>
I can't buy that argument for a couple of reasons. The main one is that if
there is an economic opportunity for newspapers, diversity in newspapers
should exist, period. Otherwise, there is no direct competition. As for
indirect competition from other media, there many not be as many monopolies,
but there is clearly a media oligopoly. Five huge corporations own most of
the mass media. How that can possibly reflect a healthy competitive
environment? Is not diversity in economic systems as important as it is in
ecosystems?
> 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.
I think you are confusing bigness and diversity. Are bigger insects more
successful than smaller ones? I don't think so -- co-evolution results in
increasing diversity, with period die-backs.
When I said big I meant most numerous, most established not size of
competitor but size of the competing populations. The larger population will
be more stable, more able to withstand the fates if you will and it will
usually "win" in the battle with the small even if the small is better
adapted. Maynard Smith's Evolutionarily Stable Strategies (ESS) notion
incorporated this. When he (and others) ran simulations on competitions
between populations the outcome was very sensitive to the size of the intial
population. The larger often won even when its adaptation (as defined in the
simulation) was inferior. So in these circumstances there is little chance
for a large population to evolve much. It can track its environment a bit but
it can't evolve into something new. Evolutionary change (speciation) occurs
when a small isolated population can evolve an adaptation. When and if the
new and the old population meet there can be a competition between the two
and the "better" adaptation can win. This is the most likely explanation for
punctuated equilibrium.
I think the thing to see is that there will always be this anti-competitive
tendancy. the rich will get richer and the poor will get dead in any system.
but in life in general and human society in particular this situation never
leads to total rigidity or stability because there will always be these
meetings of the new (established elsewhere) and the old. So I don't worry
much about the lack of competition amoung newspapers because diversity will
come from some place else. the old system will by necesity become less
diverse over time but in other arenas (say the internet) new things evolve
and they later compete with older more stable (or rigid systems).
>
Ah, well, I'm more than happy to talk about Kaufman! I'm struggling with
the comparisons, so I won't pretend to see exactly how his ideas map onto
the political economies of mass media and the Internet, but it's THE most
interesting subject at hand for me. He seems to observe that "patches" of
an optimal size create the most efficient problem-solving system (thus he
suggests that states rights may be the critical structural reason for the
United States' economic and political successes). In my head, I'm
translating that to the idea that there is an optimal level of diversity (a
patch = a way of solving co-evolutionary problems). Thus, the monopoly
newspaper or the oligopoly in mass media becomes "too few patches." Or, if
you will, too few approaches in how to solve the problem of connecting
people with information. And it follows, to me, that assuming our system
can be improved only by tweaking, not by considering that the theory of
competition as a regulator is incomplete, is to place too much faith in
competition.
Maybe that is what I am saying that competition is inevitable. Maybe I have
too much faith in it but I was very comforted by my reading of Kaufman
because it seems to me that he is saying that complex systems spontaneously
seek out combinations of stability and chaos.
At the risk of being repetitive, I have to observe that the same thing is
going on throughout mass media -- concentration of power and wealth. The
big exception is the Internet, which I'm beginning to see as a collaborative
competitor against the collaboration in the "media-industrial complex" (to
paraphrase Eisenhower) that I see as a force of evil (yeah, I guess I really
see it that way) in the world.
Have faith man. The bigger they get the more ripe they are for the fall.
Nick
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