This is not an anti-capitalist rant. In fact, let us all take a moment of sing the praises of capitalism. You are reading this article on a device that capitalism brought you. You are sitting somewhere created by capitalism. You ate recently thanks to capitalism – probably something someone else grew, and even possibly someone else made. You slept in a comfy capitalist bed last night. Personally, I love food and beds, nice rooms, and laptops. A heartfelt thanks to capitalism for these things.
But… here it comes… it’s not for everything. Capitalism works so well because it is a modern extension of a process we used for thousands of years. Unlike all other animals, we trade. That is, we give A in exchange for B. We innovated in order to trade better, and then rewarded the innovators. Capitalism is formalizing this process of innovation over large groups. And capitalism, thereby, should really only deal with innovation.
There will be problems in society when capitalism is applied to things that don’t need innovation. Things like the news. Yes, we traded for thousands of years, but we talked for millions. And while information is valuable, basic information is not something that needs innovation. In fact, the only information really worthy of trading is information on how to innovate. Things like the weather, product reviews, laws, and politics don’t need innovation. And if we try to monetize them, we create artificial demand, and we screw them up.
If we think about the current chaos online in social media platforms and the 24 hour news cycle they have done well to replace, we see that we are overloaded with information and manipulated in attempts to capitalize on our attention. We used to have to spend time and energy looking for information, but now we spend time and energy trying to avoid much of it, and sift through the garbage for tidbits of nutrition.
The solution is to keep the news out of capitalist systems. Make news outlets non-profit. When you do, you kill the drive to grow revenue. Because the only way to grow revenue in the news industry is to increase user attention – something that is detrimental to society. Just as we have a range of calories we should be consuming each day (between 1000 and 2000), there is also a range of time we should be spending gathering basic, relevant information about our world. How much time is that? I don’t know. But it’s closer to 20 minutes than it is to an hour. News is a capitalist system will try to make that 5 hours, just like the food industry is trying to make our caloric intake something ridiculous.
Want to save democracy and your sanity along the way? Look for non-profit news platforms (yes, like Politiq.net). They won’t be perfect, but then nothing in humanity is. But they will provide a much more appropriate foundation for brain food. And just like with real food, when it comes to the news, you are what you eat.
Politiq is the new spot to get your political news and get your informed about the next election. Register today for free!