Study Finds Regulation Good For Telecom Customers

jfruhlinger writes "Customers are always better off when government bureaucrats get out of the way and let the market work, right? Well, maybe not in all cases. As described at ITworld.com, a recent study compared the regulatory regimes and telecom environments in various European countries. The study concluded that in countries where regulators had more power to levy fines and punish monopolistic behavior, customers paid less and got more services." From the article: "The report, conducted by Jones Day and Strategy and Policy Consultants Network Ltd., showed that investment in telecommunications, which leads to better services for end users, is lower in countries where there is little competition."

Comments

Re:Slashdot doing downhill

[Money for Nothin']

Slashdot has never been a haven of economically-literate people. People here are computer geeks; they have little, if any interest in business, finance, or economics, and indeed, many are openly-hostile to the very *idea* that such systems work as described.

Nevermind that well over 90% of all economists, both in academia and in the business world, agree that free trade is good for trading nations and that price controls (already enjoying support in a post to this very topic) are a proven failure. Slashdotters, like most economically-left-leaning people, make-believe that the entire study of economics is one giant conspiracy against mankind (because much economics study disproves their ideology they want to make-believe actually works when in practice it does not); that *somehow*, there is no scarcity of goods in the world. Nevermind the Law of Conservation found in physics says the same thing -- this is Slashdot, and on Slashdot, we don't like facts!

Most Slashdotters, being high school or college students, I would hazard a guess have never taken an economics course in their lives. Slashdotters, categorically-speaking, are economically-illiterate, and no matter how many times you beat them with the cluesticks of Adam Smith, Frederic Bastiat, Henry Hazlitt, Ludwig von Mises, F.A. Hayek, Gary Becker, James Buchanan, Milton Friedman, or Arnold Kling, you find that the generally-socialist population of Slashdot refuses to learn, because they are blinded by their dreams and ideals that can never be and which ultimately failed in practice 15 years ago. There is no reputable economist in the western world at this point that promotes socialism and communism to the extent that most Slashdotters do; even the "old guard" of socialist economics (John Kenneth Galbraith, George Stigler, and to a lesser-extent (though from which the former two derive their work), J.M. Keynes) have started fading-away in light of economic reality.

In terms of overall economic design, pure socialism failed, true communism was never actually achieved by the Soviets or anybody else (though Chairman Mao came close), and free market capitalism emerged victorious. That is the political-economic conclusion of the 20th century.

Yet, Slashdotters remain clueless to economic history, theory, econometrics, etc.. For such "intelligent" people, they sure like to remain ignorant!

Me, I'm one of those rare people who actively seeks out intersections between the computing and economics worlds. But you will find very few people (perhaps a dozen or so) like me here unfortunately...