Phenomenal World

Love me some techdirt, but this is off base in a few ways. For one thing NYTimes and Politico are both profitable. Whether they're good is up to interpretation, but I don't think the likes of techdirt can say they're failing. They mention 404 Media in there as somebody who's doing it right. They're about to put up an email wall for their content because AI and monopolies and social media and tracking users will save them.[1] But one thing this article has for it that I haven't found in most other reading is an attempt at a solution. I mean at least it links to a discussion about it.[2] I'm only half-way through it, and so far it's a radical approach. Given the gutting of journalism I believe a radical change is what we need. [1] https://www.404media.co/why-404-media-needs-your-email-address/ [2] https://lpeproject.org/blog/taking-media-out-of-the-market/

> It does not and never has obligated any private persons or business to listen, rebroadcast, or not *react" to what you say. You have never been protected from the consequences of your speech within your community, nor has anyone been required to enable it. So there might be an example of the supreme court requiring just that: in a case called Marsh vs. Alabama, a private community (a company town) was forced to allow some mormons to keep door-knocking on private property because of First Amendment rights. Something to the effect of 'if you have enough control over private space, you start to take on an increasing blend of public square obligations'. At least, that is the conclusion I drew from the below article. Unfamiliar domain name but I got it from memeorandum so it's not afaik some completely off the rails screed. https://lpeproject.org/blog/after-the-great-deplatforming-reconsiderin…

It has more terms as well: neoliberal encasement, depoliticization or post-politics, it's designing a system in such a way as to protect private property, international trade and other economic orthodoxy from democratic influence. That is an incredibly potent theory to understand the EU by. Lots of work in academia on the subject as well, for instance: https://www.jstor.org/stable/45129546 https://lpeproject.org/blog/neoliberal-encasement-infrastructure-the-c…

Ali Kadri’s The Accumulation of Waste: A Political Economy of Systemic Destruction comes to mind https://lpeproject.org/events/the-accumulation-of-waste-a-political-ec…

Jack Blakin over at Yale law has been writing about this very issue (and proposing solutions) for some time. See https://lpeproject.org/blog/the-political-economy-of-freedom-of-speech… See also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4daIk8PCPIc

> The issue is that the regulations initially cut into the profits for meat packing companies. Then over time they serve as a barrier to entry, essentially creating artificial monopolies and anti-competitive market stagnation. I would say the issue is that antitrust officials stood idly by and allowed extreme market consolidation >For four decades, the U.S. government has watched idly as a handful of largely foreign-owned meat corporations grew horizontally by killing off or gobbling up their competitors and vertically by gobbling up their supply chains. Today four massive companies – JBS, Tyson Foods, National Beef, and Cargill – control over 80 percent of America’s beef. Three companies – JBS, Tyson, and Smithfield Foods – control 63 percent of America’s pork. Two of those – JBS and Tyson – also control 38 percent of poultry. https://lpeproject.org/blog/break-up-the-modern-meat-trust/ Historically, we last saw this sort of cartel acting in the US 100 years ago leading to legislation that has slowly been whittled away until the problem has returned. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Packers_and_Stockyards_Act