2024-03-17
It's been a long road travelled largely out of the headlines ... perhaps because those who write the headlines didn't want to make any kind of big deal out of it.
The truth is that even where we are today, if freedom of speech had been respected throughout then we probably wouldn't be so far down the road - but freedom of journalism (as opposed to freedom of speech) ie: the freedom to dig for the stories and have them published with appropriate fanfare, has been quietly withdrawn for many years now, without being reported.
After all, why would you publish negative stories about the outfits that provide your income?
Today, at the dawn of the age of citizen journalism outside the reach of the big publishers, that has begun to be reversed, despite desperate attempts to discourage defund and shut down popular channels that publish the truth that the big boys don't like.
Jeffrey Tucker, founder, author, and President at Brownstone Institute, reviews the sorry tale for America, but as we all know, what happens over the pond also happens over here - you can read the same article leaving out the word "American" altogether and it still makes perfect sense.
"In free enterprise, the old rule is that the customer is always right ... "
"What happens, however, when government itself becomes a main and even dominant customer?"
" ... we are ideologically and philosophically unprepared to deal with this new world with anything like intellectual insight"
He could have written "public-private partnerships" for inclusivity as well as "government", but I cavil.
The state has effectively unlimited power to change the rules, unlimited money to spend as it pleases, no competition within national borders, and systems that should be holding it to account that are too expensive too blunt and too unresponsive to be effective.
Then acknowledge for practical purposes that this does nothing to discourage an inevitable seasoning of corruption ...
It makes all the difference in the world.
Sadly however, this treatise must be regarded as incomplete, since it makes no mention of the secret services /TLAs that seem so all-pervading these days. Yes they are nominally controlled by the government, but I do wonder whether the truth is that the government is controlled by them?
Perish the thought ...
