Free Riding with satellite
This article talks about a man sentanced to jail for three months for stealing satelite t.v., as well as helping others do the same. I thought this was a good article to show and example of free-riding. There are honest people out there paying for their satellite t.v. and channels, however there is a way around that. To my understanding, you have to have somebody come out, to make sure everything is hooked up and check every few months to make sure everything is ok. If you do not have them come out, that is considering stealing their satellite t.v. because you are free-riding on other people paying for it. This has been an issue in the past years with stealing cable t.v. as well and an issue that I think will never stop.
5 comments:
This is the first time that I have ever heard of people stealing satellite before, but it seems to be common place with cable. I suppose that people feel, once they have the equipment that they've already paid everything that they need to, and have the right to tap into the feeds. It's kind of like wireless internet, I suppose. Unless you protect that signal, anyone with the proper equipment can pick it up--and that takes away the benefits for the people who are paying for it, slowing down connections, splitting signals, etc.
If they haven't already thought to do so, these satellite companies might want to look into protecting their signals with passwords that are issued every so many months. It might seem like a hassle and not worth the effort, but if it keeps people from stealing their services, maybe they're better off in the end?
Satellite T.V. is so hard to police or make excludable. This probably explains why Sattellite T.V. is stolen so commonly. I think the solution for the Satellite T.V. market is for them to find better ways of making the product excludable. They also could try to buy out the local cable company and offer their services to everyone but put in a large tax for all citizens.
The only way to reduce the number of people stealing satellite tv is for companies to lower their rates. It is crazy for people to pay over $300 just for t.v. I also believe the the companies would decrease the number of stolen signals if they would stress the idea of stricter penalties.
These are all intersting ideas to stop satellite-thieving, but I really don't think it will stop. Lowering the prices might encourage a few more people to pay for it, but there will still be people who want it and can't afford it or who just don't want to pay for it. I don't think that you can think of free-riders just being those people below the price on a demand curve; they're more like anomalies found all along the demand curve.
There will forever be those people who want to get things for free whether it be cable or wireless internet connection because people do not want to have to pay for these extras. They also seem to think their hard earned cash is more valuable than others for whatever reason they may have. Free riders are not worried about anyone other than themselves and they are everywhere as we saw in our class experiment. They are only looking out for number one, themselves.
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