Scott Alexander

When my salary goes up really fast, that's just me, obviously.

I deserve that.

I'm happy it's happening because I sure as hell caused it.

In short, it's an outrage if eggs cost $10, and that's true even if I make $500,000 a year and made $250,000 the year before.

That massive increase in my income was the result of my blood, sweat, and toil.

I didn't do the egg thing.

My own read on the vibes of a lot of people my age, especially who voted for Trump, is that they actually expect the real sticker price of commodities to go down as the result of some unspecified economic corrective policy.

And if not, well, things will be bad for whoever is in charge.

And this will be true no matter how much anyone makes.

End quote.

Ivan Fyodorovich writes, quote, Scott writes, I was going to ask if the media is really this powerful, but Doc Tam writes, quote,

After seeing how much media opinions on big tech changed overnight in 2016, I learned how much the opinions of journalists in New York City really changes the zeitgeist of discussion.

The journalism industry is so miserable, with people still looking to get college degrees in a field that pays terribly.

Even the alternative media economy is primarily driven by wretched journalism majors.

End quote.

Scott writes, This was a formative experience for many people in Silicon Valley.

There was a sudden turn from the early 2000s world where everyone loved technology and thought that the information superhighway was the utopian world of the cyber future, to the late 2000s world where everyone hated techno-fascist tech-bro techno-oligarchs using the algorithm to addict our children.

Although there was some shift in the underlying terrain, the sheer speed of the change in opinion made a lot of people point to journalists realising that tech was bad for their business and making a united decision to cover it negatively.

Could the same thing happen to an entire economy?

Should we subsidise journalists on the theory that if they're in a good mood, everyone else will be in a good mood too?