would like managers to do Y as well as X, so I declare managers to have a responsibility to do Y (as well as X).   Responsibility really isn’t the right word here because the underlying agreement on the agent-function matter has not been established.  In other words, responsibility properly follows from a given agent-function rather than institutes it.   Claiming that corporations have a responsibility to act in concert with public opinion or extant social norms—to the extent that it goes beyond the business profit calculus—is to use responsibility in a way that presumes more than is presently the case.  This use of the term is really an instance of ideological prescription rather than a reminder of an agreed social contract that has modified the corporate fidicary duty to the owners of the private property.    Using the term responsibility to create an agent-action foundation puts the horse before the carriage.

So we over-reach when we say that the bankers of the commerical and investment banks that are too big to fail have a responsibility to act within public opinion on the bailout (e.g., concerning bonuses and trading on the banks’ own books).  Even if it is in the long term interest of the financial institutions that the financial system remain viable, the managers correctly point out that their responsibility (i.e., agreed upon actions) is to act in their stockholders’ interests.   To say that the big banks had a responsibility to rescue Lehman Brothers in September, 2008 even if doing so is not in their respective stockholders’ interests is essentially to express the public’s (and government’s) wish that Wall Street step up to the plate and do what is good for the system.   To make saving a bank too big to fail part of the big banks’ responsibilities, there would have to be a requirement that they do so (unless they agree that it is part of their activities).   That is to say, there would have to be a law or regulation because otherwise there is not apt to be the sort of mutual agreement out of which responsibilities can be extracted.  A person can say, “the law says you must do Z, therefore it is your responsibility to do Z.”  The response can’t very well be “Well, the law doesn’t apply to me so it is not my responsibility to do Z because I haven’t agreed to do it.”  This is not to say that a typical manager wouldn’t like to use such a line if he or she could get away with it.  Such a self-maximizing mentality makes the legal foundation of responsibility all the more important.

On the question of whether more government regulation is needed for banks too big to fail (as well as health insurance companies), I would shelve the use of the term responsibility and look instead at the mentality of managers in general (as well as in the industry in question).   Whereas the Senate can be likened to a herd of cats instinctively unwilling to be managed, a corporation can be likened to cats circling tuna.   The tuna is their required function: to act in the interests of the stockholders (typically short term).  To expand a business manager’s function to include working against systemic risk (banking) and working so all American citizens are covered (health-insurance) is an excercise in futility unless these functions dovetail with the stockholder/profit interests.  So in addition to government regulation being necessary (as responsibility is not sufficiently viable as a constraint because the agent-action foundation has not been established),  regulators would have to monitor the companies to keep the managerial feet to the fire.  Also, the regulators would have to be monitored because of the managers would have an incentive to capture the agencies that otherwise pin in the firms.  The managers will constantly be trying to turn toward the tuna.  Whether hardwired or socialized by managerial culture to do so, managers can be expected to incessantly strive for more tuna.

As an example of such striving being at the antithesis of constraint, logging companies that sold forests to the US National Parks in the mid-twentieth century continued logging even after the managers knew the sales had gone through.  Also, the managers of the banks too big to fail fought financial regulatory reform in the wake of the banks’ own culpibility in the crisis of 2008.  In addition to reading this as presumption to excess, it can be interpreted as the allure of the tuna always there.  Even if a cat could feel guilty for having knocked over a vase on the way to the food, the animal would turn right around and fight efforts to thwart it from the tuna.  The guilt is extrinsic to the animal as it pursues the tuna.  That is to say, we impose ought on an activity that is simply an “is” to the cat.   As Hume points out, you can’t get ought from is.  The cat’s mentality is essentially to keep striving for tuna, which ideally (to the cat) means ignoring constraints (if possible).   If managers could routinely ignore the law when it is in their interest, it is futile to believe that they would be the sort of creatures that would allow themselves to be guiled into acting within the contours of social norms.  What I am getting at is this: In the CSR movement, there is far too much reliance on the good faith of managers of companies—as if they can be lured away from the tuna, even for a minute for a good cause. The CSR movement ignores the managerial nature, or mentality, or tries to modify it with insufficient force.   The mentality is far too intractable and the use of responsibility far too over-reaching for CSR to be viable in the real world. Essentially, the CSR movement, even in its beginnings in the 1950’s by a few well-meaning though naive businessmen, presumes Hume’s naturalistic fallacy as somehow invalid (meaning that extant societal norms can be taken as normative on their own basis and managers can be presumed to have a responsibility to act in sync with them even if doing so is not in the stockholders’ interest).

