You miss my point entirely. You can only conceive of the old system going, so you want to get the government to fund it. But there's another way: Let the market figure something out.
Governments can't do new things. They usually can't conceive of them, and if they can, they can't get them past committee.
The old system isn't working. Pouring more government money into it has no realistic prospect of working. For one thing, how can the "fourth estate" function as a watchdog if they're getting too much of their money from the people they're supposed to be watching? Your only hope of something that actually works is a truly new system, and the government can't come up with that.
But the market can, even if you can't think of what that may be and if I can't think of what it may be. It's not blind faith, every niche works that way. The government did not create the auto industry. The government did not create the electronics industry; it did not create the RAM industry or the CPU industry or the video card industry. It did not create the insurance industry, it did not create the furniture industry. It did not create just-in-time delivery or Amazon.com. These all came from supply on one side figuring out how to reach demand on the other, with all sort of creative chaos in the middle (and ongoing) that could never have been legislated into existence. (It can, on the other hand, be legislated out of existence.)
Why should the government prop up the current system instead of letting something new happen?
Nothing in my post had anything to do with "unregulated capitalism". It's simply how the economy works, and without this critical understanding, not only can you not go forward, you can not understand how we got where we are.
"letting the market figure it out" is unregulated capitalism. Unregulated capitalism is exactly the extremist economic policy nonsense that created the mess we are in. When Bush eliminated most of the regulation on the financial services industry, what that "let the market figure out" is that it is very, very easy to steal money when there is little regulation.
Libertarian economics policy advocates utterly fail to recognize that when money is laying around with no regulations/regulators protecting that money, people steal that money.
I don't know why libertarians can't figure out people steal money that is left around unguarded, but they just don't comprehend that fact.
> When Bush eliminated most of the regulation on the financial services industry
Since Bush did no such thing....
> Libertarian economics policy advocates utterly fail to recognize that when money is laying around with no regulations/regulators protecting that money, people steal that money.
Libertarians recognize that govts don't protect money all that well and that big thefts always involve a govt.
""letting the market figure it out" is unregulated capitalism."
No, Adam503 chooses to misinterpret "letting the market figure it out" as unregulated capitalism so that (s)he can go off on a more-or-less entirely unrelated rant.
What letting the market figure it out really means here is that instead of a glorious upper authority picking the "winner" by handing out government funds to a proven-loser business model to prop it up ("winner" hardly seems like the right word), that we unleash the creativity of thousands or millions of people in the confident belief that where there is unmet demand, someone will find a way to supply it.
Did you think my example list was just randomly tossed in there or something? It's the core of the point; government action can only look to the past. Your actions will simply guarantee the extinction of journalism, because the system you want to prop up is dying before competition even fully matures, which is the ultimate proof of economic death.
What regulations you may or may not want to lay down on such actions is an entirely separate point, and if you can't see that, you're simply being willfully blind to the point I'm making because you've been so conditioned in your response to the word "capitalism" that you can't see past it anymore. The fact that Amazon.com created a new meeting point for supply and demand is neither here nor there in the question of whether they are regulated (hint: yes).
Again... this sort of thing has happened millions of times. It's not a wacky theory, it's how we got from the dark ages to the economy of today. (The wacky theory is that this creation is impossible and only happens when central authorities help it along; this flatly contradicts the historical facts.) This time is only different because now the town crier is facing disruption, and he's being loud about it. Other than that, it's hardly different than any other industry which has been transformed over the past 50 years, which is most of them.
Governments can't do new things. They usually can't conceive of them, and if they can, they can't get them past committee.
The old system isn't working. Pouring more government money into it has no realistic prospect of working. For one thing, how can the "fourth estate" function as a watchdog if they're getting too much of their money from the people they're supposed to be watching? Your only hope of something that actually works is a truly new system, and the government can't come up with that.
But the market can, even if you can't think of what that may be and if I can't think of what it may be. It's not blind faith, every niche works that way. The government did not create the auto industry. The government did not create the electronics industry; it did not create the RAM industry or the CPU industry or the video card industry. It did not create the insurance industry, it did not create the furniture industry. It did not create just-in-time delivery or Amazon.com. These all came from supply on one side figuring out how to reach demand on the other, with all sort of creative chaos in the middle (and ongoing) that could never have been legislated into existence. (It can, on the other hand, be legislated out of existence.)
Why should the government prop up the current system instead of letting something new happen?
Nothing in my post had anything to do with "unregulated capitalism". It's simply how the economy works, and without this critical understanding, not only can you not go forward, you can not understand how we got where we are.