[LowCountryJoe]

I read this piece just after it was posted on Cato's Daily Commentary a few weeks back. I noticed that it was being reintroduced (linked) because of an LA Times piece on how this new legislation is going to indirectly cause the increase of unemployed. I see now, with hindsight, where you Mr. Levy could have made three more points with his piece if he wanted to. Allow me to point them out as I see it:

1) Unemployment arising from those who will be displaced due to the decrease of economic activity. This not only includes traditional telemarketers but other sales persons who rely on phone contacts to make a living. Like Realtors, Insurance & Financial salesmen; and may include other educated professionals such as attorneys, physicians, and therapists that are trying to break out on their own.

2) That politician's shortsighted behavior could lead to further legislation protecting us 'dependent' citizens from the e-mail, snail mail, and billboard advertising that we somehow, by ourselves, can not suppress the influence of. Once this happens, I wonder what will happen with regard to the economic activity in those industries included in my first point.

3) Can you imagine being a telemarketer or anyone of those professionals that might use a phone to solicit business in order to earn a living? Now imagine having a small portion of YOUR income taxed in order to fund the administrative and enforcement costs of the very 'Registry' that hampers your ability to make a living the way you have chosen to do so.

it's unbelievable that this has happened. I think someone with some courage should deliberately violate the law in order to eventually make these arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court. I think these are valid arguments, don't you? I would just enjoy watch our elected officials having to choose between acknowledging their stupidity or actually pushing for a constitutional amendment to reinforce their non-belief in freemarket solutions.

[ironman]

There are still 115 million numbers they can call all they want. Seems like plenty to keep the dialers busy.

[Jack of all Trades]

Suppose for a moment that I have your home telephone number. Would I be exercising my first amendment rights by setting up an automatic dialer to continually ring your phone so that I could express my opinion to you? Oh I won't actually be on the phone though, I'll just record a few random thoughts for your enjoyment. Not good? Well how about every five minutes, or only once an hour then? Hey, you drive a hard bargain! Once a day it is then! How about 6:30p.m.? What? You don't want me to do this? Well I'll just give the number to ten of my neighbors who'll start with the continual ringing again.

That would be harassment wouldn't it? Where between continual and once a day or once a month does it change from harassment to OK? How many times can I forward your number to new callers? What efforts to conceal my identity as a caller are OK?

Telemarketing, the way that it has been done in the past ten years or so, IS HARASSMENT.

[af_vet_rr]

I pay for my phonelines, I value my time at home. If telemarketers want to pay me for my phone and my time (and it would cost a lost, let me tell you) then they are free to call and chat.

[Moonman62]

In "Like It Or Not, Free Speech Protects Telemarketers, Too", Cato's Robert Levy, senior fellow in constitutional studies, argues that "when government sets the rules, it must not discriminate based on the content of the calls.

But the government isn't making the rules, it's the owners of the phone lines who sign up to be on the list. Telemarketers are a national menace.

[CMAC51]

>> "Of the nation's 166 million residential numbers, 51 million are now off-limits to telemarketers." <<

The proposition that the no call list hurts the telemarketing industry is as full of holes as the "tax cuts only for the rich" mantra. Of the 166 million residential numbers, the telemarketers have been told which 51 million they are wasting their time on. Why bother calling someone who isn't going to buy anything from you anyway because they are ticked off that you called them in the first place?

Golf on TV draws one of the smaller viewerships for major televised sports. It continues to get some of the highest dollar per minute advertising rates. Why? Because golfers watch golf. The advertisers know they have a totally targeted audience. You are selling to the people who are most likely to buy. They get maximum bang for their buck.

Telemarketing should become much more efficient since they don't have to waste time on people who aren't going to buy anyway. They are being handed a perfect "don't bother calling" list and are crying about it. Some people don't know when they have it good.

[BJungNan]

"Like It Or Not, Free Speech Protects Telemarketers, Too",

It protects them only in a twisted, contorted view of free speech rights. The constitutional protection is about speech critical of the governemnt and or its policies, not the right to ring my phone with a commercial message.

