C.J. Burch had an amusing jibe which I've modified about how we should put the same sin tax of 300% on newspapers which purvey rancid lies to children as we do to R.J. Reynolds. After all, Walter Duranty, who had received a Pulitzer, and covered up a famine that killed ten million under Stalin was probably worse than Joe Camel.
Got me thinking.
What about a world in which the NYT and the Washington Post and the local paper all operate under 300% taxes? So your morning paper, instead of being .50 is now 2.00. Well, as with cigarettes, we have black market smuggling in semi trucks.
And given the local to this universe propaganda, everyone is going to think of these smugglers as the heroic freedom fighters. Not so quick.
In Newspaper Doom, the press is regarded as gossip-mongers. The reporter is either an effeminate and treacherous snake of a man, or a vicious, old biddy who just loves spreading the garbage of other's lives out for everyone to see.
They would regard our national press as a mere after teh fact rationalization of our desire to gossip like mad.
And they see snooping into other's lives as busybodyism, and as living vicariously through another when you should be living your own life. In other words, the press reports are the province of the peeping tom, and the weak and cowardly.
On the Internet, in our timeline, there is a phenomenon called 'mom-blogging' where mothers talk about the trials and triumphs of raising kids, and deal with husbands. None of that exists here.
The Internet exists, but its a far more factory type place than the back fence it is here. Its more efficient and powerful as the people who run it don't make customary allowance for people like me. Its a place without too many safeguards, and where lots of power is concentrated into simple exercises so that you can wipe out all of your company's financial records for the last five years pretty easily. OTOH, you can do more things, quicker and more directly.
The Internet is built more for security from hackers, and with the extra effort and money spent on it by VIP's, the punishement for tampering aka 'hacking' is significantly more severe.
Also, the WW2 warning ...."Loose lips sink ships' has been update to 'loose lips empty accounts'. There is a much stronger enthusiasm for the ability to keep one's mouth shut. Its part of the culture. Edit: This helps keep passwords to the owner.
One example of this is that a notarized or delivered to a judge statement of a promise not to reveal certain data is accepted under the Fifth Amendment. "I'm claiming the Fifth Amendment right to withhold information based on a sworn oath to another person who was not engaging in a crime at the time to my awareness."
Of course, you could hammer some other activity with a 300% tax, and see where that took you for a world.
