5 ms·

I wonder if we would be having the same conversation if google had charged publishers to add them to the google news product. Even charging $5 a year seems like

I wonder if we would be having the same conversation if google had charged publishers to add them to the google news product. Even charging $5 a year seems like it could have completely turned this whole situation on its head. For one it would have offered publishers some contractual protections, but mainly it would have changed the publisher's mindset towards google. Now it's a provider of a service they need, and they do need it. The problem is that the internet made the "news" market way to efficient. Competition is incredibly fierce because the cost of distribution has plummeted, and because it turns out that most people don't read news for news, they read it for entertainment. If Google were to go away tomorrow, the publishers would be in the exact same position with Bing, DDG, Baidu, or whoever picks up the pieces. The economics have shifted, 90% of publishers are now offering a very low value product. If governments go out and create this artificial market to prop up the "news" they like, not only will it be prone to corruption (What counts as an eligible publisher? Does Google owe the Daily Sun and the BBC the same amount of money? If it's different, who decides by how much?), but in 30-50 years, we'll be talking about the news subsidies the same way we talk about farm subsidies today; a corrupt and wasteful relic from an era that refused to acknowledge things have changed. All that being said, the sales tax on digital adds is probably the best idea so far, but enforcement is going to be tricky.

triceratops 6y ago
Note: farm subsidies may well be corrupt and wasteful but they exist for national security reasons. A country that can't feed itself is completely vulnerable in times of conflict.
- scarmig 6y ago
  It's implausible that we'd ever not be able to feed ourselves without farm subsidies. About half of our wheat is exported. Even if somehow we dropped more than 50% without farm subsidies, we have enough money that we could import from other countries; even if we faced a global ban on exporting food to the United States, it would not be difficult to begin using more land and labor to grow crops within the span of two years.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - davidgay 6y ago
    The US is far from the only country with farm subsidies. Some of those countries (e.g., Switzerland) are in fact not self-sufficient.
    - JumpCrisscross 6y ago
      > US is far from the only country with farm subsidies Democracies with lots of farmland, i.e. ones with reduced food security risk, have farm subsidies because they have lots of voting farmers.
      - Natsu 6y ago
        It's sort of like how you shouldn't let the national reserve of masks go empty, even if they had not been needed for about 100 years. The thing about farms is that you can't just start producing stuff right away. It takes months to actually grow out a crop, you need a seed stock ready, and you just can't deal with sudden shocks. So you have to be always prepared because if you're not, even just for a few years, it can bite you in the ass.
        JumpCrisscross 6y ago
        There is no evidence that continuous farm subsidies maintain agricultural output. (That’s mostly correlated to political stability and trade policy.) Periodic stability mechanisms, yes. But that is the vast minority of farm subsidies. And the whole amount of farm subsidies that go to alfalfa and cotton and tobacco fail to rise to this argument. Farm subsidies are about buying off a voting bloc. (Disclaimer: I own farmland as an investment.)
        Natsu 6y ago
        I don't think anyone is arguing that there are some subsidies like that or that some are wasteful--you can see as much in the first few posts. They're arguing that the idea isn't categorically absurd.
- naringas 6y ago
  > Note: farm subsidies may well be corrupt and wasteful but they exist for national security reasons. A country that can't feed itself is completely vulnerable in times of conflict. It's not that different: "news subsidies may well be corrupt and wasteful but they exist for national security reasons. A country that can't agree on what's happening cannot agree on what to do, therefore it's completely vulnerable..."
  - triceratops 6y ago
    That may be true.
  - a1369209993 6y ago
    Except that it's difficult for a farm to actively reduce a country's ability to feed itself, since everyone mostly agrees on what constitutes diseased or poisoned food, and can recognize such, by people getting sick if nothing else.
- wnevets 6y ago
  Can't you apply that logic to most industries?
  - triceratops 6y ago
    Depends on the industry. Could a country make do without textiles imports for a couple of years during a conflict? Probably. Could it do without food? Probably not.
hobby-coder-guy 6y ago
*too

triceratops 6y ago

Note: farm subsidies may well be corrupt and wasteful but they exist for national security reasons. A country that can't feed itself is completely vulnerable in times of conflict.

scarmig 6y ago
It's implausible that we'd ever not be able to feed ourselves without farm subsidies. About half of our wheat is exported. Even if somehow we dropped more than 50% without farm subsidies, we have enough money that we could import from other countries; even if we faced a global ban on exporting food to the United States, it would not be difficult to begin using more land and labor to grow crops within the span of two years.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- davidgay 6y ago
  The US is far from the only country with farm subsidies. Some of those countries (e.g., Switzerland) are in fact not self-sufficient.
  - JumpCrisscross 6y ago
    > US is far from the only country with farm subsidies Democracies with lots of farmland, i.e. ones with reduced food security risk, have farm subsidies because they have lots of voting farmers.
    - Natsu 6y ago
      It's sort of like how you shouldn't let the national reserve of masks go empty, even if they had not been needed for about 100 years. The thing about farms is that you can't just start producing stuff right away. It takes months to actually grow out a crop, you need a seed stock ready, and you just can't deal with sudden shocks. So you have to be always prepared because if you're not, even just for a few years, it can bite you in the ass.
      - JumpCrisscross 6y ago
        There is no evidence that continuous farm subsidies maintain agricultural output. (That’s mostly correlated to political stability and trade policy.) Periodic stability mechanisms, yes. But that is the vast minority of farm subsidies. And the whole amount of farm subsidies that go to alfalfa and cotton and tobacco fail to rise to this argument. Farm subsidies are about buying off a voting bloc. (Disclaimer: I own farmland as an investment.)
        Natsu 6y ago
        I don't think anyone is arguing that there are some subsidies like that or that some are wasteful--you can see as much in the first few posts. They're arguing that the idea isn't categorically absurd.
naringas 6y ago
> Note: farm subsidies may well be corrupt and wasteful but they exist for national security reasons. A country that can't feed itself is completely vulnerable in times of conflict. It's not that different: "news subsidies may well be corrupt and wasteful but they exist for national security reasons. A country that can't agree on what's happening cannot agree on what to do, therefore it's completely vulnerable..."
- triceratops 6y ago
  That may be true.
- a1369209993 6y ago
  Except that it's difficult for a farm to actively reduce a country's ability to feed itself, since everyone mostly agrees on what constitutes diseased or poisoned food, and can recognize such, by people getting sick if nothing else.
wnevets 6y ago
Can't you apply that logic to most industries?
- triceratops 6y ago
  Depends on the industry. Could a country make do without textiles imports for a couple of years during a conflict? Probably. Could it do without food? Probably not.

hobby-coder-guy 6y ago

*too