There are only different kinds of dependence. If your financial security is derived from the approval of others, you are not independent

From To Slightly Reduce How Much the Internet Sucks, Use Positive Reinforcement by Freddie deBoer.  He makes a point that parallels an age old debate.  

I can begin by repeating a common refrain here: there is no such thing as independent media; there are only different kinds of dependence. If your financial security is derived from the approval of others, you are not independent.

I read an essay recently in The Idea of America by Gordon S. Wood.  The book is a wonderfully erudite and insightful collection of essays from across his career.  The particular essay was Interests and Disinterestedness in the Making of the American Constitution. 

Wood is discursive and hard to extract.  The basic argument he is exploring is the philosophical approach to addressing the perceived failures of the Articles of Confederation as a context for the Constitution.  

One camp, the Mandarin Class camp in my terminology, were distressed by the naked populism of democracy as practiced in the state legislatures.  Legislatures dominated by men on the make.  

Although Madison in these years had some notable legislative achievements, particularly with his shepherding into enactment Jefferson’s famous bill for religious freedom, he was continually exasperated by what Jefferson years later (no doubt following Madison’s own account) referred to as “the endless quibbles, chicaneries, perversions, vexations, and delays of lawyers and demi-lawyers” in the assembly. Really for the first time, Madison found out what democracy in America might mean. Not all the legislators were going to be like him or Jefferson; many of them did not even appear to be gentlemen. The Virginia legislators seemed so parochial, so illiberal, so small-minded, and most of them seemed to have only “a particular interest to serve.” They had no regard for public honor or honesty. They too often made a travesty of the legislative process and were reluctant to do anything that might appear unpopular. They postponed taxes, subverted debts owed to the subjects of Great Britain, and passed, defeated, and repassed bills in the most haphazard ways. Madison had enlightened expectations for Virginia’s port bill in 1784, but the other legislators got their self-serving hands on it and perverted it. It was the same with nearly all the legislative proposals he sought to introduce, especially those involving reform of the legal code and court system. “Important bills prepared at leisure by skilful hands,” he complained, were vitiated by “crudeness and tedious discussion.” What could he do with such clods? “It will little elevate your idea of our Senate,” he wrote in weary disgust to Washington in 1786, to learn that the senators actually defeated a bill defining the privileges of foreign ambassadors in Virginia “on the principle . . . that an Alien ought not to be put on better ground than a Citizen.”  This was carrying localism to absurdity.

For those concerned about the shortcomings of raw democracy and its practitioners's obeisance to popular will and to their own self-interests (political and financial), there was only one obvious solution - disinterested political leaders.  Leaders with the financial means and values to rise above crude corruption and to make decisions based on merit or principle on behalf of the commonweal.

The contest was not so much between Federalists and Anti-Federalists.  It was between those comfortable with the sordid implications of raw democracy and those aspiring to a more Age of Enlightenment, rational form of governance.

The only problem being for those advancing the argument for disinterested politicians (with the values and financial means to be incorruptible) is that that position looked more than passingly like an argument for a new-formed aristocracy.  

It can be seen as a contest between those arguing that the best form of government was the direct democracy of the unwashed masses electing partisan representatives with interest, i.e. willing to benefit themselves and their constituents versus those arguing that the best form of government were disinterested political leaders who had the means to make independent decisions regardless of their own financial concerns and their own personal opinions.  

A choice between political leaders motivated by interests versus governance by political leaders able to rise above the turbulence of the squalid fray.  

Wood's whole essay is an uncomfortable read because it forces us to examine the traditional founding experience in a different fashion than we are accustomed to. 

It is the same sort of disconnect you get when reading Thomas Paine.  When he wrote about freedom and liberty, he is unparalleled in his inspiration.  But you don't have to be conservative to also see a subtext of radical egalitarianism emerging.  Coerced egalitarianism.

deBoer is basically observing that the internet is a manifestation of those with Interest.  They are dependent on and court the mob for their own financial well-being.  That is in contrast to those in the array who hue to principled debate, evidence, logic and reasoning.  The internet by its nature lends itself to those with Interest and is not particularly hospitable to those in the Disinterestedness camp.