We should not rely on CSR or good corporate citizenship in lieu of government regulation when business firms (or entire industries) put us or our society at risk of harm.  The business calculus understands requirements, not “oughts,” and responsibility follows (rather than establishes) the requirements.   To presume otherwise is mere wishful thinking along with a dash of imposing, which is really the self projecting itself on to the world—making the world in its own image.

In early February, 2011, the Los Angeles city council voted unanimously to draft an ordinance that would require condoms to be used on the set of every pornographic movie made within city limits. “We can’t keep our heads in the sand any longer,” City Councilman Bill Rosendahl said. “These people should be using condoms. Period.” According to The New York Times, the "city law would be the first to impose safety standards specifically on the pornographic film industry, which has largely been allowed to police itself." Until the late 1990s, the industry went unregulated. On the heels of lawsuits filed against production companies by several actresses who had contracted H.I.V., the industry created the Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation in 1998. The nonprofit clinic was financed by contributions from production companies and offered STD tests for the talent. Producers agreed not to hire performers who had not been tested within thirty days. Even though the county health department accused the industry's self-regulation of failing to protect the talent and their sexual partners, the production companies claimed that the system worked well. “This has been working for years,” said Steven Hirsch, founder of Vivid Entertainment. “If we saw people getting sick, we would go to mandatory condoms.” However, STDs remained rampant among pornographic film performers. Rates of chlamydia and gonorrhea are seven times higher than those in the general population.  Taking Steven Hirsch's own statement, it could be argued that waiting until an actor looks sick to require him to wear a condom is a bit like waiting until the horse has left the barn. “Testing just acts as a fig leaf for producers, who suggest that it is a reasonable substitute for condoms, which it is not,” said Michael Weinstein, president of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation.

As with most business ethics cases, this case pits the public good against the financial interests of particular firms and employees. The self-regulatory testing system often left the talent weighing financial needs against their own safety (and one could add the public health). “At first, I would ask about condoms, and they told me I’d never be able to find work,” one actress said. “You do worry about the risk, but any girl desperate for money, like I was, is still going to do it.” It is also not in the financial interest of the production companies to make condom use mandatory. “I tried many years ago to get everybody to go to condoms,” said Jim South, a longtime talent agent for sex-film performers. “Quite a few companies did, but sales fell severely. The switch would be very difficult.”

Ethically, both the talent and the companies have been risking harm to others (and in the case of the talent, themselves as well) in order to gain financially.  It is essentially egoism at the expense of others' well-being. To the extent that AIDs is still fatal, the trade off is between killing someone (and oneself, in the case of the talent not wanting to wear condoms) and losing money. I have written a novel in which I juxapose frauduent sub-prime mortgage banker with gay college students who carelessly risk others' health (and lives) by having unprotected sex, moving from guy to guy in "hook-ups."  The harm in being kicked out of one's home onto the street may seem qualitatively different than the harm in being infected by a possibly fatal disease.  However, I contend that the callous disregard for others among the two kinds of violators renders the two as the same "type." Moreover, I submit that this "type" is increasingly salient in the make up of modern society.  In other words, modern culture, at least in the West, is increasingly taking on their attitude. In terms of M. Scott Peck's theory in People of the Lie, the self-centeredness at the expense of others is malignant narcissism.  Peck theorizes that such narcissism is actually a protective or defensive shield around a feeling of emptiness at one's core.  The evil, Peck argues, is the emptiness rather than the defense mechanisms of selfishness and lack of empathy.  The increasingly "bubble" quality of modern society, wherein people drive in their own cars, listen to their own music, and even watch movies alone on their laptops, may perpetuate the "me vs. everyone else," which in turn reinforces the attitude of malignant narcissism.

Beyond the ethical dimension, that industry self-regulation allowed for others to be harmed in the sex film industry and perhaps has even killed talent or their partners indicates a justification for government regulation. The New York Times reports that enforcement has been a problem, and that the threat of loss of the industry might undercut the regulator's power to enforce a new law. "Even if the law is enacted, city regulators may face similar problems of enforcement that have dogged state occupational safety and health officials. And some filmmakers have grumbled about moving their operations, which bring in as much as $13 billion annually, to other states." An industry can "capture" a regulatory agency not only because the latter depends on the former for information, but also because of the industry's power. This power can be exercised through government officials, even legislators and governors, who have influence over agencies. 

