8 ms·

Am I just grotesquely cynical that my first thought was “Pai liked this because it hurts AT&T and Comcast, not his paymasters at Verizon.”? Still, good news wh

Am I just grotesquely cynical that my first thought was “Pai liked this because it hurts AT&T and Comcast, not his paymasters at Verizon.”? Still, good news whatever the reason. Competition is desperately needed here, even if it’s only going to be between three or four major options.

ars 8y ago
Yes, you are cynical. Republicans simply have a different utility function. They consider deregulation, and ease of running a business more important than enforcing fairness via legislation. They believe the market will do a better job than they can do. Democrats don't trust the market to do that, and feel they can do a better job.
- craftyguy 8y ago
  Unfortunately we have no alternatives to choose candidates from that understand neither extremes will work, and that you actually need a mixture of legislation/regulation in the right places, and no legistlation/regulation in others.
  - ars 8y ago
    That's why you make the parties fight. Like have the house and the senate controlled by different parties, or the president and the legislature different parties, etc, etc. There's a reason control usually flip-flops each election, it's the electorate trying to accomplish this. See here: https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2010/sep/07/mary-jordan/do-presidents-always-get-shellacked-midterm-electi/ https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2010/sep...
    - craftyguy 8y ago
      While compromising may have worked in the past, each year brings a more polarized situation where each party is less willing to compromise. > Like have the house and the senate controlled by different parties, or the president and the legislature different parties, etc, etc. This two party system makes it too easy for one party to control all 3 branches (like now..). Having a true multiparty system (>2, preferably more) forces compromise, because you wouldn't have a government without it.
      - andrew_ 8y ago
        One can point to the 24-hour cycle media viciously vying for eyeballs, and the litany of pseudo-news outlets that have gained widespread audiences and which peddle in division for a major portion of the cause. The electorate are being manipulated by our own. Unless the media on all sides walk back the rhetoric it will only get worse in the years to come.
  - vonkow 8y ago
    IMHO, the United States lacks a true left wing party and the Democrats are the party of moderate regulation/legislation (which is unfortunate for a number of reasons).
  - ikiris 8y ago
    They aren't two extremes. Democrats are somewhere around center. It's just the spectrum in the US is shifted vastly right as a whole.
    - ars 8y ago
      Or maybe the EU (which you are comparing to) is shifted vastly to the left? How do you know which it is? But it's irrelevant, for the electorate in question, Democrats are most definitely not center.
      - ikiris 8y ago
        Nowhere did I mention the EU at all. I was using an absolute scale, and yes, frankly the democrats are a bit right of center. I mean if you declare the electorate the spectrum, then nothing means anything, because its all a completely meaningless fluid definition which has no basis in actual reality.
  - rayiner 8y ago
    To the contrary, there is broad consensus and what people are all arguing about is actually the mushy middle. The Republicans won on this one--the 1996 telecom act broadly deregulated the telecom industry. Most of Europe followed suit and deregulated their telecom markets similar to how we did it in the 1996 act. What republicans are worried about is attempts to undo the 1996 reforms. There are people who think that rate regulation, municipal utility boards deciding where infrastructure should be built, etc., are actually good ideas. Probably not a majority of people even in the democrat camp, but there are enough people who don't remember why the 1996 act was a good idea that it makes republicans nervous.
    - techsupporter 8y ago
      > Most of Europe followed suit and deregulated their telecom markets similar to how we did it in the 1996 act. But one big problem with "attempts to undo the 1996 reforms" is that Europe kept (and expanded) linesharing and unbundled network element rules; the United States threw out most mandatory UNE rules and never expanded them to include companies operating networks over coax or new-build fiber optic networks. So now we have this farce where, in some areas, people served by DSL have the choice of several (slow) ISPs because the copper is still technically, kinda unbundled. But if you can't get DSL or can't get a sufficiently fast speed, your sole choice is likely your monopoly cable provider.
      - rayiner 8y ago
        Most large European countries didn't expand unbundling to include cable and fiber either: https://www.oecd.org/sti/broadband/2-7.pdf https://www.oecd.org/sti/broadband/2-7.pdf. None of the five largest EU countries (which comprise the majority of the EU population), applied unbundling to coax. Most don't apply unbundling to fiber either. U.S. copper unbundling rules are weaker than the U.S., but copper is also largely irrelevant in the U.S., because most broadband is over cable or fiber. Unbundling matters more in Europe, but primarily because DSL is much more common in Europe.
    - tonysdg 8y ago
