this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2024
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Fully nationalizing news would be a terrible idea. But, having an American version of ABC, BBC, CBC, etc. would be a smart move. The national broadcaster is what keeps the news in countries like the UK, Canada, Australia, etc. from going as insane as the US. Often the national broadcaster is boring and stodgy, but because they're not profit-driven they can tell the full, true, boring story.
As for social media, you just need to mandate interoperability and break up monopolies. If you could leave Twitter for Mastodon and keep following and being followed by the same people, almost nobody would stay behind. Unfortunately, not only does that interoperability not exist, the DMCA makes it illegal to build certain tools to migrate off awful platforms. Facebook succeeded because they provided an easy migration path from Myspace. But, if you tried the same thing today, Facebook would sue you to oblivion.
For news, you could set up a trust and transfer ownership of each news station to the workers for a type of collective. Let them vote democratically how they want to run their news station or news paper. Let them elect editors and managers. Or something similar to that. Financing shouldn't really be a problem, after all governments can print money and run plenty of ministries and agencies.
You could do the same for social media, just transfer ownership to the collective of the workers. After that it is self-governing. That would be a massive change from corporate ownership, profit optimization and catering to advertising. Of course this is unthinkable.
And yeah I like the interoperability, the EU did something like this, mandating interop for messengers. But I'm not sure it really works.
Yeah, because if we know one thing, it's that a group of people never has outlandish and crazy beliefs.
Which are paid for by tax dollars. If you just print money endlessly you cause inflation, and eventually hyperinflation.
It doesn't seem to me like you've actually thought any of this through.
Yeah and that is the big lie right there. People have become so indoctrinated with the idea that profit seeking and unbridled greed is somehow neutral and can be trusted compared to things people might decide. That democracy is itself the problem, not the influence of capital on democracy. That we need to abdicate all power to protect us from the people with the crazy ideas. Instead we now get the best or worst of both worlds, capital using the most extreme beliefs to make money or gain power and social media pushing polarization for profit.
The inflation myth is a common fallacy btw. That only happens when essential goods (with "non elastic demand") become scarce.
PS: Anyway, I did say these things are unthinkable
Just because you're wrong about something doesn't mean the idea is unthinkable.