ePublic Good (Public Good) Prediction comes true in New Zealand
Over ten years ago, I wrote the article Is the Internet Making New Public Goods? ePublic Goods. In the article, I reasoned the internet is producing, based on the decline and failure in the entrainment and news media industries, a new type of Public Goods, ePublic Goods. e for electronic or internet-based.
Public Goods are, along with Private, Club, and Commons (Common Pool) Goods, a key phenomenon in economics,
Governments support public goods, and I predicted that this may happen with the media, too, someday, at the risk of democracy. If this is true, it is not a good thing at all.
Firms in these industries are not profiting and are failing due to the loss of sales from the internet and have been downsizing. This is akin to the examples of market failure with the streetlights, fireworks displays, lighthouses and others. The media and entertainment firms are failing due to the same problems as with these normal Public Goods. The non-rivalry is when no one is bothered (the experience is not diminished) by someone else's use of the good, and the non-excludable is when one cannot control access to knowledge, news, music, etc. The 'free-rider problem' is now the free-copy problem.
Without being political and just trying to explain phenomena, is this what has happened in New Zealand recently? From the Government website, it appears so. The current government are offering money to help the ailing industry. This is not just a subsidy to help all media; it is conditional on a (controversial) sitting government policy.
Please read the following.
Public Interest Journalism Fund
Google search: New Zealand Government 50 million to media
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