In the end, it is the lack of value that talent and the production companies put on human life (especially that of others, but also that of the talent themselves) that is telling in this case study. Sex itself is oriented to an instant of sheer pleasure that a peson can enjoy in him or herself. It is therefore not surprising that people in an industry involving sex are oriented to their own interests at the expense of others. Whether through industry self-regulation or government regulation, it is difficult to get around, or change, an attitude. This is the intractable problem that this case puts before us. One might ask whether the malignant narcissism is simply human nature or an instance of decadence therein.  Weakness may be difficult enough to treat; whether human nature itself can be changed so as to mitigate the squalid effects of malignant narcissism may be a question for the psychological, biological and medical sciences as the twenty-first century progresses.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/10/health/policy/10porn.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper

On February 28, 2010 on CNN’s State of the Union, Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the US House of Representatives, said that the health insurance companies didn’t want a government-financed and operated insurance option for American citizens so it was off the table.  Her statement reminds me of the earlier one by Richard Durbin of the US Senate, who remarked after his forclosure-assistance amendment failed that the banking lobby owns Congress.   Would there have been the hyperbole of “socialism!” associated with the public option for health insurance were that proposal in the interest of the industry at issue (i.e., at fault)?  If so, it is interesting in a sad sort of way that a culpable person would have the gall to use exaggeration (there would still be private insurance so the sector would not be socialist…meaning owned and controlled by the state).  We have seen the same thing from the banking lobby in fighting reform efforts in the wake of the financial crisis of September, 2008.   In other words, we can isolate a pattern here: even when companies (or an industry) are at fault, they can still own Congress when their interests are at stake.

It is particularly disconcerting to me that so many citizens fall for the self-interested exaggerations when it would be more natural for people to be angry at the culpable people for continuing their unethical business practices (and going on to stop reform that is at least in part due to their bad practices).  Take for example, Representative Dennis Cardoza, Democrat of California in the US House. The husband of a family practice doctor, he is intimately familiar with the failings of the American health care system. His wife “comes home every night,” he said, “angry and frustrated at insurance companies denying people coverage they have paid for.” Even so, he is on the fence on the Democratic health-care reform proposal because he wants stronger anti-abortion language and more cost control.  Were he really angry like his wife, he would be pushing not only for the bill, but for the public option or for real restrictions on the insurance companies, rather than allowing secondary issues to block him.  In other words, I don’t believe he is really that angry at the companies refusing to fuffill their responsibilities to their customers who have paid the premiums.  Also, he is allowing himself to succumb to the self-interested manipulation of the same firms that he is ostensively angry at.  It is in the health insurance companies interest that costs be reduced because then their expenses are reduced (and their profits, which were very high in 2009…even as they were denying treatment to some).  If he were really angry like his wife, he would not be so willing to do something that would benefit them so much; rather, he would be working to take power and money away from them.

Unfortunately, the problem kids are able to thwart our efforts to clean up after them.  America’s Health Insurance Plans, a lobby for insurers, announced in March, 2010 (as Congress was considering health-insurance reform) that it was buying more than a million dollars’ worth of television advertising time to explain why insurance premiums had been rising. The week before, the White House had indicated that the industry’s rationale for the raised premiums was unconvincing.  Too many of us are letting industries get away with their mis-representations geared to thwart reform.   The health insurance industry’s ads convince us that the companies really aren’t sharks; we ignore Sen. Rockefeller’s likening of the companies to sharks—you don’t know there is a shark until you see its fin and feel its sharp teeth.  In other words, our anger is too easily (and conveniently…for the sharks, which want to continue feeding) dissipated.  We let the bad kids off the hook and go on as if the problem were somehow no longer out there.  This puts the misbehaving kids in a position to thwart any parenting.   In short, too many of us are unwittingly being manipulated by the bullies (who are therefore getting away with murder).   I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that spoiled  kids would not feel culpable for their own bad behavior, but I am.  I am perhaps even more disappointed in the parents (i.e., the American people) who let themselves be manipulated by such kids.  It is like watching the parent of an alcoholic teenager be in denial and thereby enable the kid to continue drinking even though the kid beats up other kids when he or she drinks.  “Oh, Tommy didn’t mean it; he is really a good kid.  I don’t think we need to look at a group home or jail. He will be good if he can relax with a beer.  Here Tommy…” 

