Cost needs to be thought of as relative to benefits, and the public externality benefits may not be salient to them.
No, it doesn’t need to be thought of that way when you are asking why private agents do not engage in privately-costly public-goods. Who is paying or otherwise rewarding these cognitive elites into taking the substantial time and effort to write up their thoughts and engage with the many low-quality commenters etc? Has anyone ever gotten tenure for a blog post, or any number of blog posts?
No, it doesn’t need to be thought of that way when you are asking why private agents do not engage in privately-costly public-goods. Who is paying or otherwise rewarding these cognitive elites into taking the substantial time and effort to write up their thoughts and engage with the many low-quality commenters etc? Has anyone ever gotten tenure for a blog post, or any number of blog posts?
Incentives matter.