Everyone should be concerned - right, left and every 1 in between.

[kpete]

:large
https://twitter.com/saraturner19/status/717714854405140481?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

https://twitter.com/EricBoehlert/status/717701811214356480?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
http://investmentwatchblog.com/only-six-corporations-own-all-mainstream-media-in-the-united-states/
http://www.wakingtimes.com/2015/08/28/the-illusion-of-choice-90-of-american-media-controlled-by-6-corporations/

[JDPriestly]

1. Yes. We should be concerned.

A problem as big as government censorship is the corporate censorship of our news. We get the information that the megacorporations who own the news media want us to get. No more. No less.

This needs to change.

[hfojvt]

16. actually we seem to get more

Somerby complains that the "gatekeepers are gone". Fringe people and fringe ideas used to be kept out of the mainstream, now they float down that stream like a thousand points of excrement.

That could be deliberate too, as it tends to crowd out and drown out any substance, even on places like DU.

[Scuba]

2. Thanks Bill Clinton for signing the Telecommunications Act of 1996.

[FailureToCommunicate]

10. And Ronald Raygun for elimating the Fairness Doctrine in '87

http://articles.latimes.com/1987-06-21/news/mn-8908_1_fairness-doctrine

[merrily]

51. The FCC could have revived the Fairness Doctrine---until the Obama Administration put the nail in

coffin. Now, it will take an act of Congress--and what is the likelihood of that these days?

Many of the same Democrats who opposed Reagan's move on the Fairness Doctrine were ever so silent during the Clinton and Obama administrations.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairness_Doctrine

There are also anti-trust issues that government has given the go ahead about, too. It's a lot more complex than your post indicates.

[ReasonableToo]

3. Democracy Now, TYT, Pacifica radio. Nt

[rusty quoin]

9. Most people don't see it.

[rurallib]

29. freespeech tv. The only real news on cable or dish

[Ferd Berfel]

52. Unfortunately

neither Comcast or ATT Uverse carry it.

[Hydra]

4. This is what they said capitalism wasn't about

Lack of competition. But this is exactly what happens. One day, one of the companies will own everything.

[beastie boy]

7. At the risk of exposing myself as an old fart,

read up on Marx. This is exactly what he predicted.

[Hydra]

11. Oh, I know- I haven't read Marx

But I have read that he basically extrapolated where Capitalism would logically go, and I came to the similar conclusions independently. I'm just trying to point out the coming trend for the flat earthers :p

[Fantastic Anarchist]

37. Marx isn't the only (or the first) to bring these ideas to light.

You may be interested in my post and the link therein:

Link to post in this thread:

Marx wasn't the first ...

Link to "Proudhon and Marx" via Anarchist Library

If you are interested in revolutionary ideas, I think (and hope) the links above will help you with a starting point. Also, I highly recommend reading both Marx and Proudhon (and other revolutionary thinkers). So many ideas and so insightful and ahead of their time. If you would like more sources and links, I'm happy to help.

Happy reading!

Edit to add: A true free-market can only exist within a socialist econom]y (yes, often considered to be polar opposites, yet this is the model that truly lets people live in a free-society). These ideas are often expressed in participatory economics and workers' democratic ideals such as cooperatives. One model, termed Mutualism was developed by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and advanced by Kevin Carson.

Market socialism is a type of economic system involving the public, cooperative, or social ownership of the means of production in the framework of a market economy. Market socialism differs from non-market socialism in that the market mechanism is utilized for the allocation of capital goods and the means of production.[1][2][3] Depending on the specific model of market socialism, profits generated by socially owned firms (i.e. net revenue not reinvested into expanding the firm) may variously be used to directly remunerate employees, accrue to society at large as the source of public finance, or be distributed amongst the population in a social dividend.[4]

Although economic proposals involving social ownership with factor markets have existed since the early 19th century, the term "market socialism" only emerged in the 1920s during the socialist calculation debate.[5] Contemporary market socialism emerged from the debate on socialist calculation during the early-to-mid 20th century among socialist economists who believed that a socialist economy could neither function on the basis of calculation in natural units nor through solving a system of simultaneous equations for economic coordination, and that capital markets would be required in a socialist economy.[6]

Early models of market socialism trace their roots to the work of Adam Smith and the theories of classical economics, which consisted of proposals for cooperative enterprises operating in a free-market economy. The aim of such proposals was to eliminate exploitation by allowing individuals to receive the full product of their labor while removing the market-distorting effects of concentrating ownership and wealth in the hands of a small class of private owners.[7] Among early advocates of market socialism were the Ricardian socialist economists and mutualist philosophers. In the early 20th century, Oskar Lange and Abba Lerner outlined a neoclassical model of socialism which included a role for a central planning board (CPB) in setting prices equal marginal cost to achieve Pareto efficiency. Even though these early models did not rely on genuine markets, they were labeled "market socialist" for their utilization of financial prices and calculation. In more recent models proposed by American neoclassical economists, public ownership of the means of production is achieved through public ownership of equity and social control of investment.

