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BLOGGING COSTS MONEY. YOU OWE THESE PEOPLE.
TIME IS MONEY. WRITING IS WORK. PEOPLE DESERVE TO GET PAID FOR THEIR LABORS.
You're A Liberal, Right? OK, A Progressive!
You don't mind paying an extra X% for the advertising & marketing of everything you eat, wear, or otherwise use, do you? Well, of course you MIND, but you're used to it, so you pay it without thinking. It's a hidden cost. Involuntary. Automatic. Almost painless. Anyway, TV and radio are free, right? So, you really never think about what TV & radio might be costing you. But those media are advertising-supported. So all that stuff you buy includes money to pay for that advertising. So, unless you NEVER buy ANYTHING, you're paying for advertising, and the money goes to the radio & TV people.
The Internet is free, though, yeah? But there's some advertising on some of the websites. So you must be paying to support those websites, if you buy any of the products advertised. In fact, you're paying to support every website, radio & TV station in the world, every time you buy something, whether you watch, read or listen to them or not.
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It's a passive kind of support, but it works, if only because we've almost ceased to be aware of it. It's just built into the price of everything, and there's nothing you can do about it. When you buy a product that is advertised on Rachel Maddow's show and Bill O'Reilly's show, you're supporting Bill as well as Rachel. And you're supporting Rush Limbaugh and Ron Reagan when you buy stuff that's advertised on both of those shows. You really don't have any choice, unless you want to go to the trouble of boycotting one of these products. And then you're boycotting both Ron & Rush, O'Reilly & Maddow. It's frustrating, but that's the system they've established in the electronic media.
Newspapers and magazines, of course, you actually have to pay for. You have to make a conscious choice and physically give them actual cash on the spot in order to read them. It's not a passive thing at all. You have to make a decision and take action. So, that's better, right? Well, then why are passively-supported no-choice electronic media killing actively-supported choice-required print media? Are we cheap? Lazy? Stupid? Would we rather just stand there and be passively milked like cows? Or would we prefer to use our money to advance our own agendas like human beings, to uphold our own beliefs, express our own tastes and judgment? Hm?
It may be too late for print. The overwhelming expense of real estate, infrastructure, personnel and raw materials, combined with the limits inherent to physically reaching a market, as compared with electronic production & delivery, have drained print media nearly dry. If they cannot reinvent themselves, they may not survive in their present form, or at all. And that's a bad thing. It means the end of choice in media. It means further limitation of your freedom to express yourself in the marketplace of ideas. It means more corporate consolidation and more power to those corporations. That's a very bad thing.
We have a new model that's popped up. In fact, before the corps ever figured out how to exploit the Internet, we were all just using it to reach out and touch each other, to create and communicate free and freely, to express ourselves and change our world for the better. The corps are horning in on this now, sucking up bandwidth, threatening us with lawsuits against fair use of copyrighted materials, "monetizing" something that used to be money-free, grabbing all the eyeballs. We can't take this lying down. We're going to have to fight it. But that means working together, making choices and taking action to support the websites that are important to us.
You pay for your coffee and cigarettes, newspapers and candy, chips and soda, water and energy bars, food and booze, books and records, movies and concerts, cable TV and DVD rentals, cell phone and music services, satellite radio and wireless Internet. You don't expect to get any of that for free. And all that money goes to corporations and people who are already rich, for the most part. You never really think about it, but you are supporting them, even though they use your money to support things you oppose, things that hurt you or hurt others. Things that the blogs listed below are actively fighting, and keeping you informed of every single day. Very bad things, things that you are paying for, things like racial profiling, discrimination against gays, lower pay for women, and trashing the American economy.
There are things you can do about the way your money is used. Maybe you could choose to spend your money at Starbucks or Ben & Jerry's, and to avoid Exxon and WalMart. You could be also be helping to build entirely new models of human interaction, designed around common interests and positive goals, and not just mega-profits for mega-corporations. You could help change the world right here on the World-Wide Web. You could be making the same kinds of small contributions to the work of a few good bloggers as you are now making every day to companies and people you really don't support, politically, socially, philosophically, or spiritually. You know, the bad guys? You could be supporting the good guys instead, before they are starved out of existence.
So, long story short, stop being such a blind weasel, and take some of that Exxon or Marlboro or WalMart or FoxNews money, and send it to your favorite bloggers, instead. Even just a buck or two would help, once a day, once a week, once a month. If nothing else, it would be a way to show your support and feel good about it. Complimentary comments are always nice. But talk is cheap. Blogging isn't, if only in terms of time spent, and opportunity cost. Kick in a little something, and vote for your own future. It's not mandatory or passive, hidden or automatic, built-in or invisible. It's totally voluntary. It's up to you to support good blogs, or not. And that's a good thing.
Here's some of my favorites. Send 'em a buck or two or twenty by PayPal. Please. Thank you.
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