I disagree. The church is not comparable to the media. We need innovative ways to equitably pay for our economy of attention. Ideally a way that would create a market incentive for producing local news that people read. I think the revenue sharing tax on Google/Facebook is pretty fair and clear.
I disagree. North Korea has newspapers. North Korea has media. Are its citizens well-informed? Of course not. The media is literally owned by the government. And in that case, you get pure propaganda. The reason for separation of church and state is that religion and politics are both powerful forces that influence people. If one entity controls both, it inevitably causes a loss of liberty. The press has the power to shape narratives and influence massive amounts of people based on how they frame a story. That is powerful, and it needs to be treated as a power that should remain separate from the government. There should always be competing narratives in a free country. Democracy doesn't die in darkness. It dies in uniformity.
I totally agree! And I believe that markets can be created through governmental platforms. Just as governments might have created cash (which could have been private) and physical market places (which can also be private), I believe the government can support a platform for a diverse market of news media. Without a free market, monopolistic forces dominate. The market for news is not so free, if the attention platforms are owned by private individuals that don't share profits with the content driving their eyeballs. We don't disagree. I just believe that government involvement and free markets aren't opposites but mutual enablers.
You have an interesting perspective. But governments can create, or shall I say foster, market incentives -- and not just by getting out of the way. A cap and trade program illustrates that, as does mandatory product labeling. Markets and governments have more akin to flowers and gardens than to oil and water. They need each other to function.
