Thread · 4 tweets · 10 May 2021

This is a very important point: free speech isn't something that you decree a right and then you're done. You need to dedicate significant social structures to make it work in practice. Postal subsidies is a great example. 👇

One of the reasons the US has had a thriving local press can be traced back to rural free delivery, which was basically a way to ensure that local press was competitive on the Internet of the day. (Source: The Creation of the Media, Paul Starr)

Delivery subsidies are one tool that solved a specific issue to do with the cost of delivering physical items at smaller scales. They worked in concert with any number of other interventions (including, eventually, trustbusting the AP.)

Today's problems are different. Many have to do with the destruction of value, governance, & knowledge at scales smaller than global ("disembedding"). We need solutions to match, and ones that work at a time when states are institutionally weak & corps strong. Interesting times!