      The problem as I understand it is that deregulation helps a lot in situations where a compelling business case exists for companies to expand/compete, and it hurts a lot where said business case does not exist. As it so happens, crowded urban centers, where a single cell tower or fiber-optic network can serve thousands of paying customers, benefit a great deal from deregulation. Sparsely populated rural areas, however, where "last mile" really means "last 30 miles", get screwed over by deregulation since companies have minimal incentive to expand if it only means 10 new paying members. I'm not saying either extreme is perfect -- indeed, deregulation likely helps more than it hurts given increasing population density in U.S. cities -- but it seems to me that there are advantages to both sides of the equation.
- anadem 8y ago
  Unfortunately deregulation leads to consolidation which leads to monopolies.
  - AmericanChopper 8y ago
    What mechanism does deregulation introduce that leads to monopolization? The opposite is the truth. The most regulated markets are the least competitive. More than anything else, regulations are barriers to companies that want to enter markets.
- malcolmgreaves 8y ago
  The Republican political identity is no longer that of small, limited government and free market policies (see: massive tarrifs and bailouts of the affected domestic industries to win votes).
  - TangoTrotFox 8y ago
    One could argue that the reason that tariffs are necessary is because we do not have an economy purely dictated by the free market, which in this particular case is probably not a bad thing. A big reason China is able to flood the US with a trade surplus is because they have a different view on the value of humanity. For instance workers in China, in some cases, work in something that's not that far off from slave-like conditions. $1000 iPhones are manufactured by the millions by people earning a few bucks a day, living in on-site dormitories, in buildings surrounded by 'suicide nets' to try to stop impulsive suicide from workers. In the US we would never tolerate such conditions and it would be legally impossible on a large number of levels, the least of which not also being our minimum wage. While I think this is probably the right way to go, it also means that our taking the higher moral ground there means that we're severely hurting domestic producers by making it literally impossible for them to compete with the prices that they can produce things for. By not relying entirely on market forces we've crippled our ability to compete. In a world where politics, on both the right and left, was not dictated by business interests there would be bipartisan support to let's say "adjust" our relations with China on this front. It's reminiscent of the times past when countries would speak out against slavery and then buy the dirt cheap American cotton and tobacco by the ton. We believe workers have the right to certain reasonable working conditions and in the process of doing so end up massively cutting employment in our nation and then shipping trillions of dollars to nations with no such concerns. It's hardly logical regardless of your political leaning.
- Shikadi 8y ago
  Except there are things called natural monopolies. See: Railroads, water, electricity, telephones.
  - mc32 8y ago
    And search engines and social media and streaming services...
    - smt88 8y ago
      None of those are natural monopolies. Every human could easily switch from Facebook to any competitor right now. The same is not true of cable, ISPs, electricity, gas, etc.
      - int_19h 8y ago
        You can switch from Facebook, but since the value of Facebook is derived entirely from connecting to other people on it, any such switch would be utterly useless unless the people you want to interact with also switch. The result is that a sufficiently large social network is, effectively, a natural monopoly. Which is exactly why no-one has managed to dethrone Facebook yet, not even by throwing lots of money at a better alternative (like G+).
        cookiecaper 8y ago
        No one has managed to dethrone Facebook because the CFAA allows private companies like Facebook to stop anyone who'd actually provide the facilities to allow for a smooth transition. BigCos like Facebook and Google lean on the aggressive monopoly-making powers of the CFAA every day. Look up the dockets and you'll see the companies making active use of these powers. In particular, check out Facebook v. Power Ventures, where an entrepreneur was left owing $3M in damages to Facebook for allowing users to extract only their own information. Underpinning all digital "monopolies" is copyright law, which is eminently changeable. It really pets my peeves when people suggest things like streaming services are natural monopolies as if there is nothing that can be done about it. Copyright was invented because since the printing press, intellectual goods are so easy to copy that it'd be impossible to sell them at scale without state-enforced supply ceilings (aka copyright). Doesn't sound like a "natural monopoly" to me. It's wholly artificial and we could change it if we wanted.
- kalleboo 8y ago
  This is a regulation though. They're telling private pole owners what they have to do.
- tschwimmer 8y ago
  This is demonstrably false. Tariffs are are one of the least pro-business legislative tools. Businesses and sometimes whole industries can evaporate when costs increase by 25% overnight.
rory096 8y ago
Pai worked at Verizon from February 2001 to April 2003 when he was four years out of law school. What evidence do you have that Verizon are his 'paymasters'?