Market socialism is distinguished from the concept of the mixed economy, because unlike the mixed economy, models of market socialism are complete and self-regulating systems.[8] Market socialism is also contrasted with social democratic policies implemented within capitalist market economies: while social democracy aims to achieve greater economic stability and equality through policy measures such as taxes, subsidies and social welfare programs; market socialism aims to achieve similar goals through changing patterns of enterprise ownership and management.[9]

Wikipedia: Free-market socialism

[dreamnightwind]

43. Many thanks for this post

I have read up a little in this area, but still have much to learn, great post!

[Fantastic Anarchist]

45. Thank you!

It's very interesting stuff. Especially when one is brought up with the exact opposite of the truth. So many untruths exposed!

[Laffy Kat]

12. Yup. Monopoly capitalism just like Marx predicted. nt

[scottie55]

20. Embrace "Big Brother"

Orwell anyone?

[Fantastic Anarchist]

38. Not only Marx ...

There are others ...

[Fantastic Anarchist]

36. Some of his ideas, like scientific socialism ... (Edited)

... actually originated with the anarchist, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. Marx admired Proudhon and formulated his brand after reading Proudhon's work, "What is Property?" The common misconception is that Engels formulated the idea, which is not true. Of course, once the relationship between Marx and Proudhon became acrimonious, then Marx started to treat everything he learned as his own, and dismissing those elements that didn't fit with his dogma in his revisions.

Edit:

Suffice to say, the accounts of Marx and Engels are highly distorted and almost always charged with scorn.[18] This is unsurprising given that they considered Proudhon as their main theoretical competitor within the socialist movement. Indeed, at the start of the Franco-Prussian war Marx wrote that the French needed “a good hiding” and that a German victory would “shift the centre of gravity of West European labour movements from France to Germany” which would “mean the predominance of our theory over Proudhon’s.”[19]

Be that as it may, and regardless of the misrepresentations that Marx inflicted on Proudhon, it is also fair to say that he developed many of the themes he appropriated from Proudhon (“One of Marx’s most important teachers and the one who laid the foundations for his subsequent development.”[20]). As Marx suggested:

Proudhon’s treatise Qu’est-ce que la propriété? is the criticism of political economy from the standpoint of political economy... Proudhon’s treatise will therefore be scientifically superseded by a criticism of political economy, including Proudhon’s conception of political economy. This work became possible only owing to the work of Proudhon himself.[21]

...

The awkward fact is that many key aspects of Marxism were first suggested by Proudhon. For Benjamin Tucker “the tendency and consequences of capitalistic production... were demonstrated to the world time and time again during the twenty years preceding the publication of ‘Das Kapital’” by Proudhon, as were “the historical persistence of class struggles in successive manifestations.” “Call Marx, then, the father of State socialism, if you will,” Tucker argued, “but we dispute his paternity of the general principles of economy on which all schools of socialism agree.”[22] Moreover “Proudhon propounded and proved [the theory of surplus value] long before Marx advanced it.”[23]

...

Marx argued that credit system presents “the means for the gradual extension of co-operative enterprises on a more or less national scale” and so the “development of credit” has “the latent abolition of capital ownership contained within it.” It “constitutes the form of transition to a new mode of production” and “there can be no doubt that the credit system will serve as a powerful lever in the course of transition from the capitalist mode of production to the mode of production of associated labour.”[35] Proudhon would hardly have disagreed. For Marx, abolishing interest and interest-bearing capital “means the abolition of capital and of capitalist production itself.”[36] For Proudhon, “reduction of interest rates to vanishing point is itself a revolutionary act, because it is destructive of capitalism.”[37]

Marx asserted that “Proudhon has failed to understand” that “economic forms” and “the social relations corresponding to them” are “transitory and historical,” thinking that “the bourgeois form of production” and “bourgeois relations” were “eternal.”[38] Yet Proudhon explicitly argued that the “present form” of organising labour “is inadequate and transitory.”[39] Hence the need to “organise industry, associate labourers and their functions.” Association “is the annihilation of property” and this “non-appropriation of the instruments of production” would be based on “the equality of associates.”[40]

Much more including source links here:

Proudhon and Marx

[eppur_se_muova]

30. Who said it wasn't ?

“People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.”
― Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations

Yes, that Adam Smith. Starting from this premise, Smith argued against "incorporations" (i.e. guilds and unions) of workers as stifling competition. But exactly the same statement could be made about the executives of private corporations -- they seldom meet together for any other purpose.

[Fantastic Anarchist]

40. Wasn't Smith an advocate of cooperatives?

I know that capitalists love him, but wasn't he actually a proponent of ideas that would later express themselves as socialist, with thinkers such as Proudhon and Marx advancing and building upon these ideas?

You may be interested in my post in this thread:

Marx and Proudhon

[eppur_se_muova]

48. There seem to be a few things in "The Wealth of Nations" ....

that would have neoliberal economists clutching their pearls. And don't forget that wasn't his only work!

Thanks for the pointers to Proudhon; bookmarking for later.

[Fantastic Anarchist]

54. Thank you for the link!

[bvar22]

46. It is frighteningly similiar to the game Monopoly.

We all played it as children. Inevitably, one player would wind up owning everything, and we would all quit and start a new game later.

