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This line of thought really encapsulates the problems with purist free markets. What happens if someone who doesn't believe in those ideals uses the free market

This line of thought really encapsulates the problems with purist free markets. What happens if someone who doesn't believe in those ideals uses the free market to simply buy up news media and push the opposite narrative? Regulated media doesn't produce perfect outcomes, but it does produce better ones.

lolinder 2y ago
> Regulated media doesn't produce perfect outcomes, but it does produce better ones. You just throw this out there as a statement of fact without backing it up beyond citing one hypothetical failure mode of a free market for media. Here's a dueling hypothetical: what happens if the state that is in charge of regulating the media gets taken over by someone who doesn't believe that media should hold elected officials accountable and they prevent the media from covering their actions negatively? Now that we've evened out the "what happens if"s: On what basis do you say that regulated media produces better outcomes? Because you say so? Is there evidence in favor that you can cite?
- freejazz 2y ago
  All the other circumstances. Your hypothetical is the exception proving the rule.
  - lolinder 2y ago
    And again I ask: why is my hypothetical the exception proving the rule while their hypothetical is sufficient to prove that they're right? Make an argument in favor of regulated media producing better outcomes or don't, but all I've seen here so far is you and OP asserting a dogma.
    - freejazz 2y ago
      You haven't argued anything more substantive the other way. I'm speaking colloquially here, if you want a robust argument, you're not going to find it from me right now. This is just a conversation, not a dissertation. If you don't want to engage in it, that's fine. But let's not overdramatize what is happening here right now, which is a basic conversation about intuitions and principles. You attacked the other poster's claim with a hypothetical. I rebutted yours the same way. Begging for "proof" is beyond the scope of this conversation.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - lolinder 2y ago
        > You haven't argued anything more substantive the other way. Correct. I provided a dueling hypothetical precisely to illustrate that they had not provided an actual argument. I didn't intend to argue the other way—I honestly haven't formed an opinion on the topic—I just intended to point out that confidently asserting dogma isn't useful or meaningful. What you call intuitions and principles I call dogmatic beliefs, and dogma is uninteresting to discuss in a mixed-dogma forum like this: it just devolves into a shouting match.
        freejazz 2y ago
        >What you call intuitions and principles I call dogmatic beliefs, and dogma is uninteresting to discuss in a mixed-dogma forum like this: it just devolves into a shouting match. Well, you were the one who came to the conversation and basically did the 'shouting down' thing rather than substantively engage in anything. All you did was express your disbelief in the lowest form possible, so I'm not sure what you're really complaining about besides your own contributions here. Be the change you want to see!
- redeux 2y ago
  Not OP but, the political polarization, governmental dysfunction, and eventually the rise of an extremist right wing government can be at least partially attributed to the deregulation of media - specifically the repeal of the fairness doctrine which requires that public broadcasters air both sides on controversial topics of public importance. This was done in the vain of deregulation, but if we want a “free market” for media, why not deregulate the air waves? May the most powerful transmitter win … https://fair.org/extra/the-fairness-doctrine/ https://fair.org/extra/the-fairness-doctrine/
  - lolinder 2y ago
    Thanks for providing an actual argument! That said, correlation does not imply causation, and I'm unconvinced that the polarization we're seeing now traces back that far. Pew's research [0] shows that in '94 only 21% (Rep) and 17% (Dem) of each party held a "very unfavorable" opinion of the other party. That number had barely shifted by '02, with both parties still well under 25%, but then steadily started growing from '02 on. The timing of that is more suggestive of the internet being a cause (if we're going to try to pin it down to one media-oriented cause, which is probably a bad exercise to begin with) than it does of the fairness doctrine, which was repealed back in '87. [0] https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2022/08/09/as-partisan-hostility-grows-signs-of-frustration-with-the-two-party-system/ https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2022/08/09/as-partisan-...
