Should be no secret, I consider Ezra Klein to be a 3rd rate dipshit thinker. His latest column at WashPo only serves to reinforce my opinion. The latest from Klein: The recent blowback from WashPo's attempt to monetize it's content by selling insider access to the machinations of the Washington Political Machine demonstrates the need for the Washington Political Machine to subsidize content providers. Laugh the Fuck Out Loud...

Let's see, a "theoretically" incapable private good(i.e., "news") immediately puts pressure on the Washington Post for canning one of it's more popular columnists, Dan Froomkin, with everyone and their brother cognizant of the fact Froomkin got fired for the fact he questioned/exposed Washington Insider establishment bullshit. And just a couple of days later, lo and behold, we find out the Post is selling corporate access to it's journalistic sources.

Uh, no failure in the "news" here. Pretty freakin efficient in sniffing out the bullshit, if you ask me.

Nevertheless, of course, Ezra Klein blames the "free market" for the Post whoring itself out to the Washington Establishment. After all, "news" and "information" are not "market goods"...they are incapable of being produced privately outside of the State.

Writes Klein:

The question, then, is whether we want newspapers (and magazines, and so forth) so agonizingly vulnerable to these pressures. The news, after all, is not a market good. Among other things, it is not profitable to sell it. But we think society needs it. Cross-subsidization from advertising and classifieds worked so long as they worked. Those days are over.

LOL...talk about a lame, dipshit defense of the Washington Post's sleazy relationship with the State.