It's intriguing how long this more subdued perspective has taken to reach the world outside the industry. True, when it comes to finance, the public attitude toward Internet companies has swung to outright ridicule. But public discussions of the Net's political and social impact have the same credulous tone we remember from the mid-1990s. Sunstein is eminent enough to appear on standard lists of Supreme Court candidates when the Democrats are in power. There are certain commodities, Sunstein says, that have a market value but whose production should not be left strictly to the market because their full effect on public life is not reflected in their profitability or price.
Education is the obvious example.
In a pure-market system, with no attendance laws or publicly supported schools, children from poor families might be sent to sweatshops at age 6 and never learn to read. That ends up being a problem for everyone. Similarly with the news. As content sites across the Net have recently learned, the market doesn't necessarily value them as highly as it does gambling sites or pornography. If you've been frustrated by the difficulties of making content work on the Web, an hour with the book may convince you that the effort is still worthwhile.