Disagree.
There is a common meme that money is the root motivator behind everything that happens. I beg to differ.
Money, of itself, provides only the ability to acquire "stuff." Once one is past a certain basic level, more or larger or better stuff provides little in the way of actual physical pleasure.
The true quite literally insatiable desire is for status and ego gratification. This has been obscured in our society by the fact that the main way one acquires status is by first acquiring money. In pre-modern societies, there were other ways of acquiring status. Indeed, money often flowed from status, not the other way around. Few of these alternative paths exist any more.
Let us look at automobiles as an example. One can get a new Toyota for ~$20k. This car will do, very efficiently, anything a Lamborghini can do, insofar as moving self, others and stuff from place to place. Indeed it will do so more efficiently.
So why would someone want to spend an order of magnitude or more of money to buy the Lamborghini? Because it's a status symbol. Women and others will admire you. People appear to have no limit at all on their appetite for this.
Until quite recently, women competed indirectly for status by the men they latch onto. Men competed to some extent by the women they were seen with.
Status can also be achieved by and is directly intertwined with power. That status/power is much more important for most people than money can be seen by the fact that wealthy men will leave their money-generating activities for years to enter "public service," where the direct monetary rewards are contemptible (by their standards), but their status shoots up tremendously. They will even spend tens of millions of their own money to acquire political office, showing very clearly that money is a means to the end of status for most people, not the other way around.
“Status can also be achieved by and is directly intertwined with power. That status/power is much more important for most people than money can be seen by the fact that wealthy men will leave their money-generating activities for years to enter “public service,” where the direct monetary rewards are contemptible (by their standards), but their status shoots up tremendously. They will even spend tens of millions of their own money to acquire political office, showing very clearly that money is a means to the end of status for most people, not the other way around.”
You are mostly correct, but I disagree that “That status/power is much more important for most people”. I think the people that it is important for are a minority. A majority do not even want the status and power of being a supervisor or boss. The hassle is not worth it to them.
But, that small minority that does crave status and power is far more than enough to be extremely dangerous.
The behavior of a profit-making industry can be satisfactorally explained by what is good for it’s bottom line. So it’s secondary that, of course, people have various other interests than money. It is not neccessary to look to these other, emotional, motives.
The media’s natural predatory desire for government redistribution to increase consumer spending is at the heart of all the behavior Greenfield educes so well. (Though he misunderstands the cause of it.)
As the other commenter’s namesake said so well: “you show me where a man gets his cornpone and I’ll tell you what his opinions are”.
It is about money, but in a different way. The media is a leech on politics, sucking the money from the people who become our government.
Campaigns are very expensive, and they end up becoming a wealth-redistribution scheme that nobody talks about. Candidates take donations from corporations and people, and then hand much of those donations over to the collective "media" in the form of campaign advertising, i.e., ad buys on regional and national television and radio stations.
Look at what happened to Newt Gingrich in Florida. Mitt Romney blanketed the state in negative ads for weeks between the South Carolina and Florida primaries. While the Republican candidates were slandering each other, the "media" was laughing all the way to the bank.
And don't get me started on the Senate campaigns. Those are 33 of the most expensive elections that occur every two years. If we repeal the 17th amendment, we eliminate 100 elections over a six year period, and we eliminate all of that wealth transfer from candidates to the "media."
-PJ