Russ Allbery

There are moderated groups. The NetNews Moderator's Handbook[1] has technical details (and more) but basically:

'Moderated' means that all postings to the newsgroup go to a mail
address (e.g. comp.std.unix@uunet.uu.net) instead of appearing
in the newsgroup directly. The postings are then forwarded via
email to a moderator, or group of moderators, or even an automated
program, who decides whether to actually inject the article into
the newsgroup or to reject it as not meeting guidelines spelled
out in the group's charter.

1: https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/usefor/other/moderators-handbook

USENET never really solved spam. I remember the statistic that at one point one third of usenet traffic was spam and another third was spam cancels. Here's what people felt at the time: https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/writing/rant.html

(the "cancel" message was hilarious since when invented it was unauthenticated, i.e. anyone could delete any post on any group in USENET! This had to be fixed:

https://www.templetons.com/usenet-format/cancel.html )

Also found https://www.gdargaud.net/Hack/NoSpam.html which is a great little time capsule site..

Ha-Joon Chang's works

Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Samaritans:_The_Myth_of_Free_Trade_and_the_Secret_History_of_Capitalism
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WU9DgfOMpmo

Economics: The User's Guide
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/may/29/economics-the-users-guide-ha-joon-chang-review

Jane Jacobs

Cities and the Wealth of Nations
https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/reviews/books/0-394-72911-0.html

You could download a news reader (I liked slrn; other people like tin or trn or pan; but there's a bunch of others) and find a free text server.

Or you could download INN and set up your own local group for you and your friends.

http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/software/inn//

(Perhaps INN isn't the best server to start with! Maybe Diablo is better.)

http://www.openusenet.org/