I've not seen evidence of elite journalists pushing for more citizen journalism.
I'm a citizen journalist covering my small town that would otherwise be a news desert. I've been working hard on a how-to, to inspire and enable other people to do what I've been doing, at a level of effort that one can do as a hobby. I recently tried to pitch this how-to at my local TEDx as a talk. Despite the chairman complimenting my pitch as an example of one that was very well prepared, one of the judges torpedoed the idea on the grounds that it's bad to encourage non-credentialed people to publish, and that involvement by the non-credentialed is a major problem in journalism right now.
Meanwhile, I've searched far and wide for examples of citizen journalists doing what I do. There are not many examples, and a lot of what seems to be small-town citizen journalism is from professional journalists who lost their jobs and created their own gigs.
I had not thought about it like this: that all the kum-by-yah, everyone wins nonsense that has pervaded so much of the culture is a great way to defend elites from disruption by normies.
I have been thinking a lot lately about art in the midwest, a place that I have recently returned to. There used to be good artists in the midwest, peopel with skill. You can’t find it anymore except from the occasional rare talent whose gift just can’t be stop (I know one of those).
But no one is cultivating skill among regular kids any longer. Going to arts events out here is depressing.
It hadn’t occurred to me that this is all part of an elite strategy to undermine competition by non-coasties. Good point.
Excellent insight. Similarly, I’ve been thinking about marriage in elite circles. Divorce and single parent families encouraged in lower classes and as policy, but monogamy and long-term marriage practiced far more among themselves.
I think most people have a gut feeling that "insider trading" is wrong but are really confused about why, because most people are not used to think of trading in markets as trading in information. They often cite things like market fairness or influencing outcomes, but that's besides the point. Your other piece about keeping secrets convinced me that it's purely a matter of spilling confidential information, on equal footing as talking to a journalist.
Consequently, any person in a position that requires keeping confidentiality should not be allowed to participate in certain prediction markets. That's actually a good thing that will give prediction markets more credibility. And if insiders still insist on trading, maybe we should call them "whistleblowers" instead of "insider traders"?
Ancients who disrespected merchants and bankers would also have disrespected journalists. It is we moderns who have come to respect the educated and articulate so much more.
I'm thinking of the fact around LLMs and AI development online, in the sense that it is information itself that holds more leverage, and with this also power lately. It's not a scientific fact that a government position would necessarily have access, in all cases, to substantial futures market information ahead of others. Since journalism involves gathering information, it does place itself systematically in a more advantaged career position in this power-competition structure, where reliance on the internet is a key function.
"Pushing rivals towards egalitarianism undermines them"?? This is not the motive of the people pushing towards egalitarianism. The motive is to help the people who are being oppressed by their authorities. Easy-access elections, for example, help the poor and minorities who otherwise would have little political influence and would get screwed on pollution, work conditions, housing, public transportation, segregation, etc.
It can be a legitimate criticism that insider trading creates perverse incentives. If a decision-maker is influenced to make a decision that harms their organization because the decision-maker would profit from a prediction market trade, that's a bad thing.
Insider trading by non-decision-makers is not necessarily bad, unless it involves kickbacks to the decision-makers (which creates the perverse incentive again).
Much criticism of prediction markets is not valid. I think criticism is often influenced by general resistance to new institutions and also by the free-market ideological flavor. The egalitarian nature of it isn't the reason - how egalitarian is it really?
My reading of the quoted sentence, in context, is that you're offering it as an explanation of why elite institutions push for egalitarianism.
But the actual reason they push for egalitarianism is because they have a psychological motive to do so, because it helps people. If it undermines rivals, it undermines just those rivals who are harming people.
You're trying to interpret the push for egalitarianism through the lens of in-group favoritism, or perhaps social Darwinism, but neither are the main reason in this case. Humans are not exclusively scheming bastards - sometimes they do good things for good reasons.
