> To what extent is this an actual "issue?" What are we sacrificing for having a plethora of divergent ideas?
There's nothing wrong with divergent ideas per se, but divergent ideas themselves don't really do anything. You and I probably have different ideas about something. And we can leave it at that and both go on with our lives, never interacting and learning about another idea than our own.
In the best case, nothing is gained by this, and that's OK and probably even describes the majority of interactions we will ever have with distinct people. But the "value" of divergent ideas is when they converge back together and generate brand new ideas their neither party would have on their own.
But, in the worst case we continue to diverge in our own ideas, only ever converging with people with the same ideas, building "echo chambers" that separate us from anything new and "in-groups" and "out-groups" that further divide us.
And this seems to be the problem with American politics, and bleeding into American society in general. Everything's a partisan issue and everything's on the extremes, so you're either a left-extremist, a right-extremist, or you're not even part of the conversation. If something isn't promoting our ideas, isn't serving us and shouldn't be supported.
So, what we seem to be sacrificing for having these divergent ideas is having any meaningful conversations that can create new ways forward. Which certainly does seem to be creating a lot of issues.
But for what it's worth, considering how our federal congress behaves these days, I'm inclinded to agree that a tax funded public broadcaster would probably not really be in our best interest.