Whether in dealing with the people at the health insurance companies who are in denial or the representatives and their supporters among the public who are also in denial and are enabling them, it is an exercise in futility and utter frustration to see this dynamic and want to shape it up because the sickness has strong defense mechanisms against real change.  So I ask: can a dysfunctional system be fixed?  Can it fix itself?  Probably not.  So are there enough people in the US outside of the dysfunction who could fix it above the screams of the sick who do not want the shot?   Imagine a physician acquiescing to a kid’s demand that the shot not be given.  In a physcian’s office, the sick kid does not get to decide—or to put it another way, there are enough adults in the room that the shot is given over the kid’s objections.  So where are the adults?

Sources: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35628488/ns/politics-the_new_york_times/ ; http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/10/health/policy/10health.html?ref=us

President Obama's chief of staff, William Daley, was a top executive at JPMorgan Chase, where according to The New York Times,  he was paid as much as $5 million a year and supervised the Washington lobbying efforts of the nation’s second-largest bank. Daley also served on the board of directors at Boeing, the giant military contractor, and Abbott Laboratories, the global drug company, which "has billions of dollars at stake in the overhaul of the health care system." Although some argue that the White House needed someone on the inside who has the ear of business, the conflict of interest in having someone so tied to vested commercial interests decide who gets into the Oval Office and determine the President's agenda ought to be troubling. Just one year earlier, a Wall Street reform bill had been passed that sidestepped the question of whether banks too big to fail should be allowed to exist.  Also, the enacted health-care reform law both included a mandate and excluded a public option...as per the interests of the heath insurance lobby.  Rather than worry that well-financed private interests might already have too much clout in Washington, some people suggest the need for more corporate influence in the West Wing.

In terms of the Obama administration, the appointment of Mr. Daley represents "staying the course."  Larry Summers, for example, had been instrumental in the Clinton Administration in keeping derivative securities from being regulated. Like Clinton, Obama is a pro-business Democrat, at least in practice--the charges of socialism notwithstanding. I contend that the fear over socialism is overplayed, while the ease with which corporate executives (such as Hank Paulson--Bush's Treasury Secretary and former CEO of Goldman Sachs--and William Daley) encase themselves in the White House is cause for concern.  Yet there appears to be a societal blind spot with respect to some rather obvious ways in which corporations can capture our federal government. For instance, no one suspects a tie between Daley coming on board leading up to the re-election campaign and his corporate ties. It may be that Obama did not press "too big to fail" and the public option more because he knew he would draw on corporate campaign contributes. I suspect that we are blind to this possibility because our values are largely in line with corporate interests. 

Whether corporate capture is from design or not, our corporate-friendly societal-orientation provides a bedding of sorts for structural conflicts of interest that must seem strange elsewhere in the world. William Daley is a beneficiary of a friendly American culture that enables looking the other way, or even cheerleading on behalf of greater corporate influence in Washington.

Source:http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/07/us/politics/07daley.html?ref=politics

On January 18, 2011, Comcast received government approval to acquire NBC Universal. This followed a lengthy review, which mandated a list of conditions. The most important of them is aimed at preventing the new media conglomerate from thwarting competition in online video. However,even though regulators described their review as the most intense scrutiny ever for a planned media merger, Comcast managers said they believed their company faced few onerous restrictions from the review. “I don’t think any of the conditions are particularly restrictive,” said David L. Cohen, executive vice president of Comcast. This statement ought to give readers some pause.

