Comment by chongli | Hacker News Reader

Comment by chongli | Hacker News Reader

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I wonder if there is a viable business model where for each article, readers can pay to unlock it not just for themselves, but for everyone. The price would obviously have to be higher since you aren't just buying it for yourself. But perhaps the sense of "I'm helping build a better-informed world and helping broadcast my values" would encourage people to pay that higher price.

What you're asking for is the system we already have, except at a micro level rather than a macro level. Rich people buy out newspapers to signal-boost their own preferred messages to the public.

I think it's questionable that the "news that people feel is actually valuable" is what really ought to be spread. Some of the most valuable news is local reporting on the daily business of municipal governments. Regular people are notoriously uninterested in local politics, despite the outsized impact it has on their lives. Many of the most mundane decisions made in municipal councils go completely unnoticed yet they can destroy whole communities in the long run.

>Many of the most mundane decisions made in municipal councils go completely unnoticed yet they can destroy whole communities in the long run.

They go unnoticed because of scaling issues, not because people are per se less interested in local politics than national politics. If you write a story about a decision on the local city council, it is of interest to maybe a few hundred thousand, whereas a story about Congress is of interest to tens of millions. Even if people were ten times as interested in local news (as measured by their willingness to subscribe or the amount of ads they are willing to be exposed to), it would still make more sense to send a reporter to the Capitol before City Hall.

I think a lot of our issues today are because people are too engaged in federal politics. It's turned into a massive spectacle on the same level as the NFL.

That seems to be the point; WWE USA: Blue Team vs Red Team, The Democracy Simulation Show. Everyone has the same and equal meaningless vote.

> Everyone has the same and equal meaningless vote.

There is one vote that is not meaningless: the primaries. A lot of the issues y'all have is that Democrats and Republicans alike don't bother to vote in the primaries. That is how you got people like MTG or Trump, that is how you get people like Chuck Schumer stuck in office for far too long.

AOC/The Squad and Mamdani both proved that it is possible to succeed in a primary and offer voters an actual alternative to the corporate owned shills.

You don’t have choice in the primary either. See what happened with the democrats and trying to stymie a sanders candidacy.

After Bernie got shuffled out in 16 I'm not sure anyone cares believes that primaries matter either.

You mean the primary where Biden ran virtually unopposed and then Harris got the nomination?

> not because people are per se less interested in local politics than national politics

Actually I believe this is exactly the issue. Most people are interested more in national politics than county or even state politics. Of the people I know who vote in national elections, very few vote in local ones or even go to city council meetings.

> Rich people buy out newspapers to signal-boost their own preferred messages to the public.

Right, but micro level difference matters here. If a middle-class person can help an important story reach an audience, that's helpful for democracy. When a billionaire buys a newspaper, it isn't.

This is also why I think suggesting it work like a kickstarter where multiple people can pool money to unlock an article would be helpful. It naturally collects the will of many people in a democratic way.

This is basically political fundraising, where rich people signal-boost their preferred candidate and help them attract lots of donors from the public.

I think the fundamental piece you're missing is the Pareto principle. In any popularity contest, the most attention accrues to the most popular. This naturally leads to a power law distribution in popularity.

I'm actually wondering if Citizens United will prove to be a stabilizing force.

https://www.cnn.com/2026/02/18/politics/texas-senate-primary... shows that, in this year's Texas race, the centrists are getting more funding than the culture warriors even though the culture warriors are more popular.

Granted, that's only a single data point.

It sounds quite aligned with how assurance contracts[1] work.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assurance_contract

The solution to increasing interest in local government is to strengthen the federal system (repealing the 17th amendment) & even extending it into state government (state senators should be appointed by, say, the city councils of the 24 largest municipalities in said state).

This decentralization of power would bring the peoples' focus back to their own neighborhoods, where they can actually hold government officials accountable.

That’s a recipe for corruption and minority rule. It centralizes, not decentralizes, power, in the hands of fewer people. I would advise looking to effectively any senatorial appointment from the gilded age to see why the 17th was needed: monetary exchanges for senatorial seats was widespread, race-based disenfranchisement was a reality, and in one state, Utah, a theocracy was nearly cemented. A greater focus on local rights, and greater federalist powers, should not preclude senatorial elections.

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