Kevin Spacey Sees the Light About Free Markets – At Least for TV Audiences

Actor Kevin Spacey had some inspiring words for his audience at the Edinburgh Television Festival.

Fresh off of watching the TV series he produces & stars in, House of Cards, become a hit sensation on the Netflix streaming service, Spacey was forthright in calling for giving television viewers more choices in accessing programs rather than less: 

Clearly the success of the Netflix model – releasing the entire season of House Of Cards at once – has proved one thing: the audience wants control. They want freedom. If they want to binge – as they’ve been doing on House Of Cards – then we should let them binge.”

“And through this new form of distribution, we have demonstrated that we have learned the lesson that the music industry didn’t learn. Give people what they want, when they want it, in the form they want it in, at a reasonable price and they’ll more likely pay for it rather than steal it. Well, some will still steal it but I think we can take a bite out of piracy.

So when it comes to his own work, Spacey is all for a free market where people are allowed to make their own choices. Yet he’s a Hollywood liberal who on political subjects thinks the unwashed masses out there need an elite class guiding and coercing their choices through legislation towards the “right” way to live.  

I’d ask Spacey and other Hollywood liberals why they favor placing such immense freedom into the hands of TV viewers of their own product when they think people exercising that kind of freedom of choice on things like their health care and public education is a bad thing, and so Americans need elites controlling and limiting their choices “for their own good.”

Who’s to say people would be able to responsibly handle the kind of freedom Spacey is advocating here? Maybe they need those elites coercing them towards the “right” times and mediums to be watching their TV programs. Hollywood liberals sure seem to have no problem pontificating that Americans need such controls placed over them when it comes to so many other things. 

I commend Spacey for understanding the concept of freedom when it comes to television, and then ask him and others in the industry to examine themselves as to why they often oppose allowing their fellow citizens such freedom in other areas of their lives.