Comments on The Belmont Club "The price of information"

wretchard,
So Dan goes fishing in the government waters. After all, if they make them an offer, then they might be tempted to accept.

Both sides should low ball the offers under the following reasonable standard.
I have already determined what you are. Now we are just dickering over the price.

Both sides would raise the offers under the following time tested standard.
Other people's money.

The problem with the Internet is that it was designed as a piggy-back or parasite on other communications systems. The money should be in the provider not in the content. That was historically true for most communications. The railroads were worth more then the grain and cattle they shipped and they shipped people for almost nothing. Merchant shipping at sea was worth more then the bulk that got moved around. Otherwise Onassis wouldn't have gotten near Jacqueline Kennedy. The Internet does not offer similar opportunities. If it did then the operators of the infrastructure would subsidize the content providers, the same way that Onassis made money shipping oil with Panamanian flagged tankers.

Sometimes the profit is in a surprising corner of a business. Before the havoc wrought by the anti-trust judgement in the 1940s the multi billion dollar American movie studio industry was really just a shill for a popcorn and candy counter operation. The New York Times has been described as a money losing front for a profitable Canadian logging business.

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Discovered, The Inspector General, with Health Care.
Obama's Magic Elixer.

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It makes no sense to me that people pay for cable TV when they can get 90% or more for free on the internet. If the Left was relying on the MSM as a meme injector then the shift to digital was an act of self destruction. How many are now disconnected and learning to live with it?

Aug 14, 2009 - 10:31 pm

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Mad Fiddler,
(who praised Drudge for getting out the Monica Lewinsky story)
A difference between then and now.

Then, the MSM was caught by surprise and when NewsWeek tried to bury the story thousands of writers, editors, producers and reporters, most of whom were liberals, clung to memories of watching The Front Page and followed the story. It wasn't only broken by the minions of the extreme right. The damage control on the Left came late, after the facts got out.

Now (or at least a year ago), the MSM was well prepared and when word got out that the Los Angelas Times was sitting on a video of candidate Barack Obama at a party for Palestinian activist Khalid Rashidi that could blow his entire campaign right out of the water they clung together and helped bury the story. That video is in the same incinerator as his college files and passport records.

Aug 15, 2009 - 4:39 pm