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - femiagbabiaka 2y ago
      Yeah, it's clearly the formation of the Tea Party that was the trigger for severe change. But the mechanism through which the Tea Party ideology was disseminated was.. Fox News and conservative radio, which could not have existed in the same state before the Reagan era.
- femiagbabiaka 2y ago
  Pretty simple: the quality of news media in the U.S. was better prior to the Reagan admin which deregulated it. https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/archives/topic-guide/fairness-doctrine https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/archives/topic-guide/fairness-... Since the Fairness Doctrine was struck down, we've had nothing but bad media outcomes. If you want to know more, Noam Chomsky wrote the book on this, called Manufacturing Consent.
  - fallingknife 2y ago
    I disagree. The quality of news media is massively better today. I have access to much more and higher quality information than I would have in the 80s. E.g. I was able to watch live combat footage of the war in Ukraine right as it happened. I have access to peer reviewed research just with the click of a button. I can discuss the news with other people right here on HN. A highly regulated media oligopoly with massive barriers to entry is a terrible system compared to what we have today.
    - femiagbabiaka 2y ago
      > E.g. I was able to watch live combat footage of the war in Ukraine right as it happened. I agree that this was interesting to do, but Telegram and Reddit are not high quality media. Some people with high levels of media literacy can distill the information gained through such channels to understand the world, but a lot of people cannot. Most people still use legacy media (even if it is through digital channels) as primary sources. And those legacy media sources are worse than ever. On top of that the digital channels are massively astroturfed, especially those whose consumer base are in the west. For example, the state of the war as described by Western-targetted media vs. Ukrainian-targetted sources differs greatly. Same applies for the Hamas-Israel conflict. We need high quality and impartial (for some definition of impartial) sources to complement the raw feed for people with lower media literacy. Substack is great but not enough when Fox News and MSNBC exist.
      - roenxi 2y ago
        > Telegram and Reddit are not high quality media... Says who? Back in the day people made a big deal about how Wikipedia was a low quality source of information until it turned out to be by far the best public repository of information humanity has ever seen and one of the best institutions ever built for neutral and informative coverage of various issues. Reddit is a fantastic resource too. It sometimes gets long-form discussion involving domain experts and is much better at representing multiple viewpoints than any pre-internet media channel (which, given the bias of the major subreddits, is pretty amazing).
roenxi 2y ago
When has that ever happened? The only time someone can control all the media is if the market is highly regulated. Otherwise I can literally go and start up a newsletter pushing free market views and it'll eventually overtake the competition if they persist in being stupid and advancing stupid views. Free market views aren't better because they have some theoretical purity; they work much better than all the other options. Anyone who approaches the world trying to get the best results will end up with strong free market views. The free market is almost a magic fountain of wealth and prosperity. The people who want to improve the world are hard ones to shut up; they keep talking. And they don't even need to be in contact with each other to figure out market principles - they're matters of observing human behaviour, not learned ideologies.
- gwd 2y ago
  > Otherwise I can literally go and start up a newsletter pushing free market views and it'll eventually overtake the competition if they persist in being stupid and advancing stupid views. ...or so one would hope. The fact that Fox News had to go back to supporting Trump because they were losing people to Newsmax unfortunately seems to be a counterexample.
  - fallingknife 2y ago
    So the Fox was forced to respond to competitive pressure from a new entrant. Companies are fighting over customers. Sounds like exactly how a competitive free market is supposed to function.
