Rethinking what's news

I had this thought that the news depends so much, too much on what the government is doing. What if we invented the news media from scratch? Would the wacky activities of our rulers really be the most interesting things that happen on a given day?

I thought I was the only one who thought this way. No more.

Libertarians like to phrase it more along these lines: whatever government subsidizes, it gets more of. But what we’re overlooking when we think that way is that by granting government such an important place in our daily thinking, our moment-to-moment life, we’re feeding that damned beast. We’re giving it power that we don’t believe it deserves. We’re subsidizing and legitimizing government’s power with our own thought energy.

I think Lightning's onto something here. I don't mean we should ignore government and hope it goes away, because that way lies sure tyranny. But we should seek out news of people who succeed and grow the human race without depending on a government boost, without government even entering the sphere of influence. Not an easy task to find these stories, but not impossible either.

Government initiatives to steal our freedom is dog-bites-man. Real news is when man-bites-dog, because it's unusual and fascinating. Government efforts to steal more freedom should not be rewarded with our attention; the media should seek out and cover government efforts to restore our freedom and relinquish power.

Hey! I'm in the media. Take a memo ... Oh wait, I'm not powerful enough to have someone who takes my memos ... where's my keyboard?