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Comment by f33d5173 | Hacker News Reader

Media is dying because of lack of funding. Mediocrity comes after the money dries up and they can't afford to pay writers and editors anymore. This in turn drives readers away, causing a spiral. But the initial effect is due to lack of funding

It is not normal in a free market for an entire industry to die. In a free market, if one competitor starts flailing, the other competitors should pick up their slack. If every player in the market is suffering the same disease, that is indicative of a deeper problem that could plausibly be solved via regulation.

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Industries have died countless times in a free market. It is an indication that people no longer want to consume what they are making. You can make an argument that local journalism is a public good. In that case the honest response would be for the public to pay for it from the general fund.

People are consuming news media, so its no indication of that. The way these laws are structured, a news organization recieves payment in proportion to how often their articles are read, so they continue to only receive profit when their product is being consumed. If they were funded from a general fund, that might end up subsdizing useless or poor quality news instead of things people actually want to read.

The general fund could pay per click just as easily. The situation as it stands is that the customers aren't willing to pay to click and read. The social media sites aren't willing to pay per click either.

Why would an industry dying be a problem?

Why would you "regulate" to keep it alive? (which means keep it alive with our money)

Who decides which industry should be kept alive and which should die? Let me guess, you do.

> Who decides which industry should be kept alive and which should die? Let me guess, you do.

Sometimes that's better than letting "the market" decide.

IMHO, it's a mistake to think of the market as some kind of best-decision making machine that should be left to run unattended. It's a effective, but buggy program with a lot of WONTFIX bugs that need to be mitigated through other means.

> Let me guess, you do.

Close. It's decided democratically, via elections of representatives who in turn vote on such issues. This system has it own problems, of course.

Aren't those same people now voting directly, with their wallets, to let an industry die? Why do you want to add a middleman politician to the process? Do people not know what's good for them? Why would they then know what's good for them when voting for those politicians?

Exactly. I'm going down town today to buy a brand new, reasonably priced, safe and effective horse drawn buggy.

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