The notion of democracy came to us from Ancient Greece. The citizens of the ancient Greek city-states got together in the square and took decisions on changes in the city’s life by way of direct open voting. Roughly speaking, the decision considered by the majority of citizens to be the most reasonable and expedient was taken. Political science calls such political system "direct democracy." However, with the course of time the cities developed; their territory expanded, the number of dwellers grew, cities merged into a single administrative unit. It happened so that the number of people did not allow gathering in the square any longer, since there was simply not enough space to accommodate everybody. They needed a way out.
They found it: direct democracy transformed into "representative democracy": the people are still recognized to be the source of authority, but the powers and authorities to administer the affairs of the state are delegated to representative bodies, such as parliament. People elected by citizens became members of parliament. People no longer needed to get together in the square for this purpose: you could cast you vote indirectly, through the prototype of today’s ballots. What was the important difference? From voting for decisions society shifted to voting for people, who would take decisions.
That immediately triggered advertising of candidates: through opinions of opinion leaders in the state, posters, leaflets, etc. Already at that time someone decided to pay to opinion leaders for the vote in favour of a particular candidate.
As time went by, opinions of opinion leaders "rose in price" in the eyes of the public, but not all candidates could afford paying for services of that kind. Besides, opinion leaders were not so numerous, and it is highly possible that there wouldn’t be enough opinion leaders for all candidates. After that, they started to "buy" votes of minor opinion leaders, and then they got to common voters, and more often they combine both. Has it resulted in a collapse of the political system? No, it hasn’t. Has it resulted in a collapse of the economic system? No, it hasn’t. The humankind has been successfully existing and reproducing on the Earth, with the population growing year after year. Why? Probably, because the man, who had enough money to pay to opinion leaders, already was a successful (and well-off) person, who apparently wouldn’t take irresponsible and unreasoned decisions for the sake of immediate enrichment.
There is a direct analogy between the mechanism of representative democracy and the mechanism of search engines. Compare:
- External links give their votes for the site proper, but not for its content;
- There are more weighty links and less weighty links;
- Links can be bought;
- The price of a link depends on its weight.
Search engines state that bought links are not good, that these are not "real" links; search engines try to struggle with bought links. Today it is due to bought links that many well-known web-sites offering good-quality and cheap services are ranked by search engines at the top. Many sites sell links.
Since there is an opinion, imposed on us by the policy of search engines, that buying and selling links is a king of fraud, large and major sites do not sell links because this may harm their reputation, but if they do sell, then they do it secretly.
Is buying links an evil? We can not say for sure whether it is really so. Nevertheless, all major sites buying and selling links by doing so give an answer: no, it’s not an evil. Recently, at the web-site text-link-ads.com, a link popularity ad firm, it was noticed something suggesting that bought links are gradually becoming legitimate.
It’s difficult to say 100% that Wall Street Journal web-site sells links; but may be it proves that major Internet players are taking a positive view on buying and selling links.
It goes without saying that a situation when links are bought and sold has both negative and positive aspects. However, firstly, it’s an accomplished fact. Secondly, every known phenomenon has two sides, and many of such phenomena have been recognized by society as useful and important.
Probably, it’s high time that our opinions about the "fraudulent" nature of bought links were revised. Both by us and by search engines? This question still remains open.
