Policy Wonkery

With today’s decision by the Supreme Court overturning California legislation that banned the sale of violent video games to minors (Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association) it appears that government is losing its ability to regulate the morality of American entertainment.  Now case law will dictate that video games will roughly be treated equivalently to books, movies, and music.

While no legislation mandates that entertainment retailers check the age of their customers, many industries have standardized self-regulation. The MPAA-Motion Picture Association of America, the RIAA-Recording Industry Association of America, and now the ESRB-Entertainment Software Rating Board are the de-facto gatekeepers of American “morality.”  While these industry rating systems empower parents and businesses to make decisions on behalf of children, they can be more opaque and less democratic than federal agencies. The documentary “This Film is Not Yet Rated” explored how the MPAA is surprisingly secretive and demonstrates biased against both female sexuality and homosexuality in their ratings.

The real last frontier though is broadcast television.  Earlier this year, the FCC’s control on content (specifically profanity) was severely restricted by the Second Circuit.  However today the Supreme Court agreed to hear the Second Circuit case in a sign that the FCC’s authority may be upheld.  This contrasting push and pull of First Amendment freedoms reflects the technical distinctions of private purchases and public airwaves.  However, it’s unclear whether this distinction is either stable or relevant with the diminishing role of broadcast television in the American media landscape.

NIMBYism, “Not In My Back Yard”ism, is the local opposition to something perceived as undesirable in ones neighborhood.  Environmentalists are regularly confronted with two conflicting narratives about NIMBYism. In one, the fearless locals fight to save their homes from mountain top removal in West Virginia or factory farming in Pennsylvania. In another selfish locals on Cape Cod oppose the construction of wind turbines, or Marylanders oppose light rail.

Local control, is not necessarily good.  When local rule forces decision makers to confront the consequences of their actions, a respect for human rights can be enforced. However, local thinking can also inhibit the big solutions needed to address big problems.  It can also threaten the needy and instill local conceptions of morality, as half way houses and planned parenthood clinics are often the targets of NIMBYism.  A matrix of progressive “goodness” and public vs private ownership reveals the wide range of policies effected by NIMBYism both good and bad.

Organizations like the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) have sought to identify corporate personhood and federal control as the critical roadblocks in the path towards progressive change.  While this does appear to be a silver bullet against Factory Farms and Big Box Retail, its worth wondering what its consequences might be.

What happens to renewable energy projects, adult stores, halfway houses, and planned parenthood clinics in this future?  Certainly, for now, for profit factory farming and mining corporations have more legal resources to exert their corporate rights.  Progressive must understand that NIMBYism is by its nature is good, bad, and ugly. A progressive future must empower those with the least power, often times that’s local communities, but sometimes it is the individual.