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> But Telecoms and the old Robber Barons had monopolies without government forcing people. Telecoms were totally built by govs. Back in the days govs were obse

> But Telecoms and the old Robber Barons had monopolies without government forcing people. Telecoms were totally built by govs. Back in the days govs were obsessed with controlling the means of communication, so all the related biz was due to the monopoly right. > AT&T established a network of subsidiaries in the United States and Canada that held a government-authorized phone service monopoly, formalized with the Kingsbury Commitment, throughout most of the twentieth century. > With $18.8 million spent in 2013, Comcast has the seventh largest lobbying budget of any individual company or organization in the United States.[62] Comcast employs multiple former U.S. Congressmen as lobbyists. Sure, nothing to do with the government. Go ahead, try to bypass FCC and establish a new telecom company. It's literally pushed by the gov, as in any heavily regulated domain with patents and other monopoly rights. As for robber barons, that's mostly an antitrust myth to scare people > After 1900 it did not try to force competitors out of business by underpricing them.[37] The federal Commissioner of Corporations studied Standard's operations from the period of 1904 to 1906[38] and concluded that "beyond question ... the dominant position of the Standard Oil Co. in the refining industry was due to unfair practices—to abuse of the control of pipe-lines, to railroad discriminations, and to unfair methods of competition in the sale of the refined petroleum products".[39] Due to competition from other firms, their market share had gradually eroded to 70 percent by 1906 which was the year when the antitrust case was filed against Standard, and down to 64 percent by 1911 when Standard was ordered broken up[40] and at least 147 refining companies were competing with Standard including Gulf, Texaco, and Shell.

skinnymuch 7y ago
But everyone does lobbying. Singling our Comcast like that is weird to prove a point of government and telecoms. Even if they are in the top 10.
- ernst_klim 7y ago
  >But everyone does lobbying. What? Your local Cafe does lobbying? Only magacorps do that, and yes, they use it to protect themselves from competition. And no, protecting yourself from competition using lobbying, monopoly rights, patents, regulations means exactly this: big biz uses government to ensure its monopoly/oligopoly, aka governments creating monopolies. >Comcast like that is weird to prove a point of government and telecoms Comcast is using government to ensure its marketshare is not an example of government forcing people to use the service? It exactly is IMHO.
  - skinnymuch 7y ago
    It’s disingenuous to do faux ignorance by acting like you don’t know what I roughly meant when I said everyone. You know I wasn’t talking about your local cafe. Or even a $10M/year company.
    - ernst_klim 7y ago
      > It’s disingenuous to do faux ignorance by acting like you don’t know what I roughly meant when I said everyone. You know I wasn’t talking about your local cafe. Or even a $10M/year company. Then articulate your point more clearly. Sure, many the American megacorps are using the government for their own sake. That's exactly proving why US is such a crony state, where big corps are protected from competition by a huge apparatus of bureaucracy. What's your point? If they use the government it's not the government's fault? Government is literally a mean of establishing oligopolies and shifting the bargaining balance from people to corporations.
      - coliveira 7y ago
        You point is moot because there is no capitalist society where big companies will not interfere with government. If government is too big, they will lobby the government. If government is too small/inexistent, they will run monopolies by direct financial control and other "standard" practices: buying out competitors, collusion, threats of violence.
        ernst_klim 7y ago
        > buying out competitors, collusion, threats of violence. You can't buy a competitor if he don't want to be sold. Neither can you threat somebody with violence if the government does its job. I don't even comprehend how the absence of interventionism presume allowance of such violent measures. Don't confuse violence with "non-competitive practices". The latter are seldom harmful, or at the very least much less harmful than those leveraged by the allowance of interventions.

skinnymuch 7y ago

But everyone does lobbying. Singling our Comcast like that is weird to prove a point of government and telecoms. Even if they are in the top 10.

ernst_klim 7y ago
>But everyone does lobbying. What? Your local Cafe does lobbying? Only magacorps do that, and yes, they use it to protect themselves from competition. And no, protecting yourself from competition using lobbying, monopoly rights, patents, regulations means exactly this: big biz uses government to ensure its monopoly/oligopoly, aka governments creating monopolies. >Comcast like that is weird to prove a point of government and telecoms Comcast is using government to ensure its marketshare is not an example of government forcing people to use the service? It exactly is IMHO.
- skinnymuch 7y ago
  It’s disingenuous to do faux ignorance by acting like you don’t know what I roughly meant when I said everyone. You know I wasn’t talking about your local cafe. Or even a $10M/year company.
  - ernst_klim 7y ago
    > It’s disingenuous to do faux ignorance by acting like you don’t know what I roughly meant when I said everyone. You know I wasn’t talking about your local cafe. Or even a $10M/year company. Then articulate your point more clearly. Sure, many the American megacorps are using the government for their own sake. That's exactly proving why US is such a crony state, where big corps are protected from competition by a huge apparatus of bureaucracy. What's your point? If they use the government it's not the government's fault? Government is literally a mean of establishing oligopolies and shifting the bargaining balance from people to corporations.
    - coliveira 7y ago
      You point is moot because there is no capitalist society where big companies will not interfere with government. If government is too big, they will lobby the government. If government is too small/inexistent, they will run monopolies by direct financial control and other "standard" practices: buying out competitors, collusion, threats of violence.
      - ernst_klim 7y ago
        > buying out competitors, collusion, threats of violence. You can't buy a competitor if he don't want to be sold. Neither can you threat somebody with violence if the government does its job. I don't even comprehend how the absence of interventionism presume allowance of such violent measures. Don't confuse violence with "non-competitive practices". The latter are seldom harmful, or at the very least much less harmful than those leveraged by the allowance of interventions.