    - femiagbabiaka 2y ago
      That competition resulted in a shift in ideology -- not based on principles but on $$$. That's not good.
    - gwd 2y ago
      The person I was replying to seemed to think that the competitive free market would push news organizations away from "being stupid and advancing stupid news". That would be an example of the market pushing towards "being stupid and advancing stupid news". This is exactly what is called a "market failure": Where the natural market forces push companies into making decisions which are bad for everyone -- bad for themselves, bad for their customers, bad for society as a whole. That's exactly what regulation is meant to address. After WW2, no doubt in part after seeing how the Nazi party used broadcast medium to subvert discussion, the FCC instituted what they called the "Fairness Doctrine", which "required holders of broadcast licenses both to present controversial issues of public importance and to do so in a manner that fairly reflected differing viewpoints." [1] This was eliminated in 1987. Imagine how different the world would be if both Fox News and MSNBC were required to have people on both sides of the aisle have their say about all the political hot topics; and if Fox News didn't have to worry that doing so would cause an exodus to Newsmax, because Newsmax (perhaps once they reached a certain size) would be required to do the same thing. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairness_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairness_doctrine
kjrfghslkdjfl 2y ago
[dead]
jarvuschris 2y ago
The thing is, there really is no such thing as a "free market" as most who are in love with the term envision ALL markets are BORN of regulations. A market is what emerges when you lay some shared ground rules: here's what a pound is, here's a standard currency, here's some laws about commerce, here's a court system for mediating disputes. So the question isn't ever really about free or not free—it's what are the rules and who sets them 99 out of 100 times the people spending money pushing the virtue of a "free market" really just want to be the ones setting the rules and steering them in their favor Replace "free market" with "competitive market"—what most people actually want when they talk about free markets—and suddenly a lot of what Bezos is going to argue for stops making sense
- Panzer04 2y ago
  Yes, everyone has their own agenda. The idea of the thing is pretty straightforward though; Companies succeed or fail on the merits of their product. The government shouldn't seek to give undue advantage except insofar as to incentivize things we as a society care about (eg. carbon taxes). Prices are the arbiter of resource allocation, and should almost never be controlled or subsidised. That people seek to use an idea to garner support for their agenda without embodying that idea is nothing new. Just see current American politics.
- derbOac 2y ago
  > Replace "free market" with "competitive market"—what most people actually want when they talk about free markets I wish this was recognized more widely. I feel like the public versus private thing is kind of a red herring; the real issue is competition and cultivating it. Sometimes this means the public intervening in various ways (to support individuals in their skill development and ability to take risks, or break up monopolies, offer a competitive alternative in a public service, etc.) and sometimes it means the public stepping out (as when public regulations stifle true competition or a public service exerts too much control over pricing and services).
  - idiotsecant 2y ago
    The problem with competitive market ideals is that money is a positive feedback loop. The more money you have, the more you set the rules, the more money you get, ad finitum until eventual money singularity. Capitalism is useful, like fire is useful. You just need to be careful to keep your fire under control and doing useful things.
Ray20 2y ago
>What happens if someone who doesn't believe in those ideals uses the free market to simply buy up news media and push the opposite narrative? Haven't we seen for the last 10 years exactly what will happen in this situation? I mean, not through the free market, but the deep state pretty much had complete control over the narrative of 90% of the media, from Covid to border policy. And the stronger the control, the less trust people have in these media, and at the end of the day the election results are no longer decided by who is clearly supported by 90% of the news media, but by who came to Joe Rogan's podcast.

