In a quickly emerging environment dominated by TikTok, print and online fake news, ChatGPT journalism and Op-Eds, payola, press releases and public relations operators and campaigns, demolition jobs and distortions, the Fourth Estate is gradually but inevitably being cauterized
Though not from a lack of good intentions, as substantial agricultural hectarage shifted ownership to farmer-beneficiaries, the question of comparative productivity and land valuation arose together with the prospect of potentially higher values where land use shifted from marginally producing agriculture to higher value industrialized, commercialized, and urbanized uses.
All assumed greater professionalism, higher operational efficiencies, and economies of scale. All assumed the transfer of development risk to the private sector who then charge risk premiums. All assumed greater gross domestic productivity. And all assume an eventual re-transition to government upon achieving internal rates of return.
The difficulty is in seeing where the costs lie beyond our tax pesos, the cost compendia, and who pays ultimately pays when a comprehensive accounting is undertaken.