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 argued that, based on the decline and failure of the entertainment and news media industries, the internet is producing a new type of Public Goods, ePublic Goods. e for electronic or internet-based.

Public Goods, along with Private, Club, and Commons (Common Pool) Goods, are 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, are failing due to internet sales losses, and have been downsizing. This is akin to examples of market failure, such as streetlights, fireworks displays, lighthouses, and others. The media and entertainment firms are failing for the same reasons as these normal Public Goods.  Non-rivalry is when no one is bothered (the experience is not diminished) by someone else's use of the good, and non-excludability 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

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Natural fractal lake, Arethusa Pool, the worlds only?

Fractal Dimension, (Economic's) Elasticity and Complexity

ePublic Goods. Is the internet making new public goods?