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There was nothing stopping other people from buying generators and going down. It's the possibility of competition that's important in my mind. I've come to the

There was nothing stopping other people from buying generators and going down. It's the possibility of competition that's important in my mind. I've come to the conclusion that nothing protects consumers as much as competition

lovich 9y ago
ISP's have a possibility of competition but they don't. The possibility of something happening can not be the end all for legislation
- rlpb 9y ago
  See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly. ISPs are in an objectively different situation from gas stations and the supply of generators over a distance in a disaster situation.
  - derefr 9y ago
    The thing with gas stations is, the gas has to come from somewhere. For various reasons, oil companies are in a natural-monopoly position (or rather, a natural cartel position, that uses various branding tactics to discourage the appearance of collusion—much like the deBeers cartel does for diamonds.) With so much leverage over their direct customers, the oil cartel isn't interested in allowing gas stations to eat into their profit margin. So they buy them. Thus, gas stations become another facet of the cartel.
- tdb7893 9y ago
  I dont think that ISPs have a realistic possibility of competition. There are lots of barriers to entry to start an ISP and the current ISPs could probably just price you out of existence in whatever market you tried to enter anyway
  - Spooky23 9y ago
    There absolutely is. Until the phone companies decided to get out of the business of supplying landlines, there was a competitive market for both dialup and DSL service in the US. In my area, I used to buy EarthLink cable service because they offered higher upload speeds. In the UK, many people can choose one of a dozen ISPs. That's the real reasoning behind Ajit Pai and his pals in the industry hatred of the Title II regulatory classification of internet access. They want to head off local loop unbundling (which requires companies to share local infrastructure at non-discriminatory rates) and ultimately re-create the old Bell Telephone monopoly. Companies like Verizon and Comcast are incredibly inefficient and poorly administered organizations. If meaningful competition were possible, they would be slaughtered in the marketplace.

lovich 9y ago

ISP's have a possibility of competition but they don't. The possibility of something happening can not be the end all for legislation

rlpb 9y ago
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly. ISPs are in an objectively different situation from gas stations and the supply of generators over a distance in a disaster situation.
- derefr 9y ago
  The thing with gas stations is, the gas has to come from somewhere. For various reasons, oil companies are in a natural-monopoly position (or rather, a natural cartel position, that uses various branding tactics to discourage the appearance of collusion—much like the deBeers cartel does for diamonds.) With so much leverage over their direct customers, the oil cartel isn't interested in allowing gas stations to eat into their profit margin. So they buy them. Thus, gas stations become another facet of the cartel.
tdb7893 9y ago
I dont think that ISPs have a realistic possibility of competition. There are lots of barriers to entry to start an ISP and the current ISPs could probably just price you out of existence in whatever market you tried to enter anyway
- Spooky23 9y ago
  There absolutely is. Until the phone companies decided to get out of the business of supplying landlines, there was a competitive market for both dialup and DSL service in the US. In my area, I used to buy EarthLink cable service because they offered higher upload speeds. In the UK, many people can choose one of a dozen ISPs. That's the real reasoning behind Ajit Pai and his pals in the industry hatred of the Title II regulatory classification of internet access. They want to head off local loop unbundling (which requires companies to share local infrastructure at non-discriminatory rates) and ultimately re-create the old Bell Telephone monopoly. Companies like Verizon and Comcast are incredibly inefficient and poorly administered organizations. If meaningful competition were possible, they would be slaughtered in the marketplace.