Seems like you might be pointing to the executives/producers weighing short/long- term gains or risk/reward in a way that doesn’t quite feel right. Whenever that happens, I wonder if there’s a mismatch between the incentive structure for the decision-makers and the well-being of the corporation/shareholders.

“Even so, it feels to me that in some past moment, if you?? been caught burning the Reichstag this flagrantly, you would had been shuffled off to some dusty, unpaid corner of the public sphere to edit a hand-mimeographed newsletter for an audience of ten or twenty local cranks. Instead of being rewarded in a world where no publicity is ever bad publicity.”

I feel like the usual line here might be that Yes, that’s what would have happened if you were caught. But that you could get away with much more without getting caught, so it’s kind of a wash in the end.

But then again, broken window panes aren’t a problem if no one can see them, so maybe the end result is a situation that’s much worse. Hard to wrap my head around the possibility that better access to information about who’s lying and making disingenuous arguments could actually have a net negative impact on public discourse.