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Comment by mensetmanusman | Hacker News Reader

Everyone complains about the media, but few offer solutions.

My favorite type of solution is something along the lines of taxing organizations whose viewers are more disconnected from statistics on the ground (by a bipartisan independent board choosing the types of knowledge sets that a well informed population should have). We could also subsidize organizations that are doing well informing people.

This is a way of dealing with the externalities brought about by people having so much misinformation in their day-to-day decision-making.

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Almost any problem is better than that solution

If misinformation exists, it is analogous to pollution.

If misinformation exists, enemies of a state will spread it.

It’s a reasonable solution to consider taxing pollution and using funds to clean up the externalities.

After the great success of centrally-planned economies over the last century, now comes the next thing they'll try:

Centrally planned information environments!

It's sure to work great.

- "I'm from the government and I'm here to tell you what's Good and True."

- "Do you have a loicense for that opinion?"

Red tape spilling into society kan be more damaging than oil spilling into the ocean.

Schools are information environments, so there is already precedent for trying to improve the education level of society along some metric.

Eg schools where most students leave believing political violence is acceptable should probably receive less funds than those that emit students who are trained in the art of argument.

That I can agree with.

But there’s a lot of daylight between that and fining newspapers with extra taxes because the regime considers their opinions verboten.

I agree there’s a lot of daylight.

As the US finishes transitioning to a low trust society, it’s worth considering how one would introduce changes that would return us to a high trust society in 100 years or so.

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