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That's completely and utterly false. Governments corrupt anything and everything they touche and are the primary reason that monopolies exist. Why are there 3/

That's completely and utterly false. Governments corrupt anything and everything they touche and are the primary reason that monopolies exist. Why are there 3/4 major network providers in the US? Because they received billions of dollars in grant money from the goverment and did not have to compete in the market with prices. Do you know who is one of the biggest individual consumers of oil? Take a look at the military industrial complex. Want to know why Microsoft is so far ahead of Linux? Take a look at how much money the US government has paid to Microsoft/tax cuts/grants. Want to know why Amazon has no other competitors that are anywhere close to their scale? Take a look at the tax breaks it has received from different government institutions. The list goes on and on.

paulryanrogers 2y ago
Your examples are cases were the corporate interests have captured the regulators. So we're ruled by corps (who often write the laws themselves) regardless of whether they arise from a "free" market, luck, nepotism, sweet heart deals, or some combination thereof. They thrive on apathy and those who buy into their laissez-faire-capitalism-solves-all story. The answer which has worked before is to end the corruption and monopolies/oligopolies as we did before: anti trust. Voting in honest civil servants, voting out or jailing the corrupt, keeping money out of campaigns, and outlawing professional bribery (lobbying) are critical to enforce the rules that keep the playing field level. Guess which party has sold out the hardest in the US? Which is led by a man who openly sells deregulation to polluting industrialists in exchange for campaign funds?
- psd1 2y ago
  Specifically in the case of ISPs, the infrastructure requirements make it a natural monopoly. The problem comes when the infrastructure company is also the retail company. That's how you get shitty service. In the UK, the infra monopoly is owned by Openreach. You can use literally any retail ISP, they all pay the same for carriage. They can differentiate on price or service or (yuck) bundling, and you can change providers with minimal downtime. So I think the answer for the US is to separate infra from retail and regulate the wholesale price.

paulryanrogers 2y ago

Your examples are cases were the corporate interests have captured the regulators. So we're ruled by corps (who often write the laws themselves) regardless of whether they arise from a "free" market, luck, nepotism, sweet heart deals, or some combination thereof. They thrive on apathy and those who buy into their laissez-faire-capitalism-solves-all story. The answer which has worked before is to end the corruption and monopolies/oligopolies as we did before: anti trust. Voting in honest civil servants, voting out or jailing the corrupt, keeping money out of campaigns, and outlawing professional bribery (lobbying) are critical to enforce the rules that keep the playing field level. Guess which party has sold out the hardest in the US? Which is led by a man who openly sells deregulation to polluting industrialists in exchange for campaign funds?

psd1 2y ago
Specifically in the case of ISPs, the infrastructure requirements make it a natural monopoly. The problem comes when the infrastructure company is also the retail company. That's how you get shitty service. In the UK, the infra monopoly is owned by Openreach. You can use literally any retail ISP, they all pay the same for carriage. They can differentiate on price or service or (yuck) bundling, and you can change providers with minimal downtime. So I think the answer for the US is to separate infra from retail and regulate the wholesale price.