Prisoners' Dilemma
Two members of a criminal gang are arrested and imprisoned. Each prisoner is in solitary confinement with no means of speaking to or exchanging messages with the other. The police admit they don't have enough evidence to convict the pair on the principal charge. They plan to sentence both to a year in prison on a lesser charge. Simultaneously, the police offer each prisoner a Faustian bargain. If he testifies against his partner, he will go free while the partner will get three years in prison on the main charge. Oh, yes, there is a catch ... If both prisoners testify against each other, both will be sentenced to two years in jail. The prisoners are given a little time to think this over, but in no case may either learn what the other has decided until he has irrevocably made his decision. Each is informed that the other prisoner is being offered the very same deal. Each prisoner is concerned only with his own welfare—with minimizing his own prison sentence.
This leads to four different possible outcomes for prisoners A and B:
- If A and B both remain silent, they will each serve one year in prison.
- If A testifies against B but B remains silent, A will be set free while B serves three years in prison.
- If A remains silent but B testifies against A, A will serve three years in prison and B will be set free.
- If A and B testify against each other, they will each serve two years. Wikipedia
Both prisoners always rat-out the other because regardless of the decision made by the other prisoner, (in the absence of retribution) ratting always benefits the rat.
This is hard for somebody from a high-trust, team-first society to wrap their heads around, but even TH-TF believers buckle when the stakes are high enough and enough opportunities are thrown their way.
An old joke
A seventy-year-old billionaire was chatting with a lushly endowed young lady. Out of the blue, he asked her "Would you sleep with me for five million dollars?"
"Oh YES!" she squealed
"I only have five dollars in my wallet. Will you settle for that?" he pursued.
Indignant, she spat back "What do you think I am, a common whore?"
"We already settled that point" the billionaire responded. "Now we are haggling about the price".
All in
Three minute video clip from the movie Venom which shows a "Protection Racket" in action.
The Extortion or "Protection Racket" involves threatening people, often business owners and demanding payment to ensure "something bad does not happen to fill in blank ." The explicit "service" offered is that the thugs will protect the business against outsiders but the implicit threat is that the thugs will burn down the business or rape the wife and daughter or slaughter the livestock.
This source of revenue only works if they are successful in intimidating every business in the neighborhood. As soon as one business successfully resists them, all the businesses stop making payments. That puts a very, very high incentive to smash any business that MIGHT resist to serve as an object lesson.
The legacy media is in a pickle similar to a protection-racket where the marks are refusing to pay. There are too many marks rebelling for them to enforce their scam. This was never part of their business plan and they lack a graceful way to exit since it seems unlikely that the government will not back-stop their loss of profit.
ERJ - To your last point, had the Blue party remained in power (and perhaps been able to gain a majority), there might have been some driver for some sort of additional support in terms of direct grants or even taxes to keep up "the critical function of the media". That opportunity is past now. Instead, they are facing declining viewership and readership in an era where media is largely owned by corporations, which report to shareholders. At some point the shareholders should (and hopefully will) start coming after the parent companies for fiduciary irresponsibility.
ReplyDeleteThey have one small opportunity - right now - to reinvent themselves as a neutral third party pursuing actual news and truth. That said, my bet is that they squander that opportunity because they cannot overcome themselves.
Change is hard. Changing when you are older and set in your ways is harder. That is why most people and businesses never do it.