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> You can't suddenly impose laissez-faire capitalism on an industry so closely tied to government regulation. Pretty much every time it's been tried, you get a

by tjic 18y ago

> You can't suddenly impose laissez-faire capitalism on an industry so closely tied to government regulation. Pretty much every time it's been tried, you get a ton of innovation and rapidly falling costs. The US, ICC trucking regulation led to much cheaper trucking. Telecom deregulation led to an explosion of services, cell phones, and drastically lower prices. Airline deregulation led to a falling fairs, making air travel accessible to more than just the upper and upper middle class (and, because air travel is much safer per mile traveled than car travel, deregulation has saved tens of thousands of lives). > this is just profit-mongering Oh, horrors - we wouldn't want people to try to provide services in order to make money!

ingenium 18y ago
The problem is that they aren't deregulating the industry. Providers such as Comcast are legislated monopolies in certain areas, and do not lease out their lines to anyone else. There isn't anyone else to go to when these providers begin instituting caps. I believe what rms is saying is you can't apply laisse-faire capitalism to a government instituted monopoly. You either need to remove the monopoly and allow capitalism to do its thing, or you need to institute regulation to prevent them from ripping off the customer. > Oh, horrors - we wouldn't want people to try to provide services in order to make money! As everyone has said, there's plenty of bandwidth to go around, so why are they doing this? They're doing it because there is no competition to prevent them from doing so. They certainly aren't hurting for money. They're simply taking advantage of the lack of competition provided by government mandate.
- randallsquared 18y ago
  > You either need to remove the monopoly and allow capitalism to do its thing, or you need to institute regulation to prevent them from ripping off the customer. Except that, in general, instituting regulation to fix the problem that the monopoly caused doesn't actually fix things, but only partially fixes those problems, and introduces different problems. Removing the monopoly grant is by far the better solution.
- rms 18y ago
  Thank you for saying what I meant to say. (Josh is my internet comment argument ringer)

by tjic 18y ago

ingenium 18y ago

The problem is that they aren't deregulating the industry. Providers such as Comcast are legislated monopolies in certain areas, and do not lease out their lines to anyone else. There isn't anyone else to go to when these providers begin instituting caps. I believe what rms is saying is you can't apply laisse-faire capitalism to a government instituted monopoly. You either need to remove the monopoly and allow capitalism to do its thing, or you need to institute regulation to prevent them from ripping off the customer. > Oh, horrors - we wouldn't want people to try to provide services in order to make money! As everyone has said, there's plenty of bandwidth to go around, so why are they doing this? They're doing it because there is no competition to prevent them from doing so. They certainly aren't hurting for money. They're simply taking advantage of the lack of competition provided by government mandate.

randallsquared 18y ago
> You either need to remove the monopoly and allow capitalism to do its thing, or you need to institute regulation to prevent them from ripping off the customer. Except that, in general, instituting regulation to fix the problem that the monopoly caused doesn't actually fix things, but only partially fixes those problems, and introduces different problems. Removing the monopoly grant is by far the better solution.
rms 18y ago
Thank you for saying what I meant to say. (Josh is my internet comment argument ringer)