Media and Democracy

Good morning. I'm economist and, after the great - and very serious - writing of J. A. Schumpeter on "Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, I'm very sceptic about your use of the term "democracy" in your site. Yours is marketing firm and then you must satisfy your clients. I am curious to know about your public reaction when exit polls will announce Berlusconi's defeat... If a deceitful info could make happy the client, I am afraid this concurs to a great deception of the public, contributing to discredit your image. What a pity!!! Ruggero Orlandi

Comments

Well, I'd haven't read

Submitted by ahapxnct on February 17, 2006 - 12:27pm.

Well, I'd haven't read Schumpeter, so perhaps you could enlighten us and tell us a bit about his conception of democracy? Then we can discuss why you are skeptical about CMD's use of the term.

I'm not sure I follow your analogy, and the argument you're trying to put forth with it. I think it's something like "a marketing firm cannot be deceitful because doing so would discredit its image". That sounds nice, but 1) it's not true, and 2) the analogy is inappropriate for understanding how modern propaganda works. Falsifying exit polls would be too much of a risk to the marketing firm in question, that is true, but there are many other ways of deceiving the public without resorting to bald-faced lies.

Joe Shumpeter spent most of

Submitted by Umina boy on February 17, 2006 - 9:32pm.

Joe Shumpeter spent most of his time pondering the effect of innovation in distorting supply and demand in economic trade cycles. It's odd that someone purporting to be an economist would cite him because although his ideas were useful in getting other people thinking Shumpeter himself was refreshingly honest in accepting that no predictions ever made using his models ever worked...

One area where I guess he does have relevance to CMD debates is that although he was by no means a lefty, he did think that capitalism would eventually give way to socialism as competition over price eventually gets replaced by competition over innovation.

That said, I still don't have a clue about what Ruggero is talking about...

__________________________
The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.
-Friedrich Nietzsche

Back to the original comment

Submitted by bass on February 20, 2006 - 11:20am.

Ruggero,
You refer to CMD as a "marketing firm." Why? What
does it advertise? Itself? It is true that the site
markets some books, but I'm pretty sure the proceeds
are used to support the Center itself. This is not a
profit-driven enterprise. I like to think of it as a
public service site.