5 ms·

Awesome. So glad that deregulation works to open the free market. I mean, if you don't like it the. You can just get service from another provider, right? What'

Awesome. So glad that deregulation works to open the free market. I mean, if you don't like it the. You can just get service from another provider, right? What's that, you say? There aren't any other viable providers in my market? Go on. Oh my. You mean, my local municipality has a binding, perpetual contract with Comcast. That doesn't feel very free or open.

seehafer 13y ago
There is nothing free about the market for cable & internet access in the US.
- kaonashi 13y ago
  Nothing free about any market, since the bounds of said market is inevitably dictated by whatever social coordination mechanisms are available (the most wide-spread being some form of government).
  - zanny 13y ago
    If you can make something of your own volition without any violent coercion, and I can voluntarily exchange with you for it, then that is a pretty free transaction. I guess that means there aren't any free markets, since you are at least being violently taxed, and are probably violently forced to comply with regulation unless your implicit production process doesn't violate any such laws, which is unlikely.
    - kaonashi 13y ago
      Taxes aren't violence, they're dues for engaging in the external economy.
      - cobrausn 13y ago
        No anarchist here, but try not paying your taxes for long enough and the violence will come.
        kaonashi 13y ago
        If you try to walk into a baseball game or a movie without paying, it's called theft. If you try to participate in the economy without paying your dues, likewise it's theft and you will suffer the punishment.
        tsotha 13y ago
        Taxes have very little to do with the economy.
        kaonashi 13y ago
        They're the gradient in the system that drives economic activity. If you must acquire a particular currency to pay taxes to avoid jail, then you will offer your output in that currency.
        tsotha 13y ago
        That's a tiny fraction of the tax you pay.
        kaonashi 13y ago
        There are kinds of taxes that don't have penalties for non-payment?
        cobrausn 13y ago
        So, we are in agreement then? Taxes are enforced with violence.
        kaonashi 13y ago
    - rayiner 13y ago
      Violent coercion is one of the most basic sorts of free action common to all animals. Why arbitrarily take it off the table?
DannyBee 13y ago
"You mean, my local municipality has a binding, perpetual contract with Comcast" I don't disagree with your sentiment, but just to note: Municipalities can't have exclusive franchise agreements anymore (since 1992).
- clauretano 13y ago
  They can and do have franchise agreements where one provider gets the vast majority of the region, leaving only the less desirable scraps for someone else. As an example, see the cable franchise map link (in bold) here https://www.seattle.gov/cable/franchises.htm https://www.seattle.gov/cable/franchises.htm --thankfully it's not a perpetual contract.
benihana 13y ago
>my local municipality has a binding, perpetual contract with Comcast. That doesn't feel very free or open. Think about those sentences compared to your second sentence. >So glad that deregulation works to open the free market. You set up a strawman about the free market in the beginning and then contradict it at the end. The reason it doesn't feel free is because by definition, it isn't.
- _delirium 13y ago
  It's entirely possible for the same situation to happen in a free market, and it does in some states. Replace "municipality" with "private corporation that owns the common areas of the subdivision" (sometimes called "homeowners' associations" or similar names). As long as there's a landowner that owns land that's necessary to transit to run cable to a neighborhood, they can reach exclusive deals with providers, because you can't dig up stuff without permission of the landowner. And having lived in both "traditional municipalities" and the new private-style non-municipalities in Texas, it's not clear to me the latter result in markets that are freer in any meaningful sense: in both cases the only real freedom you have against the organization is to either try to change their policies through internal democracy (municipal elections, board elections, etc.), or "vote with your feet" and move to a different organization's territory.
  - jmccree 13y ago
    Our HOA fees cover providing internet access for every resident. I've found the end-user "tech support" to be totally incompetent. (A call back 3 DAYS after I submitting traceroutes showing my traffic was stuck in a routing loop in their network, wherein the "tech support professional" asked me to try rebooting my computer before even asking me if I was still having issues. I hung up mid-script.) However, when we had consistent outages and horrible service, I eventually gathered enough evidence to give to the HOA of what the problem was, and when the HOA contacted the ISP, they looped me into an email chain with their account rep and we got immediate service. If we all had to choose Comcast or ATT individually, neither would really care about individuals. But the HOA is in a much larger bargaining position and our ISP cares about losing the whole building. From my experience and friends in the area, those in condo buildings with the exclusive ISP arrangement tend to get better/faster service than those in condos with the standard cable/telco choice. Since condo buildings are managed by the residents who mostly use internet, usually enough percentage care about the quality of internet access to hold the exclusive ISP accountable or replace them. Of course in Apt buildings, mgmt just views internet as an expense and it's a different scenario.
baddox 13y ago
> You mean, my local municipality has a binding, perpetual contract with Comcast. In other words, if you or anyone else attempted to compete with Comcast in your municipality, the government would use violence (or the threat thereof) to prevent them from doing so. If that doesn't count as "regulation" then I don't know what does.
- jellicle 13y ago
  Wait a second. So everyone is free to make bargains in "the market" except for a city? How do they buy toilet paper for city hall then?
rayiner 13y ago
The cable industry was substantially deregulated in the 1990's. For example, municipalities were prohibited from granting exclusive franchises in 1992: https://www.mackinac.org/10118 https://www.mackinac.org/10118. Most areas continue to have only one cable company for the simple reason that it's not profitable to compete with the incumbents.
- hrkristian 13y ago
  That is not the case for fiber. We -Norway, a country of 6 million people spread out- have multiple companies competing in all parts of the country. Fiber companies compete in the larger cities, and even in the smaller towns we are starting to see more and more fiber competition. I have a hard time believing the U.S. offers less grounds for competition, that's a ridiculous proposal at best. When we can do it, you can. Your problem is rampant corruption. I wish I could, as a foreigner, ignore it, but what happens across the Atlantic has a tendency of spreading here.
  - wmf 13y ago
    I wonder how those competing fiber ISPs recoup the costs of running fiber past buildings that aren't their customers. Is this "competition" government-subsidized by any chance?
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - rayiner 13y ago
    Most of your population lives along the coasts, and is also quite wealthy relative to much of our population. If you look at our densely populated east coast states, which are also quite wealthy, you'll see that in terms of average internet speeds, many would rank between #3 and #4 on the worldwide chart if they were countries: http://www.akamai.com/dl/akamai/akamai_soti_q113.pdf?WT.mc_id=soti_Q113 http://www.akamai.com/dl/akamai/akamai_soti_q113.pdf?WT.mc_i... (compare pages 14 with 17). They also have pretty widespread fiber options between Verizon and Comcast.
    - 13y ago
wmf 13y ago
Realistically we were already in that situation before the merger.
Shivetya 13y ago
Whatever. Before deregulation all I had in my metro area was dial up, ISDN, or a T1. Then came the various providers riding on the dial up wave when the phone company was forced to allow them. Guess what I was stuck with even more dial up. Eventually DSL showed up but was the same price by all of them. Then Comcast (I forget who they were before the name changed) came in and suddenly my DSL came down in price but was still slower. So, yeah it worked. The key takeaway is when we look for bad its easy to forget worse. I am no fan of Comcast in general but they have been many times faster than my phone company for the same price or less. Would it be nice to have a third or more option? Certainly and I damn well want someone to one day think they can do it, but if you common carrier it we will be stuck with whatever some damn government guy thinks is good for my area. You know that means, tell me who has their streets plowed first in the storms, well lets just say the right people don't live here.

