Re:"There's no reason only poor people should have the exper...
by unalone on Friday February 06, 2009 @10:45AM
(#469844)
Market forces aren't infallible. They're compromised by a profit motive, and that's not always a good thing.
If you want to see a market in action, look at TV networks. The big networks move farther and farther away from actual reporting. They go for lowest-common-denominator. The channels that do produce great pieces of TV either do it only sporadically, or they're pay-for channels that attract a more sophisticated audience. Even then, the show that critics call the greatest show in history - The Wire - had to fight to get its last season aired. It had an extremely small viewing audience.
However, if the market chooses the testing procedures, it will reward metrics which are harder to game.
Which metrics possibly exist that can't be gamed? The minute you have any metric, you're creating a "good" and a "bad" scale, and that means that people can cram towards the good as much as possible.
If you want to see a market in action, look at TV networks. The big networks move farther and farther away from actual reporting. They go for lowest-common-denominator. The channels that do produce great pieces of TV either do it only sporadically, or they're pay-for channels that attract a more sophisticated audience. Even then, the show that critics call the greatest show in history - The Wire - had to fight to get its last season aired. It had an extremely small viewing audience.
However, if the market chooses the testing procedures, it will reward metrics which are harder to game.
Which metrics possibly exist that can't be gamed? The minute you have any metric, you're creating a "good" and a "bad" scale, and that means that people can cram towards the good as much as possible.