lolinder 2y ago

> Regulated media doesn't produce perfect outcomes, but it does produce better ones. You just throw this out there as a statement of fact without backing it up beyond citing one hypothetical failure mode of a free market for media. Here's a dueling hypothetical: what happens if the state that is in charge of regulating the media gets taken over by someone who doesn't believe that media should hold elected officials accountable and they prevent the media from covering their actions negatively? Now that we've evened out the "what happens if"s: On what basis do you say that regulated media produces better outcomes? Because you say so? Is there evidence in favor that you can cite?

freejazz 2y ago
All the other circumstances. Your hypothetical is the exception proving the rule.
- lolinder 2y ago
  And again I ask: why is my hypothetical the exception proving the rule while their hypothetical is sufficient to prove that they're right? Make an argument in favor of regulated media producing better outcomes or don't, but all I've seen here so far is you and OP asserting a dogma.
  - freejazz 2y ago
    You haven't argued anything more substantive the other way. I'm speaking colloquially here, if you want a robust argument, you're not going to find it from me right now. This is just a conversation, not a dissertation. If you don't want to engage in it, that's fine. But let's not overdramatize what is happening here right now, which is a basic conversation about intuitions and principles. You attacked the other poster's claim with a hypothetical. I rebutted yours the same way. Begging for "proof" is beyond the scope of this conversation.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - lolinder 2y ago
      > You haven't argued anything more substantive the other way. Correct. I provided a dueling hypothetical precisely to illustrate that they had not provided an actual argument. I didn't intend to argue the other way—I honestly haven't formed an opinion on the topic—I just intended to point out that confidently asserting dogma isn't useful or meaningful. What you call intuitions and principles I call dogmatic beliefs, and dogma is uninteresting to discuss in a mixed-dogma forum like this: it just devolves into a shouting match.
      - freejazz 2y ago
        >What you call intuitions and principles I call dogmatic beliefs, and dogma is uninteresting to discuss in a mixed-dogma forum like this: it just devolves into a shouting match. Well, you were the one who came to the conversation and basically did the 'shouting down' thing rather than substantively engage in anything. All you did was express your disbelief in the lowest form possible, so I'm not sure what you're really complaining about besides your own contributions here. Be the change you want to see!
redeux 2y ago
Not OP but, the political polarization, governmental dysfunction, and eventually the rise of an extremist right wing government can be at least partially attributed to the deregulation of media - specifically the repeal of the fairness doctrine which requires that public broadcasters air both sides on controversial topics of public importance. This was done in the vain of deregulation, but if we want a “free market” for media, why not deregulate the air waves? May the most powerful transmitter win … https://fair.org/extra/the-fairness-doctrine/ https://fair.org/extra/the-fairness-doctrine/
- lolinder 2y ago
  Thanks for providing an actual argument! That said, correlation does not imply causation, and I'm unconvinced that the polarization we're seeing now traces back that far. Pew's research [0] shows that in '94 only 21% (Rep) and 17% (Dem) of each party held a "very unfavorable" opinion of the other party. That number had barely shifted by '02, with both parties still well under 25%, but then steadily started growing from '02 on. The timing of that is more suggestive of the internet being a cause (if we're going to try to pin it down to one media-oriented cause, which is probably a bad exercise to begin with) than it does of the fairness doctrine, which was repealed back in '87. [0] https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2022/08/09/as-partisan-hostility-grows-signs-of-frustration-with-the-two-party-system/ https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2022/08/09/as-partisan-...
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - femiagbabiaka 2y ago
    Yeah, it's clearly the formation of the Tea Party that was the trigger for severe change. But the mechanism through which the Tea Party ideology was disseminated was.. Fox News and conservative radio, which could not have existed in the same state before the Reagan era.
femiagbabiaka 2y ago
Pretty simple: the quality of news media in the U.S. was better prior to the Reagan admin which deregulated it. https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/archives/topic-guide/fairness-doctrine https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/archives/topic-guide/fairness-... Since the Fairness Doctrine was struck down, we've had nothing but bad media outcomes. If you want to know more, Noam Chomsky wrote the book on this, called Manufacturing Consent.
- fallingknife 2y ago
  I disagree. The quality of news media is massively better today. I have access to much more and higher quality information than I would have in the 80s. E.g. I was able to watch live combat footage of the war in Ukraine right as it happened. I have access to peer reviewed research just with the click of a button. I can discuss the news with other people right here on HN. A highly regulated media oligopoly with massive barriers to entry is a terrible system compared to what we have today.
  - femiagbabiaka 2y ago
    > E.g. I was able to watch live combat footage of the war in Ukraine right as it happened. I agree that this was interesting to do, but Telegram and Reddit are not high quality media. Some people with high levels of media literacy can distill the information gained through such channels to understand the world, but a lot of people cannot. Most people still use legacy media (even if it is through digital channels) as primary sources. And those legacy media sources are worse than ever. On top of that the digital channels are massively astroturfed, especially those whose consumer base are in the west. For example, the state of the war as described by Western-targetted media vs. Ukrainian-targetted sources differs greatly. Same applies for the Hamas-Israel conflict. We need high quality and impartial (for some definition of impartial) sources to complement the raw feed for people with lower media literacy. Substack is great but not enough when Fox News and MSNBC exist.
    - roenxi 2y ago
      > Telegram and Reddit are not high quality media... Says who? Back in the day people made a big deal about how Wikipedia was a low quality source of information until it turned out to be by far the best public repository of information humanity has ever seen and one of the best institutions ever built for neutral and informative coverage of various issues. Reddit is a fantastic resource too. It sometimes gets long-form discussion involving domain experts and is much better at representing multiple viewpoints than any pre-internet media channel (which, given the bias of the major subreddits, is pretty amazing).

roenxi 2y ago

When has that ever happened? The only time someone can control all the media is if the market is highly regulated. Otherwise I can literally go and start up a newsletter pushing free market views and it'll eventually overtake the competition if they persist in being stupid and advancing stupid views. Free market views aren't better because they have some theoretical purity; they work much better than all the other options. Anyone who approaches the world trying to get the best results will end up with strong free market views. The free market is almost a magic fountain of wealth and prosperity. The people who want to improve the world are hard ones to shut up; they keep talking. And they don't even need to be in contact with each other to figure out market principles - they're matters of observing human behaviour, not learned ideologies.