seehafer 13y ago

There is nothing free about the market for cable & internet access in the US.

kaonashi 13y ago
Nothing free about any market, since the bounds of said market is inevitably dictated by whatever social coordination mechanisms are available (the most wide-spread being some form of government).
- zanny 13y ago
  If you can make something of your own volition without any violent coercion, and I can voluntarily exchange with you for it, then that is a pretty free transaction. I guess that means there aren't any free markets, since you are at least being violently taxed, and are probably violently forced to comply with regulation unless your implicit production process doesn't violate any such laws, which is unlikely.
  - kaonashi 13y ago
    Taxes aren't violence, they're dues for engaging in the external economy.
    - cobrausn 13y ago
      No anarchist here, but try not paying your taxes for long enough and the violence will come.
      - kaonashi 13y ago
        If you try to walk into a baseball game or a movie without paying, it's called theft. If you try to participate in the economy without paying your dues, likewise it's theft and you will suffer the punishment.
        tsotha 13y ago
        Taxes have very little to do with the economy.
        kaonashi 13y ago
        They're the gradient in the system that drives economic activity. If you must acquire a particular currency to pay taxes to avoid jail, then you will offer your output in that currency.
        tsotha 13y ago
        That's a tiny fraction of the tax you pay.
        kaonashi 13y ago
        There are kinds of taxes that don't have penalties for non-payment?
        cobrausn 13y ago
        So, we are in agreement then? Taxes are enforced with violence.
        kaonashi 13y ago
  - rayiner 13y ago
    Violent coercion is one of the most basic sorts of free action common to all animals. Why arbitrarily take it off the table?

DannyBee 13y ago

"You mean, my local municipality has a binding, perpetual contract with Comcast" I don't disagree with your sentiment, but just to note: Municipalities can't have exclusive franchise agreements anymore (since 1992).

clauretano 13y ago
They can and do have franchise agreements where one provider gets the vast majority of the region, leaving only the less desirable scraps for someone else. As an example, see the cable franchise map link (in bold) here https://www.seattle.gov/cable/franchises.htm https://www.seattle.gov/cable/franchises.htm --thankfully it's not a perpetual contract.

benihana 13y ago

>my local municipality has a binding, perpetual contract with Comcast. That doesn't feel very free or open. Think about those sentences compared to your second sentence. >So glad that deregulation works to open the free market. You set up a strawman about the free market in the beginning and then contradict it at the end. The reason it doesn't feel free is because by definition, it isn't.

