“There is a certain amount of irony in seeing Republicans come to the floor proposing mandates on business,” said Senator Rand Paul (R‑Ky.) in the U.S. Senate, yesterday. Kentucky’s junior senator objected “to Republicans picking winners and losers.”
At issue is a bill pushed by Senator Ted Cruz (R‑Tx.), the AM For Every Vehicle Act. Automobile manufacturers are phasing out amplitude modulation (AM) on radio receivers, and Cruz objects primarily on two rationales:
- emergency roadway communications rely upon AM frequencies, and
- since conservatives dominate AM talk radio, the move looks suspiciously like a sneaky way to decrease conservative and Republican political influence.
“AM radio is where a lot of talk radio is found,” argues Cruz, “and talk radio is overwhelmingly conservative. And let’s be clear: Big business doesn’t like things that are overwhelmingly conservative.”
Technology and media change all the time, and as ostensible advocates for free markets, it’s no business of Republicans so much as to nudge the market in one direction or the other. Perhaps AM’s days are numbered.
Shed a tear and move on.
Cruz characterizes the issue as one of free speech. Paul expresses incredulity: “The debate over free speech, as listed in the First Amendment, is that government shall pass no law. It has nothing to do with forcing your manufacturer to have AM radio.”
It gets messier: electric car manufacturers say that the AM band interferes with their batteries, and the technology to shield the batteries is expensive. So Cruz’s law would forbid companies from charging more for this tech.
If you ask me, the batteries being harmed by AM radio indicates a glaring defect not in a radio platform but in the platform of electric cars.
So it’s great that Rand Paul’s amendment to undermine Cruz’s mandate would also nix the electric car tax credit.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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3 replies on “The Great De-Platforming?”
Market manipulation is foolish whenever attempted. The problem is the government actually has the power (not necessarily Constitutionally) to do it which defines the real problem, the too powerful government.
It’s not at all a matter of AM radio harming batteries; it’s rather that the switched power that goes from the batteries to the motors adversely affects radio reception, making a noise accompany the audio signal. In order to reduce this radio-frequency interference, the noise sources, including particularly the battery and the switching power supplies, need to be shielded. FM radio is intrinsically immune to this sort of interference, hence the car makers making the less-expensive choice, omitting AM reception.
Take this from a former electronics engineer.
Unless supply of an EV is perfectly inelastic or demand perfectly inelastic, a requirement that vehicles contain an AM radio would involve an implicit transfer of wealth from those who don’t much want an AM radio to those who do.
The who want AM radios in their own electric cars should generally be expected to pay the full marginal cost of provision; those who want AM radios in the cars of other people should be expected to reach into their own pockets to subsidize such purchases. (A marginal cost of zero could in-theory arise from economies of scale, but that case does not obtain here.)
For me, an AM radio is generally a very minor burden. YMMV.