Newspapers are owned by the wealthy and powerful and you think they will allow an opposing view of capitalism?

[snot]

40. Yep.

There are two ways to protect consumers w.r.t. monopolies: either break them up, or if you're not going to do that, you've got to regulate the h*ll out of them – require them to meet certain quantity/quality standards, maintain funding for an enforcement agency that can audit compliance regularly, require them to get permission for rate/price hikes, etc.

Right now we have the worst of all possible worlds w/ respect to traditional media; and the internet is at least 85% of the way to the same fate.

Another argument I think should be made is that we have (poorly-enforced) antitrust laws that would at present probably have to be the main basis for breaking up Big Media, and that might possibly be somewhat helpful; but a problem with it is that, as I understand, those laws generally require proof of a quantifiable amount of financial ($) loss to consumers as a result of the monopoly. You have to prove, e.g., that the price for a product was at least approxmately X $amount higher because of the lack of significant competition. This can be tricky even with material products such as chicken breasts. Did the price go up in the wake of consolidation because of monopolization, or was it because the prices of supplies, labor, etc. went up, or maybe because middlemen took advantage somehow? Etc.

Media monopolies may cause some financial losses; but they may not, or such losses might easily be even more difficult to quantify.

And in any case, the real, most important result from an absence of significant competition in the sphere of media outlets is not so much financial loss as informational – we are deprived of the complete and accurate information we should have in order for us to make good decisions about the things we care about. How do you quantify that in dollars?

So imho, not only do we need to roll back the deregulation of media that took place under Reagan and Clinton, but maybe we also need to enact an antitrust law of information that focusses on that rather than on economic loss.