_delirium 13y ago
It's entirely possible for the same situation to happen in a free market, and it does in some states. Replace "municipality" with "private corporation that owns the common areas of the subdivision" (sometimes called "homeowners' associations" or similar names). As long as there's a landowner that owns land that's necessary to transit to run cable to a neighborhood, they can reach exclusive deals with providers, because you can't dig up stuff without permission of the landowner. And having lived in both "traditional municipalities" and the new private-style non-municipalities in Texas, it's not clear to me the latter result in markets that are freer in any meaningful sense: in both cases the only real freedom you have against the organization is to either try to change their policies through internal democracy (municipal elections, board elections, etc.), or "vote with your feet" and move to a different organization's territory.
- jmccree 13y ago
  Our HOA fees cover providing internet access for every resident. I've found the end-user "tech support" to be totally incompetent. (A call back 3 DAYS after I submitting traceroutes showing my traffic was stuck in a routing loop in their network, wherein the "tech support professional" asked me to try rebooting my computer before even asking me if I was still having issues. I hung up mid-script.) However, when we had consistent outages and horrible service, I eventually gathered enough evidence to give to the HOA of what the problem was, and when the HOA contacted the ISP, they looped me into an email chain with their account rep and we got immediate service. If we all had to choose Comcast or ATT individually, neither would really care about individuals. But the HOA is in a much larger bargaining position and our ISP cares about losing the whole building. From my experience and friends in the area, those in condo buildings with the exclusive ISP arrangement tend to get better/faster service than those in condos with the standard cable/telco choice. Since condo buildings are managed by the residents who mostly use internet, usually enough percentage care about the quality of internet access to hold the exclusive ISP accountable or replace them. Of course in Apt buildings, mgmt just views internet as an expense and it's a different scenario.

baddox 13y ago

> You mean, my local municipality has a binding, perpetual contract with Comcast. In other words, if you or anyone else attempted to compete with Comcast in your municipality, the government would use violence (or the threat thereof) to prevent them from doing so. If that doesn't count as "regulation" then I don't know what does.

jellicle 13y ago
Wait a second. So everyone is free to make bargains in "the market" except for a city? How do they buy toilet paper for city hall then?

rayiner 13y ago

The cable industry was substantially deregulated in the 1990's. For example, municipalities were prohibited from granting exclusive franchises in 1992: https://www.mackinac.org/10118 https://www.mackinac.org/10118. Most areas continue to have only one cable company for the simple reason that it's not profitable to compete with the incumbents.

hrkristian 13y ago
That is not the case for fiber. We -Norway, a country of 6 million people spread out- have multiple companies competing in all parts of the country. Fiber companies compete in the larger cities, and even in the smaller towns we are starting to see more and more fiber competition. I have a hard time believing the U.S. offers less grounds for competition, that's a ridiculous proposal at best. When we can do it, you can. Your problem is rampant corruption. I wish I could, as a foreigner, ignore it, but what happens across the Atlantic has a tendency of spreading here.
- wmf 13y ago
  I wonder how those competing fiber ISPs recoup the costs of running fiber past buildings that aren't their customers. Is this "competition" government-subsidized by any chance?
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- rayiner 13y ago
  Most of your population lives along the coasts, and is also quite wealthy relative to much of our population. If you look at our densely populated east coast states, which are also quite wealthy, you'll see that in terms of average internet speeds, many would rank between #3 and #4 on the worldwide chart if they were countries: http://www.akamai.com/dl/akamai/akamai_soti_q113.pdf?WT.mc_id=soti_Q113 http://www.akamai.com/dl/akamai/akamai_soti_q113.pdf?WT.mc_i... (compare pages 14 with 17). They also have pretty widespread fiber options between Verizon and Comcast.
  - 13y ago

wmf 13y ago

Realistically we were already in that situation before the merger.

Shivetya 13y ago

Whatever. Before deregulation all I had in my metro area was dial up, ISDN, or a T1. Then came the various providers riding on the dial up wave when the phone company was forced to allow them. Guess what I was stuck with even more dial up. Eventually DSL showed up but was the same price by all of them. Then Comcast (I forget who they were before the name changed) came in and suddenly my DSL came down in price but was still slower. So, yeah it worked. The key takeaway is when we look for bad its easy to forget worse. I am no fan of Comcast in general but they have been many times faster than my phone company for the same price or less. Would it be nice to have a third or more option? Certainly and I damn well want someone to one day think they can do it, but if you common carrier it we will be stuck with whatever some damn government guy thinks is good for my area. You know that means, tell me who has their streets plowed first in the storms, well lets just say the right people don't live here.