Often, when an industry faces decline, management and ownership will opt to take door number three; rather than reinvesting profits in new businesses or redistributing them to shareholders, they'll direct them to legislators and lobbyists in an effort to buy themselves protection from competition.
Writes the Economist this week.
They are putting it in the context of the decline of newspapers and as they continue
This has been the strategy used by agricultural and manufacturing interests, often, though not always, with success. I'm actually a little surprised that journalism has not been more aggressive or successful with appeals for government help. I don't imagine that a technology as revolutionary as the internet could have been quashed by government interventions (though its development could have been checked in important ways).
Via Adrian Monck
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