In a message dated 8/7/01 12:55:00 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
<<
Thus, we have big newspapers and big advertisers making perfectly rational
free enterprise decisions, designed to maximize profitability, with the net
result that competition is reduced, especially in newspapers, but also among
the corporations that advertise in them. >>
But one of the reasons this can work is that there are other means of
communication. TV, radio, the internet. In the past there would have been a
perceived need for more than one newspaper but now this need is met by other
media. The advantage of the big over the small is true at all levels. It
works in evolution for instance. Established groups are hard to displace even
if a "better" competitor comes along. Speciation typically happens in small
isolated comunities rather than within a large parent community. It is only
when the previously isolated but now well established new species interacts
with the old species that competition can occur. But this is not really bad
because no matter how much the big stable thing tries to maintain its control
it cannot do so forever. Environments change, ecosystems remains stable for a
while resisting change and then collapse or change quickly. Since I know that
Complexity is one of your favorite subjects, I am a bit timid about offering
the notion that the system you described is well covered by Kaufman in "At
Home in the Universe". Complex systems tune themselves to a balance between
stability and change. Too stable and you are unable to react, too quick to
respond to local and possibility transient change and you descend into chaos.
The forces you desribe do push the system towards stultifying stability but
other forces (other media) push it towards chaos. To consider only newspapers
in the overall equation of communication in a free society is to ignore the
other outlets.
