What the Hell Is Going On? Effects of Information Abundance

It takes coordination and peace to operate a globally-available internet, that enables us to have cheap communication and access information.

What does it take to offer the internet in its current form? Massive infrastructure, cables running every which way across countries and oceans, electricity, etc-- and governments protect that infrastructure.

If order and stability is lost to the extreme viewpoints the internet enables, and eroding trust in our existing institutions, there will no longer be necessary support for the infrastructure that enables free, open, cheap communication.

> pre-internet style of governance had substantive problems which the working class didn't like (e.g. globalization leading to a race to the bottom in manufacturing wages).

"Observing a problem", "diagnosing causes", and "presenting workable solutions" are three completely different things though.

Wage stagnation leading to quality-of-life declines is the first of these - people can notice this immediately in their life. Diganosing "globalisation" as the problem is harder and more complicated (would the US really have been better off trying to be a manufacturing autarky for the second half of the 20th century?). And the proposed solutions .. well, this is where it gets really bad.

The existing elite have done a very good job of suppressing the peaceful, workable solutions; various sorts of social inclusion and redistibution. That leaves only the unworkable and disastrous solutions out there.

The article later tackles this by examining the love-hate relationship between Trump and left-wing media (although just briefly):

The more they covered Trump, the more they danced to the music of check deposits. CBS president Leslie Moonves said: "It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS.” Or in the words of one Washington-based reporter: "‘Holy shit, Trump’s the best thing that’s ever happened to our business!’"

In short, as the amount of information exploded, the media — with business models built for an environment of information scarcity — engaged in a Faustian Bargain. Naval Ravikant said it best: "The Internet commoditized the distribution of facts. The ‘news’ media responded by pivoting wholesale into opinions and entertainment.

I'm surprised he didn't mention how the "liberal" corporate media pretty much did a total blackout of covering Bernie in 2016.

To his early supporters this was a glaring omission and I cannot conclude it was an oversight. It seemed to be an obvious collusion between them and the DNC who had $1.3Billion to spend on media that year.

Their plan seemed obvious. Ignore Bernie, create a deluge of negative coverage of Trump, and promote Hillary as our only alternative.

This caused me and many others to just tune out the bloviating corporate lackey gasbags they have working for them. I've not watched CNN, NBC, ABC, MSNBC, since. I never watched FOX News because it's always been easy to see they have an extremely biased agenda to promote and do not do "News" at all, but the others, at that time, still had some credibility up to then. They've pretty much lost all of that.

The truth is, they started losing their cred before that. I recall watching CNN during the "Occupy" protest when Carrol Costello complained about those protesters being "noisy" and making it difficult for her to get to the entrance of their New York facilities. She went so far as to comment "what are they even protesting for" when they were right outside their front door.

Every time I open my "Apple News" app I'm amazed at what drivel they present. "Look at what Kim Kardashian is wearing, it makes her butt look huge!"

HN gets far more of my time than all those "News" corporations put together now.

Even when universities are free, they are still not without problems. In Denmark education is free and you even get paid a "wage" when attending university so you don't even have to borrow (as much) money for housing/food.

High schools and universities in Denmark get money per student that passes the exams. If you fail the student, no money for you.

So there is a clear incentive for the schools to admit as many students as possible and lower the level required for passing the exams. Schools have had their "per student" budget cut year after year.

So the level of education today is not the same as 40 years ago. For high school the signalling part has become even more important, so much we lack blue collar workers because people think that kind of education is beneath them. The following question has absolutely the same validity in Denmark as in USA:

> Would you rather have a Princeton diploma without a Princeton education, or a Princeton education without a Princeton diploma?

Some things are not worth it, even when they are free.