News Down the Drain

When I was in university majoring in economics I learnt about free goods. These were considered goods that were so abundant that their price was zero. Examples of these goods were considered to be water and air. Fast forward two decades and it seems that, while the concept of a free good still stands, the two examples of air and water no longer do. The downside with free goods is that human nature tends to abuse and waste goods that are considered free. The water tap would be left on and, since the cost of those additional litres of water was considered to be zero, there was little reason to worry about efficiency in water usage. Today many homes still waste thousands of litres of water a month in swimming pools, long showers and green lawns. If people paid $1 a litre you wouldn't see nearly so much waste. So why am I on about this?

Over the last week I have been noticing the frivolous news stories that are filed by news media. There seem to be more stories about Olympic athletes and their behaviours off the slopes and rinks than on them. The pictures that surface, the rants at a loss, the scream of joy at a win, the words whispered to a coach, the costumes they could have worn. It goes on and on.

So what is the link to free goods?

Slowly but surely people are turning to the internet for news. I for one no longer dirty my fingers reading the daily rag. One could argue that the cost of a virtual page in a virtual paper is nearly zero. No paper, printing and ink costs. No extra weight to ship. The result is that, since "paper" is now a free good, we are wasting it by filling it with garbage. There is no value in conserving the space for the most important stories of the day. In the past when a newspaper was limited to a certain amount of pages there was more debate by editors about what made it to print. Less drivel made it in and readers were therefore offered, in my opinion, more important content.

This only goes to reinforce my opinion that media consumers have to become much more informed about their choices in news sources. If not they are going to read a heck of a lot of drivel, waste their time and not really know what happened and what matters.

Some will argue that the news media is only catering to what their consumers want. Maybe so, and if so, we are in a vicious circular flow heading down the drain.

Let me know what you think about what you have just read. Please and thanks!