ars 8y ago

Yes, you are cynical. Republicans simply have a different utility function. They consider deregulation, and ease of running a business more important than enforcing fairness via legislation. They believe the market will do a better job than they can do. Democrats don't trust the market to do that, and feel they can do a better job.

craftyguy 8y ago
Unfortunately we have no alternatives to choose candidates from that understand neither extremes will work, and that you actually need a mixture of legislation/regulation in the right places, and no legistlation/regulation in others.
- ars 8y ago
  That's why you make the parties fight. Like have the house and the senate controlled by different parties, or the president and the legislature different parties, etc, etc. There's a reason control usually flip-flops each election, it's the electorate trying to accomplish this. See here: https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2010/sep/07/mary-jordan/do-presidents-always-get-shellacked-midterm-electi/ https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2010/sep...
  - craftyguy 8y ago
    While compromising may have worked in the past, each year brings a more polarized situation where each party is less willing to compromise. > Like have the house and the senate controlled by different parties, or the president and the legislature different parties, etc, etc. This two party system makes it too easy for one party to control all 3 branches (like now..). Having a true multiparty system (>2, preferably more) forces compromise, because you wouldn't have a government without it.
    - andrew_ 8y ago
      One can point to the 24-hour cycle media viciously vying for eyeballs, and the litany of pseudo-news outlets that have gained widespread audiences and which peddle in division for a major portion of the cause. The electorate are being manipulated by our own. Unless the media on all sides walk back the rhetoric it will only get worse in the years to come.
- vonkow 8y ago
  IMHO, the United States lacks a true left wing party and the Democrats are the party of moderate regulation/legislation (which is unfortunate for a number of reasons).
- ikiris 8y ago
  They aren't two extremes. Democrats are somewhere around center. It's just the spectrum in the US is shifted vastly right as a whole.
  - ars 8y ago
    Or maybe the EU (which you are comparing to) is shifted vastly to the left? How do you know which it is? But it's irrelevant, for the electorate in question, Democrats are most definitely not center.
    - ikiris 8y ago
      Nowhere did I mention the EU at all. I was using an absolute scale, and yes, frankly the democrats are a bit right of center. I mean if you declare the electorate the spectrum, then nothing means anything, because its all a completely meaningless fluid definition which has no basis in actual reality.
- rayiner 8y ago
  To the contrary, there is broad consensus and what people are all arguing about is actually the mushy middle. The Republicans won on this one--the 1996 telecom act broadly deregulated the telecom industry. Most of Europe followed suit and deregulated their telecom markets similar to how we did it in the 1996 act. What republicans are worried about is attempts to undo the 1996 reforms. There are people who think that rate regulation, municipal utility boards deciding where infrastructure should be built, etc., are actually good ideas. Probably not a majority of people even in the democrat camp, but there are enough people who don't remember why the 1996 act was a good idea that it makes republicans nervous.
  - techsupporter 8y ago
    > Most of Europe followed suit and deregulated their telecom markets similar to how we did it in the 1996 act. But one big problem with "attempts to undo the 1996 reforms" is that Europe kept (and expanded) linesharing and unbundled network element rules; the United States threw out most mandatory UNE rules and never expanded them to include companies operating networks over coax or new-build fiber optic networks. So now we have this farce where, in some areas, people served by DSL have the choice of several (slow) ISPs because the copper is still technically, kinda unbundled. But if you can't get DSL or can't get a sufficiently fast speed, your sole choice is likely your monopoly cable provider.
    - rayiner 8y ago
      Most large European countries didn't expand unbundling to include cable and fiber either: https://www.oecd.org/sti/broadband/2-7.pdf https://www.oecd.org/sti/broadband/2-7.pdf. None of the five largest EU countries (which comprise the majority of the EU population), applied unbundling to coax. Most don't apply unbundling to fiber either. U.S. copper unbundling rules are weaker than the U.S., but copper is also largely irrelevant in the U.S., because most broadband is over cable or fiber. Unbundling matters more in Europe, but primarily because DSL is much more common in Europe.
  - tonysdg 8y ago
