You don't have to list them to say that it's a not dichotomy, but you do if you want to demonstrate it's not a dichotomy. I don't know why you're spending 100s of words on the theory of dichotomy, instead of just providing a third option to show how it's not one.
E.g. this could have gone:
LeonB: what about businesses owned by many people?
robertlagrant: ah, yes - what I was saying would put them in the "private ownership" bucket.
Or whatever it is that you're actually thinking of, but are reluctant to say.
I don't know about options, but I was describing two main buckets you could classify things in, so...1ish?
The irony of you determinedly pinning me down, when I'm happy to converse, while you will do anything but answer what I was asking, is hopefully not lost on you.
Apparently I will do anything but answer what you were asking.
Your question was:
>Who should own media? Private people, or the state?
The reason why no one ought to answer a question like that is because it is presented in a format identical to a “bad faith” question.
You may have meant it genuinely but it looks like the old “Have you stopped beating your wife?” lawyer trap.
I chose not to answer the question because it was recognisable as a “false
dichotomy”. Then I explained my reasoning and so on.
I wasn’t “doing anything but answer”ing what you were ostensibly asking. Avoiding it was easy. Trying to inform you and anyone else reading of why such a question is never worth answering, is what took a lot of effort. That’s just par for the course if one chooses to respond to a question that has the format of a bad faith argument. I don’t mind.
So (to carry on your schtick) apparently you feel that if “the undeserving rich” are, as I suggested, in any way restricted from owning media, the only other bucket is state controlled media. Well I’m sorry you feel that way. Perhaps
a democracy could have some laws or something, without turning into a fascist state. Seriously -
the general category of “functional democracy” provides millions of shades “between” oligarchy and totalitarianism - but even saying “between” is giving too much credence to a bad faith preposition.
I’ll go through it for you again if you wish.
Over here at a specific extreme we have a totalitarian regime controlling all the media. Over here at a different extreme we have a small number of rich people owning everything including control of media.
Now we can construct a 1 dimensional line and say that these are two extremes on a single axis. And we can go even further and say, as you have, that all possibilities fall into these two buckets.
Consider though that this world we live in and the world of political possibilities is not a one dimensional world. Nor is it two dimensional or three dimensional. It is “n” dimensional for some inconceivably large “n”. There are many different ways that power can be distributed, channeled and many more ways in which benefits and taxation can be organised - and or other mechanisms and feedback systems other than these. A functional democracy can avoid being either of those two specific buckets. That one dimensional line and those two specific buckets are not in any way inevitable.
E.g. this could have gone:
LeonB: what about businesses owned by many people?
robertlagrant: ah, yes - what I was saying would put them in the "private ownership" bucket.
Or whatever it is that you're actually thinking of, but are reluctant to say.