The telemarketers are free to voice their opposition to the law but not to continue to disobey it by ringing my phone.

Finally, a tactic that works good if you want to get even when they call.

1). Listen, then reply in very soft quiet tone, say you can not hear them. Can they please speak up. Important to say it very quietly.
2). Listen a bit more, then in very low voice, say, I'm interested but I'm still having trouble hearing you. By now they will have turned up the volume on their headset.
3). Get the airhorn out and blast it into the mouthpiece of your phone.

[TexasCajun]

I have more respect for prostitutes than I do for tele-intruders!

Get over it and get a real job! I don't believe telemarketing is the only job these 'poor' people can find. There are any number of telephone customer service jobs to be had.

...a responsible person moves to where the jobs are, they don't wait for jobs to come to them!

[Publius6961]

We don't have enough different forms of welfare that we must institutionalize a new one?

Give me a break!

[Chancellor Palpatine]

So?

[tomakaze]

re:"Do Not Call" Means Poorest May Lose Jobs
 
People are supposed ot cry for htses schmucks? How asinine.
Professional Irritants who can't work as Irritants anymore. boo. hoo. hoo.
 
Let's go after the damned spammers next. Legislation's useless - a $15 per ear bounty should tidy things up.

[VadeRetro]

We're talking about junk calls and junk callers here. If they die, they die.

[Oberon]

If the "poorest" people lose the jobs in which they are paid to endlessly harass me at my home, then screw 'em.

Let them find honest work.

[69ConvertibleFirebird]

Isn't sad that N.Y. City "took away" the **jobs** of the people who would spit on the windshields of cars then ask the driver for money to clean it off? Yes, such sad, sad, Tommy Dachle sad, situations...

Not!!!

Harassment is not a right. I pay a monthly bill for my phone service telemarkerters don't. They have no "right" to use my phone if I don't want them to. Just as they have no right to trespass on my property to harass me about buying something.

[xm177e2]

This report assumes that telemarketing must be good for our economy merely because there are jobs in it. But how are those jobs supported? Where does the telemarketers' money come from? The ones who aren't actually cheating customers outright generally prey on old and gullible people (telemarketers are an awful lot like televangelists). I don't think that's a healthy part of our economy. It's dead weight.

I don't think the gov't should be shutting down industries just because they are bad for our nation as a whole (that would be fascism), but I don't think you can make a real defense of telemarketing on the grounds that it is beneficial to our economy.

[Hemingway's Ghost]

'If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.'"

The First Amendment doesn't give you the right to demand that someone pay attention to you no matter what you say. CATO's all wet on this one.

[blackie]

*Pity.*

[aculeus]

Boo hoo!

[Oztrich Boy]

3) Can you imagine being a telemarketer

NO they're scum

2) That politician's shortsighted behavior could lead to further legislation protecting us 'dependent' citizens from the e-mail, snail mail, and billboard advertising that we somehow, by ourselves, can not suppress the influence of.

Nothing to do with not being able to supress the influence of.

e-mail: I chose when to log on and delete unread any spam that sneaks past the filters: minor inconvenience

snail mail: I choose when to go to my post box. The trash bin is between the box and the house: Minor inconvenience to dump unread.

Billboard: don't read.

Telemarketers: They insist I answer the phone when they ring, whatever I was doing at the time. This is a major inconvenience as it is *never* at a time convenient to me. For telemarketer calls there is *no* convenient time.

And did I mention that telemarketers were scum.

[Gargantua]

Then factor in all the people employed making products or providing services sold by those telemarketers.

Add in the truckers who once delivered those products, the stockroom boys who loaded those trucks and filled those shelves with products now not being sold by those telemarketers.

Take away from the economy the sale all those millions of taxable gallons of truck fuel, all those millions of taxable hours of phone calls, and the economic ripple effect thoughout our market economy might well exceeed the "value" realized by a few people too lazy to get off their fat asses and answer their telephone.

[TC Rider]

yawn.

If so many of these pitiful souls hadn't preyed on the old, sick and poor, I might feel sorry for them.

As it is, somewhere a burger needs flippin'