Five or so years ago I started a project to make it possible to crowdfund investigative journalism called Uncoverage. We launched with a review in the Times and things looked rosy. The premise: why should rich people - or editors - be the ones deciding what gets investigated? A couple of other projects have made a run at this too. The problem seems to be that the value proposition of “getting investigation” is too abstract for most people, and we’ve all been trained that information, and journalism, is free. The project flopped, as did its competitors like Beacon. The more recently launched Wikitribune is still going. The day we wake up as a society to the power of paying collectively for investigation into what may be hurting us instead of waiting for it to be done for us by the rich, nonprofits or thinly stretched newspapers will be a very important one. I wish I knew how to bring that about.
But someone always controls that shared database. Distributed ledgers continue functioning regardless of private or governmental change and are resistant to rent seeking behavior making them unsustainably expensive or ungainly.
You know what months-long lines for non-critical procedures for people without supplemental health insurance is better than? Having the number one driver of bankruptcy in the US be medical bills. https://amp.usatoday.com/amp/101148136
I think it’s absurd that we look for biodegradeable plastics as a solution when we could simple legislate common containers and reuse them. How much must we sacrifice because brands want to differentiate on the shape of the bottle instead of on what’s inside it and on the label?