I think it doesn't really matter what're their motives but such norms seem to be victorious for reasons more related to local adaptiveness is the argument.
It's an incorrect argument. Egalitarianism is not popular among some elites because of any systematic weeding-out of non-egalitarian elite groups. There hasn't been enough selection pressure on elite groups for that to happen. Actually, most elite groups are non-egalitarian - you have your dictators and billionaires who serve only their own interests, to everyone else's expense.
Egalitarianism is popular among some elites because of a human psychological tendency to want to help the oppressed.
> It can be a legitimate criticism that insider trading creates perverse incentives. If a decision-maker is influenced to make a decision that harms their organization because the decision-maker would profit from a prediction market trade, that's a bad thing.
which is also a problem with journalism, politically funded media has vested interest in getting out the news because it influences the outcome of the politics in their favour.
That's a problem with journalism, but it's a different problem.
Prediction markets aren't really comparable to journalism anyway. Journalism mostly reports on what's been happening, it doesn't revolve around future predictions. Prediction markets don't tell stories or give many details like journalism does.
It is very true that elite journalists use their connections and inside sources (remember Deep Throat?), but I think the resentment against insider knowledge on speculation market is that they have an unfair advantage used for their own financial gain, while journalists use it to inform the public (and yes, gain fame, and some job security as well, but it's not as the obvious interest of the insider on speculation market. That said, asymmetric knowledge is a feature of free exchange in free markets, and will always be, and as long as no fraud is exercised in the trade, people can try and see a pattern in the voting and join.
In both the case of the insider journalist and the inside trader, the public is better informed, and the informer personally gains. On what basis could the journalist be admirable but the trader shameful?
I've not seen evidence of elite journalists pushing for more citizen journalism.
I'm a citizen journalist covering my small town that would otherwise be a news desert. I've been working hard on a how-to, to inspire and enable other people to do what I've been doing, at a level of effort that one can do as a hobby. I recently tried to pitch this how-to at my local TEDx as a talk. Despite the chairman complimenting my pitch as an example of one that was very well prepared, one of the judges torpedoed the idea on the grounds that it's bad to encourage non-credentialed people to publish, and that involvement by the non-credentialed is a major problem in journalism right now.
Meanwhile, I've searched far and wide for examples of citizen journalists doing what I do. There are not many examples, and a lot of what seems to be small-town citizen journalism is from professional journalists who lost their jobs and created their own gigs.
I had not thought about it like this: that all the kum-by-yah, everyone wins nonsense that has pervaded so much of the culture is a great way to defend elites from disruption by normies.
I have been thinking a lot lately about art in the midwest, a place that I have recently returned to. There used to be good artists in the midwest, peopel with skill. You can’t find it anymore except from the occasional rare talent whose gift just can’t be stop (I know one of those).
But no one is cultivating skill among regular kids any longer. Going to arts events out here is depressing.
It hadn’t occurred to me that this is all part of an elite strategy to undermine competition by non-coasties. Good point.
Excellent insight. Similarly, I’ve been thinking about marriage in elite circles. Divorce and single parent families encouraged in lower classes and as policy, but monogamy and long-term marriage practiced far more among themselves.
Of course, we'd expect negative polarization to eventually demand a ban on journalism, only allowing prediction markets
I think most people have a gut feeling that "insider trading" is wrong but are really confused about why, because most people are not used to think of trading in markets as trading in information. They often cite things like market fairness or influencing outcomes, but that's besides the point. Your other piece about keeping secrets convinced me that it's purely a matter of spilling confidential information, on equal footing as talking to a journalist.
Consequently, any person in a position that requires keeping confidentiality should not be allowed to participate in certain prediction markets. That's actually a good thing that will give prediction markets more credibility. And if insiders still insist on trading, maybe we should call them "whistleblowers" instead of "insider traders"?
Folks who should not be allowed to trade on certain topics, should not be allowed to talk to reporters on those topics.
I completely agree, if that wasn't clear.