gwd 2y ago
> Otherwise I can literally go and start up a newsletter pushing free market views and it'll eventually overtake the competition if they persist in being stupid and advancing stupid views. ...or so one would hope. The fact that Fox News had to go back to supporting Trump because they were losing people to Newsmax unfortunately seems to be a counterexample.
- fallingknife 2y ago
  So the Fox was forced to respond to competitive pressure from a new entrant. Companies are fighting over customers. Sounds like exactly how a competitive free market is supposed to function.
  - femiagbabiaka 2y ago
    That competition resulted in a shift in ideology -- not based on principles but on $$$. That's not good.
  - gwd 2y ago
    The person I was replying to seemed to think that the competitive free market would push news organizations away from "being stupid and advancing stupid news". That would be an example of the market pushing towards "being stupid and advancing stupid news". This is exactly what is called a "market failure": Where the natural market forces push companies into making decisions which are bad for everyone -- bad for themselves, bad for their customers, bad for society as a whole. That's exactly what regulation is meant to address. After WW2, no doubt in part after seeing how the Nazi party used broadcast medium to subvert discussion, the FCC instituted what they called the "Fairness Doctrine", which "required holders of broadcast licenses both to present controversial issues of public importance and to do so in a manner that fairly reflected differing viewpoints." [1] This was eliminated in 1987. Imagine how different the world would be if both Fox News and MSNBC were required to have people on both sides of the aisle have their say about all the political hot topics; and if Fox News didn't have to worry that doing so would cause an exodus to Newsmax, because Newsmax (perhaps once they reached a certain size) would be required to do the same thing. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairness_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairness_doctrine

kjrfghslkdjfl 2y ago

[dead]

jarvuschris 2y ago

The thing is, there really is no such thing as a "free market" as most who are in love with the term envision ALL markets are BORN of regulations. A market is what emerges when you lay some shared ground rules: here's what a pound is, here's a standard currency, here's some laws about commerce, here's a court system for mediating disputes. So the question isn't ever really about free or not free—it's what are the rules and who sets them 99 out of 100 times the people spending money pushing the virtue of a "free market" really just want to be the ones setting the rules and steering them in their favor Replace "free market" with "competitive market"—what most people actually want when they talk about free markets—and suddenly a lot of what Bezos is going to argue for stops making sense

Panzer04 2y ago
Yes, everyone has their own agenda. The idea of the thing is pretty straightforward though; Companies succeed or fail on the merits of their product. The government shouldn't seek to give undue advantage except insofar as to incentivize things we as a society care about (eg. carbon taxes). Prices are the arbiter of resource allocation, and should almost never be controlled or subsidised. That people seek to use an idea to garner support for their agenda without embodying that idea is nothing new. Just see current American politics.
derbOac 2y ago
> Replace "free market" with "competitive market"—what most people actually want when they talk about free markets I wish this was recognized more widely. I feel like the public versus private thing is kind of a red herring; the real issue is competition and cultivating it. Sometimes this means the public intervening in various ways (to support individuals in their skill development and ability to take risks, or break up monopolies, offer a competitive alternative in a public service, etc.) and sometimes it means the public stepping out (as when public regulations stifle true competition or a public service exerts too much control over pricing and services).
- idiotsecant 2y ago
  The problem with competitive market ideals is that money is a positive feedback loop. The more money you have, the more you set the rules, the more money you get, ad finitum until eventual money singularity. Capitalism is useful, like fire is useful. You just need to be careful to keep your fire under control and doing useful things.

Ray20 2y ago

>What happens if someone who doesn't believe in those ideals uses the free market to simply buy up news media and push the opposite narrative? Haven't we seen for the last 10 years exactly what will happen in this situation? I mean, not through the free market, but the deep state pretty much had complete control over the narrative of 90% of the media, from Covid to border policy. And the stronger the control, the less trust people have in these media, and at the end of the day the election results are no longer decided by who is clearly supported by 90% of the news media, but by who came to Joe Rogan's podcast.