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In the United States, railroads are common carriers, so they're not allowed to have discriminatory pricing. Telecoms are also given a lot of government protect
by lmkg 17y ago
In the United States, railroads are common carriers, so they're not allowed to have discriminatory pricing.
Telecoms are also given a lot of government protection, like local monopolies and no liability for the information they deliver, in return for the regulation. The government paid for a lot of the wires and switches with subsidies, which muddles the property rights argument. The government certainly has a right, as well as an obligation to the public, to ensure that its expenditures are to the public benefit.
I personally take the view that, for all intents and purposes, telcoms aren't completely private entities due to the legal and financial privelages they recieve from the government, so reasoning by analogy to other private enterprises is flawed. The crossover is enough to give them a civic obligation in addition to their fudiciary responsibility, enforcable by regulation.
- fnid2 17y agoYou'll have to provide a reference, because this one disagrees, saying (on page 3): Shipping rates vary by type of commodity Each cargo owner pays a different rate http://www.cunninghamreport.com/uploads/backup_docs/585-PortofLosAngeles.pdf?PHPSESSID=bgqtpbce8uun9r8u7ji56iq2v3 http://www.cunninghamreport.com/uploads/backup_docs/585-Port... CSX has pricing rates by commodity http://www.csx.com/?fuseaction=customers.pricing_lists http://www.csx.com/?fuseaction=customers.pricing_lists It's obvious to anyone who has shipped almost anything that costs are different by size and weight and scale.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- Anechoic 17y agoIt's obvious to anyone who has shipped almost anything that costs are different by size and weight and scale. The discriminatory pricing refers to the client, not to the shipped goods. Pricing for different goods by type, size and height is appropriate because of the different resources needed to ship those goods. More fuel and studier cars are needed to move iron loads vs a load of pillows. Moving coal requires open-topped coal cars while moving ice-cream requires refrigerated cars, etc. Telecoms are in the business of moving bits. If they want to charge more to move a gigabyte of video data than they do to charge a gigabyte of text data, or if they want to offer slower speeds for a gigabyte of torrent data vs a gigabyte of FTP data, I think they should better explain how the different types of data justify the different charges.