Prediction markets is in a class of its own. I don’t see it as being on the same footing as journalism.
Some of it comes from the distaste for financialization, yeah? Like how merchants and bankers were considered low class / distasteful in the past.
Ancients who disrespected merchants and bankers would also have disrespected journalists. It is we moderns who have come to respect the educated and articulate so much more.
I'm thinking of the fact around LLMs and AI development online, in the sense that it is information itself that holds more leverage, and with this also power lately. It's not a scientific fact that a government position would necessarily have access, in all cases, to substantial futures market information ahead of others. Since journalism involves gathering information, it does place itself systematically in a more advantaged career position in this power-competition structure, where reliance on the internet is a key function.
"Pushing rivals towards egalitarianism undermines them"?? This is not the motive of the people pushing towards egalitarianism. The motive is to help the people who are being oppressed by their authorities. Easy-access elections, for example, help the poor and minorities who otherwise would have little political influence and would get screwed on pollution, work conditions, housing, public transportation, segregation, etc.
It can be a legitimate criticism that insider trading creates perverse incentives. If a decision-maker is influenced to make a decision that harms their organization because the decision-maker would profit from a prediction market trade, that's a bad thing.
Insider trading by non-decision-makers is not necessarily bad, unless it involves kickbacks to the decision-makers (which creates the perverse incentive again).
Much criticism of prediction markets is not valid. I think criticism is often influenced by general resistance to new institutions and also by the free-market ideological flavor. The egalitarian nature of it isn't the reason - how egalitarian is it really?
In the quoted sentence of mine, I made no claim about motives.
My reading of the quoted sentence, in context, is that you're offering it as an explanation of why elite institutions push for egalitarianism.
But the actual reason they push for egalitarianism is because they have a psychological motive to do so, because it helps people. If it undermines rivals, it undermines just those rivals who are harming people.
You're trying to interpret the push for egalitarianism through the lens of in-group favoritism, or perhaps social Darwinism, but neither are the main reason in this case. Humans are not exclusively scheming bastards - sometimes they do good things for good reasons.
I think it doesn't really matter what're their motives but such norms seem to be victorious for reasons more related to local adaptiveness is the argument.
It's an incorrect argument. Egalitarianism is not popular among some elites because of any systematic weeding-out of non-egalitarian elite groups. There hasn't been enough selection pressure on elite groups for that to happen. Actually, most elite groups are non-egalitarian - you have your dictators and billionaires who serve only their own interests, to everyone else's expense.
Egalitarianism is popular among some elites because of a human psychological tendency to want to help the oppressed.
> It can be a legitimate criticism that insider trading creates perverse incentives. If a decision-maker is influenced to make a decision that harms their organization because the decision-maker would profit from a prediction market trade, that's a bad thing.
which is also a problem with journalism, politically funded media has vested interest in getting out the news because it influences the outcome of the politics in their favour.
That's a problem with journalism, but it's a different problem.
Prediction markets aren't really comparable to journalism anyway. Journalism mostly reports on what's been happening, it doesn't revolve around future predictions. Prediction markets don't tell stories or give many details like journalism does.
It is very true that elite journalists use their connections and inside sources (remember Deep Throat?), but I think the resentment against insider knowledge on speculation market is that they have an unfair advantage used for their own financial gain, while journalists use it to inform the public (and yes, gain fame, and some job security as well, but it's not as the obvious interest of the insider on speculation market. That said, asymmetric knowledge is a feature of free exchange in free markets, and will always be, and as long as no fraud is exercised in the trade, people can try and see a pattern in the voting and join.
In both the case of the insider journalist and the inside trader, the public is better informed, and the informer personally gains. On what basis could the journalist be admirable but the trader shameful?
Sacredness. Press is sacred, whereas markets are profane. Why is press sacred? Because journalists and their elite friends have told everybody so.
“undermine respect for property authorities,”
Proper?
yes; fixed