4 ms·
> breakup If you look at the breakup of Ma Bell, I think you’ll doubt the government’s ability to break up a company properly.
by mcny 6y ago
> breakup
If you look at the breakup of Ma Bell, I think you’ll doubt the government’s ability to break up a company properly.
- cageface 6y agoI doubt their ability to regulate properly too. But it does seem like the big tech companies have failed to self-regulate.
- andromeduck 6y agoHow can they self regulate when government keeps screwing with the incentives? Did busting kingpins solve the drug problem?
- mcny 6y agoWorse, the corporations have to meddle with their own regulation because they know other corporations will. My understanding is AT&T basically wrote its own consent decree. Who in their right mind decided that the solution to a national monopoly is a handful of regional monopolies... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_Bell_Operating_Company https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_Bell_Operating_Compan... > In the early 1970s, American antitrust regulators became suspicious that Bell was abusing its monopoly power, and in 1974 the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice brought a lawsuit against Bell claiming violations of the Sherman Act. In 1982, feeling that it could not win, Bell agreed to a Justice Department-mandated consent decree that settled the lawsuit and ordered it to break itself up into seven "Regional Bell Operating Companies" (known as "The Baby Bells"), which it did in 1984, ending the original company's existence. These "Baby Bells" are now independent companies, and several of them are very large corporations in their own right, such as AT&T, Verizon Communications, and CenturyLink. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_System