The problem in Real Life it that there is NO WAY TO QUIT. Even after one person (or 1%) wind up owning EVERYTHING, the game doesn't end. All the 99% losers are required to keep rolling the dice and going around the board with NO CHANCE at bettering their position, while the Fat Cat just keep raking in all the money.

Our system desperately needs a RESET button.

[FreedomRain]

53. That is the point

Although the game was softened and changed considerably to make it palatable to American consumers, the original intent of the game was to show the pointlessness of capitalism.
straight dope

[Equinox Moon]

5. So fortunate that we have the Internet,

alternative news sources and social media.

It takes time and self-effort to stay well informed.

[dchill]

15. They'll be taking that away, too.

Net neutrality. The worst euphemism ever.

[Equinox Moon]

22. I don't know much about 'Net Neutrality'

I have heard of it, yet I don't know what it is all about. I guess I will need to look it up on the INTERNET.

[dchill]

23. Google is your friend...

For now.

[Equinox Moon]

25. NEVER! google....

Do you value your privacy? If so, use:

DuckDuckgo.com
Disconnect.me

Anonymous browser:
https://www.torproject.org/

[me b zola]

47. Many working class families do not have the time nor energy to search for news

Many are fortunate just to be able to listen to the tv news as they prepare dinner. Many working class families live on a hamster wheel just to keep a roof over their head and food on the dinner table. Of course, there are too many working families with no home at all.

[world wide wally]

6. And when republicans talk about "big government", they are only focused on

Environmental laws that cost corps money to keep our air and water a little cleaner.
(over regulation, they say)

[tomm2thumbs]

8. and they're coming after the free and open internet

they want to choke off data from all but the controlled sources, and limit what is possible for disagreement and dissension. The end game is control.

[rusty quoin]

13. Yes. We die off and our children are put into a chokehold denying information,

And our children's children are finally completely believing in anything they say.

[JDPriestly]

21. That is why they favor Trump (who opposes net neutrality) and Hillary (who can be corrupted with

money).

Net neutrality is never discussed in this election cycle but it is the top concern of the companies that own the media and control our access to the internet in many cases.

[Algernon Moncrieff]

14. I want Disney to own everything

I want clean, beautifully landscaped streets, and the center of every city to have a large castle. Oh - and a huge nightly fireworks display.

[chervilant]

24. Oh, goodie...

A new addition to my IL!

[Algernon Moncrieff]

60. It's a world of laughter, a world of tears. It's a world of hopes and a world of fears.

There's so much that we share,
That it's time we're aware
It's a small world after all.

It's a small world after all.
It's a small world after all.
It's a small world after all.
It's a small, small world.

[NightWatcher]

26. I too refuse to use the sarcasm thingee. Those who don't get it be damned

[snort]

28. +0

[SammyWinstonJack]

27. Hehe.

[islandmkl]

41. you need Nadin's 'over your head' toon...

it's a nice alternative to using the thing initially and then having a nice retort...

[daleanime]

17. K&R.....

[Rosa Luxemburg]

18. We the people can take them over

buy them out.

[cer7711]

19. Manufactured Consent

As Noam Chomsky (and others) have warned us about for decades.

[AxionExcel]

31. k and r

[rurallib]

32. add in Clear channel - which goes by I heart radio these days I believe - and

NPR and Cumulus and that pretty much covers all the radio.
Throw in Gannett and that pretty much covers all publishing.

I see NPR as only another wing of the MSM

[humbled_opinion]

33. I am not that concerened...

I don't believe any of the crap on TV, very little of the crap I read..... The Internet and forums like this is why I know that I can get the truth.... Now for ill and uninformed people, that stuff should scare the crap out of them....

[pressbox69]

34. At least for now we have the internet

let the corps figure out how to jump on your bandwagon

[Rebkeh]

35. Yep. Eom

[Duval]

39. Damn straight. I've been concerned for years. nt

[grahamhgreen]

42. Actually, if your pro-corporate, pro super pac, it's just fine. Nt

[mhatrw]

44. And they all went running with the "Dean Scream" and the "NYDY Interview Debacle"

and the "Iraq War is necessary" "blockbuster" lies.

[felix_numinous]

49. To assure people vote and buy

against their own interests.

[Enthusiast]

50. The Telecommunications Act of 1996.

We need real change, not more fake ass fucking change.

We can make an accurate claim that the Telecommunications Act of 1996 ruined this country. At least for working class Americans it did. Ruined the country!

[bvar22]

55. That and NAFTA were the beginning of the End.

Thanks, Bill.

[Enthusiast]

58. It's true.

[malaise]

56. GEM$NBComcast

[FighttheFuture]

57. FYI: I do not think GE owns Comcaset or NBC any longer. That is all Comcast. Still, very true

and critical points you have made. thanks.a

[Dont call me Shirley]

59. The billionaire owned Media corporations are Propaganda. We live in a country owned and

controlled by billionaires and their kingdoms (corporations).

Fascism = merger of billionaire's corporations + government (formerly owned by the people) + military.