Knowledge, as a public good, faces a fundamental market failure in the digital age. The marginal cost of sharing information is essentially zero, yet creating reliable content remains expensive and difficult to monetize. This creates an economic disadvantage for truth versus fabrications, allowing misinformation to flood public discourse.

Digital technologies have amplified this problem beyond previous eras. Social media platforms driven by attention metrics profit from lies and harmful content that spreads faster than verified information. The economics favor sensationalism over accuracy, creating a business model where disseminating falsehoods becomes profitable. AI threatens to worsen this by enabling perfect forgeries at scale.

Wolf proposes three solutions: subsidizing reliable information creation, protecting intellectual property through AI compensation requirements, and changing platform incentives. He advocates for public service obligations for major media companies and defending institutions like the BBC. The author argues that speech has always had limits - libel, slander, and incitement are already illegal - and that platforms should face similar accountability for harmful content. Without intervention, the public good of knowledge risks being drowned by profitable rivers of lies.