Often a user will ask for a feature that is not implemented. Sometimes I like the feature and it’s something I’ll use myself so I implement it immediately, sometimes it’s one I’ll work on if I have time, and other times I don’t care for it at all so I suggest that others work on it. I take a similar response to bugs, but with respect to whether I can reproduce it. Bugs I cannot reproduce nor fix tend to go unchanged. Most take these responses in stride, but there are some who do not, in particular, those reporting an issue that I cannot reproduce, and fail to give me the required information. A few of these, whom I will call the demanding consumer, demand their wishes to be met entirely at my cost in terms of time and effort. In the past few years, I’ve noticed this group grow in size.

Why are some people so demanding? In the case of an demanding OSS user, they take a free product, make their suggestion, it’s shot down, they become more irate and demanding, and often get to the point of insulting the producer. This is akin to someone receiving a gift from a complete stranger, declaring that it wasn’t good enough, and demand more. I, being the complete stranger, am now less inclined to give out gifts as a result out of fear that some demanding person will require more of me than I’m willing to give. How is it that people have become so greedy that they cannot be appreciative of something that was given to them for free?

What’s worse is these attitudes are not limited to Open Source Software. At least with OSS, the number of consumers of a product does not affect the producer’s costs (for the most part). If an OSS producer has 5 consumers or 5 million, his costs are largely unchanged, since software is easily and cheaply replicated. This has help build an OSS market with a small set of producers and a large set of consumers, and one that can survive a set of demanding consumers whose cardinality meets or exceeds that of the producers.

What happens if the market isn’t OSS, but instead involving physical goods and capital. What if the market is not a free market economy, but instead is inhabited by a single producer who charges different consumers different amounts and provides different services and products? What if the consumer has no choice but to purchase the producer’s product? What if a majority of the consumers can change the products and services as well as the prices? I’m speaking of a government here, where the consumers are the people, and the payments made by consumers are taxes. Here, a demanding consumer can thrive, especially if his views are shared by a majority of the consumers. Furthermore, unlike the OSS market where a producer can ignore and deny services to demanding consumers, one cannot choose whether they wish to fund government programs.

Currently, only 59% of the US population pays federal income taxes. This is dangerously close to the 50% threshold. One can argue that once this threshold is crossed, it can never go back, the rational being that a representative is unlikely to raise taxes on the majority of his constituents. In addition, consider the social programs the government provides. Most of them are not targeted towards those who pay taxes, but rather towards those who do not, and the current administration seeks to increase these programs. Combine this with the ever present envy of the rich by those who are not, and the country is filled with demanding consumers. Their demands consist of: “give us more free stuff,” and “tax others to pay for it, not me.” The acquiescence to these demands yields a system where the minority is taxed heavily to pay for services given to the majority. Today, only 1% pays over 38% of the taxes. Tip the scales much more, and the paying minority, consisting of people who work hard and and good at their jobs, will see futility in their efforts to make a good living, and decided they will be much happier if they stop excelling or leave the country altogether. To compensate for this loss of revenue, the remaining minority will be taxed even further, and like a string of dominos, the best of a nation stop their hard work or leave. Everyone in the country is reduced to the lowest common denominator, and no nation can compete in the global market after losing its best.

While this is not wholly descriptive of our current situation, it could quickly become so. Getting our economy “back on track” is only solving the symptom, because true problem lies in the attitudes and expectations of the people. The perception of the American Dream has been corrupted over the years. Instead of the hope that through sacrifice, blood, sweat, and tears, you can have a better life for you and your children, we have those who cry out for their share while contributing little to nothing in return. Some say that everyone is entitled to a house (an attitude which got us in this whole mess to begin with), but what authority has granted them such a right? We are granted the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is the ability to pursue happiness that drove so many to this country, and that’s the dream which built this nation to superpower status. Without that hope, and the work done by so many to achieve it, the dream fades to the harsh sea of mediocrity.

While I was at my parents’ in the country, I did a quick scan of the analog and digital transmissions. My parents are about an hour or hour and a half drive away from two large cities, and before Feb 17th, they could only receive one station in digital (because it was more local). I discovered that the remaining stations fell into one of three categories:

• Transmitting their content only in digital, but their analog transmitter was busy transmitting instructions for installing a converter box. Several were doing this. Their digital transmission did not come in.
• Continuing their concurrent digital and analog transmissions as they did before Feb 17th. Their digital content did not come in.
• Eliminated their analog transmission altogether, and transmitted only in digital. Some of these did come in.

What did this delay of the digital TV transition accomplish? Most of the stations are no longer transmitting their content in analog anymore. So if someone did not have the ability to watch digital TV, this delay saved them very few stations. Chances are, the content they wished to watch is no longer available to them. The end result is this delay accomplished very little for the consumer.

What did this delay hurt? Any station that is transmitting in both digital and analog has to operate two transmitters. Often, in this case, the digital transmission is lower power. If a station transmits only in digital, they can save transmission costs by only running a single transmitter as well as the ability to run their digital transmission at higher power. I’ve already seen a few stations whose digital transmission was not even detected by a tunner that now comes in nearly perfectly after the station shut off their analog transmission.

Thanks Obama, for taking a slightly problematic situation, and making it worse. Now several stations which could be accessible via digital transmissions outside of the city are now completely inaccessible due to the fact that they’ve elected to keep their analog transmission active running useless instructions. You’ve effectively removed stations from the list that consumers could watch as a result of this delay. Furthermore, consumers must now continually have their tunners rescan the airwaves for digital signals since a station may do it’s changeover at any time. This, combined with the fact that several tunners “forget” digital signals they did not detect in the previous scan, makes the situation even more painful and confusing for the consumer. Lastly, now we have to endure more annoying ads concerning the digital tv changeover.

This is just one example of the things this new administration has done to completely tick me off. Many others have angered me to the point where I’ve seriously considered leaving the country. It’s only been one month. How much more will the people endure?