The Sixth in an occasional series.
 
Ten: Predatory seating
Nine: Culinary relativism
Eight: Preëmptive planning
Seven: Premature mastication
Six: Irrational discalceationFive: Radiotjänst i Kiruna AB

So, Radiotjänst, let me get this straight: If I own, rent, borrow, find, inherit or assemble one or more televisions in my household, I must pay you $20 a month in protection money. If I do not pay you, you are authorised by the state to inspect my home to verify that it does not contain devices capable of receiving television signals. And you tell me all this with a severed horse’s head lovely postcard, inviting me to come clean before, any day now, you send in the goons. And you are doing this for my own (cultural) goodAs your FAQ helpfully points out, such devices include TVs, video players with tuning capabilities, computers with TV tuners built in, video cameras with tuners, and DVD recorders..

Are you mad?

Before your impending visit, let me enumerate some ethical and pragmatic difficulties I have with your existence.

First off, I don’t actually mind paying for a service that I did not ask for and rarely use. My taxes go towards such services all the time — for example, plowing Kiruna streets. By all means, then, use money from income tax I’ve paid to encourage television viewing among small children and to shield me from ads in movies I don’t watch. It’s a price I’m willing to pay for living in a modern society. However, stop pretending you are only asking for money from consumers of Swedish public radio and television, and that this makes your actions equitable. You are doing nothing of the sort. You are asking for money from possessors of television receivers, which is a stupid criteria for public television consumption, let alone public radio consumption.

Maybe it made sense once, in the 1950s, when only the richest Swedes had televisions, and there was nothing else they could do with them but watch what the airwaves providedWas there a radio license then as well?. These days, televisions are used to watch cable television, videos, DVDs, satellite broadcasts, to play video games and, in my case, to monitor video editing efforts on my Mac.

At this point, Radiotjänst, you might be tempted to retort that almost everybody who has a television uses it to watch Swedish public broadcasting at one point. If you make that point, however, you should also admit that almost every household has a television, in which case we should pay for the programming out of state coffers, much like how Swedish universities are fully subsidized by taxesIn fact, far fewer Swedes attend university than possess televisions. And opera, which is also subsidized by tax money, has a minuscule audience compared to public radio and television.. This, at least, is a sound policy, debatable on political grounds alone.

Unfortunately, such a setup would render your “services” superfluous and save us all a lot of money. I can therefore understand, Radiotjänst, why you insist on a user-pays policy. But let me at least suggest proper user-pays setups, in order of increasing fairness: Pay per television and radio (as a tax at time of purchase). Pay per man-hours spent using these devices. Pay per man-hours spent consuming public broadcasting on these devices. Pay per man-hours spent enjoying public broadcasting (with refunds for the Eurovision Song Contest). Now that would be fair, though unenforcable.

At least that’s better than unfair and unenforcable, which, it turns out, is the policy you have currently in place. I’ve actually checked up on your enforcement actions with friends — all those in attendance at a dinner party last night have at one time been paid a visit by your operatives, and you’ll be chagrined to hear that we shared successful tactics for evading your attempts at intrusion. It turns out that you do not in fact have the authority to enter our homes. (A pity, that. I was working up some real righteous indignation.) Instead, when you knock on our doors, you tend to crane your neck as you talk to us in search for that tell-tale television glow behind us. All I need to do, it turns out, is assure you, officer, that I do not have a television, and no, you may not come in. It will be my pleasure.

PS: How’s the job satisfaction? Kiruna getting you down?