    The problem as I understand it is that deregulation helps a lot in situations where a compelling business case exists for companies to expand/compete, and it hurts a lot where said business case does not exist. As it so happens, crowded urban centers, where a single cell tower or fiber-optic network can serve thousands of paying customers, benefit a great deal from deregulation. Sparsely populated rural areas, however, where "last mile" really means "last 30 miles", get screwed over by deregulation since companies have minimal incentive to expand if it only means 10 new paying members. I'm not saying either extreme is perfect -- indeed, deregulation likely helps more than it hurts given increasing population density in U.S. cities -- but it seems to me that there are advantages to both sides of the equation.
anadem 8y ago
Unfortunately deregulation leads to consolidation which leads to monopolies.
- AmericanChopper 8y ago
  What mechanism does deregulation introduce that leads to monopolization? The opposite is the truth. The most regulated markets are the least competitive. More than anything else, regulations are barriers to companies that want to enter markets.
malcolmgreaves 8y ago
The Republican political identity is no longer that of small, limited government and free market policies (see: massive tarrifs and bailouts of the affected domestic industries to win votes).
- TangoTrotFox 8y ago
  One could argue that the reason that tariffs are necessary is because we do not have an economy purely dictated by the free market, which in this particular case is probably not a bad thing. A big reason China is able to flood the US with a trade surplus is because they have a different view on the value of humanity. For instance workers in China, in some cases, work in something that's not that far off from slave-like conditions. $1000 iPhones are manufactured by the millions by people earning a few bucks a day, living in on-site dormitories, in buildings surrounded by 'suicide nets' to try to stop impulsive suicide from workers. In the US we would never tolerate such conditions and it would be legally impossible on a large number of levels, the least of which not also being our minimum wage. While I think this is probably the right way to go, it also means that our taking the higher moral ground there means that we're severely hurting domestic producers by making it literally impossible for them to compete with the prices that they can produce things for. By not relying entirely on market forces we've crippled our ability to compete. In a world where politics, on both the right and left, was not dictated by business interests there would be bipartisan support to let's say "adjust" our relations with China on this front. It's reminiscent of the times past when countries would speak out against slavery and then buy the dirt cheap American cotton and tobacco by the ton. We believe workers have the right to certain reasonable working conditions and in the process of doing so end up massively cutting employment in our nation and then shipping trillions of dollars to nations with no such concerns. It's hardly logical regardless of your political leaning.
Shikadi 8y ago
Except there are things called natural monopolies. See: Railroads, water, electricity, telephones.
- mc32 8y ago
  And search engines and social media and streaming services...
  - smt88 8y ago
    None of those are natural monopolies. Every human could easily switch from Facebook to any competitor right now. The same is not true of cable, ISPs, electricity, gas, etc.
    - int_19h 8y ago
      You can switch from Facebook, but since the value of Facebook is derived entirely from connecting to other people on it, any such switch would be utterly useless unless the people you want to interact with also switch. The result is that a sufficiently large social network is, effectively, a natural monopoly. Which is exactly why no-one has managed to dethrone Facebook yet, not even by throwing lots of money at a better alternative (like G+).
      - cookiecaper 8y ago
        No one has managed to dethrone Facebook because the CFAA allows private companies like Facebook to stop anyone who'd actually provide the facilities to allow for a smooth transition. BigCos like Facebook and Google lean on the aggressive monopoly-making powers of the CFAA every day. Look up the dockets and you'll see the companies making active use of these powers. In particular, check out Facebook v. Power Ventures, where an entrepreneur was left owing $3M in damages to Facebook for allowing users to extract only their own information. Underpinning all digital "monopolies" is copyright law, which is eminently changeable. It really pets my peeves when people suggest things like streaming services are natural monopolies as if there is nothing that can be done about it. Copyright was invented because since the printing press, intellectual goods are so easy to copy that it'd be impossible to sell them at scale without state-enforced supply ceilings (aka copyright). Doesn't sound like a "natural monopoly" to me. It's wholly artificial and we could change it if we wanted.
kalleboo 8y ago
This is a regulation though. They're telling private pole owners what they have to do.
tschwimmer 8y ago
This is demonstrably false. Tariffs are are one of the least pro-business legislative tools. Businesses and sometimes whole industries can evaporate when costs increase by 25% overnight.

rory096 8y ago

Pai worked at Verizon from February 2001 to April 2003 when he was four years out of law school. What evidence do you have that Verizon are his 'paymasters'?