On Sat, 26 Jul 2008 18:53:29 -0500 (CDT) Joe Greco <jgreco@ns.sol.net> wrote:
http://www.newnetworks.com/ShortSCANDALSummary.htm
Obviously this has its own axe to grind, but anyone who doesn't understand the fundamental truth, that the telcos greedily accepted this, took the money, and then ended up complaining and lobbying until they were allowed to provide much less, virtually noncompetitively, on terms extremely favorable to their own interests, well, if you don't get that, you're blind.
The problem with the free market is that it doesn't work in the public's best interest, but rather in the best interest of the companies involved.
Say What? You talk about government mandated monopolies, government subsidies and massive government regulation and then point to it as a failure of the free market? Do you even know what "free market" means?
Yes, I do. The free market is a system where corporations like to take the easiest road to do the least work to maximize profits, while everyone else is doing the same thing. Normally, this might merely result in the sort of situation you have with Wal-Mart vs K-Mart vs Target, where the consumer gets to trade off different variables (quality of goods, price of goods, condition of store, etc). In the case of telecommunications, however, certain telecommunications companies looked around at the situation and determined it was most easily accomplished by lobbying the government for pseudo-monopoly status, in exchange for promises of an "open network," followed by repeated backpedaling so they wind up providing less on a closed-to-the-competition network, and an easily hoodwinked government that agrees to all of this, with the end result that you wind up with a monopoly (or duopoly). By doing so, one (two) large corporation "wins," maximizing profit while minimizing expenditures *and* competition. The free market created this situation, because, without separation of the network from the service providers, or without stern and fair oversight and regulation, the natural tendency of the free market system will be for the party that owns the last mile infrastructure to see it as "theirs" (hello Ed Whitacre!) and to try to make it as difficult as possible for the competition. This results in things like Ameritech selling wholesale DSL circuits to CLEC's and ISP's for *more* than what they're selling them at retail for via Ameritech's own ISP service. If it isn't readily apparent that I understand what "free market" means, and how our government has caved in to give us anything BUT a free market, well, sigh. The free market has a really tough time operating in an environment where the government ultimately enables and gives a blank check to monopolies. The telcos might disagree... it's a free market... they're free to market whatever they want. ... JG -- Joe Greco - sol.net Network Services - Milwaukee, WI - http://www.sol.net "We call it the 'one bite at the apple' rule. Give me one chance [and] then I won't contact you again." - Direct Marketing Ass'n position on e-mail spam(CNN) With 24 million small businesses in the US alone, that's way too many apples.