According to The New York Times, "The combination of Comcast’s cable and Internet systems and NBC Universal’s channels will create a media powerhouse, and it will be the first time a cable company will control a major broadcast network." In abstract terms, process or transport will control content. It is perhaps as though the flying to grandma's for Thanksgiving were itself the point. Less abstractly, it is worth looking at how the privileging of throughput might have an impact on content. It seems at the very least like a case of mistaken priorities.  Even so, what sticks out to me is the conflict of interest that is inherent in the combination. I believe we put too much stock on the ability of regulations to mitigate such conflicts.
The concentration of market power in a combined media company that includes program content with a strong cable-system influence is inherently at odds financially with other routes being able to use the content. In other words, there is an inherent conflict of interest at the root of the combination. Interestingly, it could be argued that NBC content, being private property, could rightly be limited to one pipeline. For example, NBC could have purchased Comcast in order to have its own route. It would be understandable if NBC wanted to limit its content to its own pipeline. Our resistance to this idea is perhaps because we view the major networks as public goods because they are readily available over the airwaves. The latter give the content the veneer of being public goods. Similarly with the free content available on the internet, it is easy to view it as a public good because it is free and available, even though the content has ownership. This post, for example, is mine because I am writing it; it contains my ideas. So it could be argued that the "over the air" system of television broadcasting had led us to "forget" that the content is private property, which could rightly be limited as to throughput.  Yet it could also be argued that broadcasters must have broadcasting licenses because they are being allowed to use the public airwaves, which are a public good, and there can be obligations associated with this privilege that include open access and safeguarding competition. Essentially, there is is a public good vs. private property tradeoff that should be addressed in analyzing the merger.
The matter of who in the merger is in the driver's seat is also relevant, for it might be in NBC's interest to be broadcast beyond its own cable system, whereas Comcast would benefit most by restricting the availability. Part of the angst over the merger may be due to the restrictiveness inherent in Comcast being in the driver's seat. A policy implication might be that in such mergers the content could be mandated to be in charge. That the people at Comcast view the restrictions as far from onerous may suggest that the company will be able to do what is in its financial interest in spite of the conditions. One might recall the case of subprime mortgage derivatives, which had outstripped the ability of regulators to regulate, much less to understand. To rely on regulations to protect the public interest in the case of very complex securities minimizes the ability of traders to circumvent what must seem to them as quite superficial barriers. The conflict of interest in the present case, which involves throughput restricting access beyond what is in the interest of the public or even the content, can be expected to have a subtle and on-going force that would inevitably out-wiggle the ability of regulators to look out for the public interest. 

Lastly, the case of a media company that includes political and news content means that market concentration also has implications for free speech, and ultimately for the republic itself. Specifially, the views gaining access in the public air waves could narrow, and those that make it through migh be more likely to support the media company's general political interests. It is, for example, in the interest of corporations that we debate secondary issues, rather than the basics that enable large businesses to exist.  For example, it is notable that after the <i>Citizens United </i>case that allows for unlimited campaign donations, the question of whether a corporation should be considered a legal person was not salient in the media.  Also nearly missing was a discussion of whether wealth constitutes speech.  As another example, in the debate on financial reform in 2010, whether banks too big to fair should be allowed even to exist was not much debated. Consequently, the resulting law applies "too big to fail" only to firms that have already failed on their own (e.g., structuring their liquidation). According to Jesse Eisinger of Propublica, "Goldman, like all the other major investment and commercial banks, had become too big and intertwined, making the financial system too fragile. . . . Unfortunately, despite a hulking financial reform law, the American financial system still has largely the same structural issues that it had before the crisis." Eisinger laments that neither the U.S. Government nor Wall Street has been particularly interested in going after the underlying structural flaw: over-leveraged banks whose size alone renders them too big to fail. Coincidentally, discussion of this structural flaw and the related very existence of the big banks as big banks was kept largely off the public radar. I wonder if we realize how narrow our public political discourse really is,  why that is so, and what the impact has been on legislation.  In other words, what the public debates may not be an accident. The consolidation of the media sector could facilitate the subterranean influence of corporate America on the American polity and society.

 In short, conflicts of interest are of such force that they cannot be undone by regulators. Therefore, it is better that such conflicts not be permitted to exist in the first place. Pipeline should not be allowed to control content. It isn't even good business because it isn't in the interest of the content.  Hence even from the standpoint of private property, there is reason to be critical of the merger. Secondly, it ought to be recognized that the concentration of media power in a republic is dangerous to that form of government because a narrowing of public discourse does not serve the electorate in making informed decisions in voting.  Compounding the problem, both the conflict of interest and the negative effects on the republic itself are long-term, whereas the regulators and the public have their attention fixed primarily on the short term.

Sources: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/19/business/media/19comcast.html?_r=1&scp=3&sq=comcast&st=Search; Jesse Eisinger, "Goldman Sachs's Navel-Gazing Comes Up Short," The New York Times, January 19, 2011: http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/01/19/goldman-sachss-navel-gazing-comes-up-short/?ref=business