Slashdot Mirror
Why Everyone Should Hate Cellphone Carriers
The Byelorrusian Spamtrap writes "Wired Magazine's made its position clear on the state of play in America's cellular industry, delivering a long, satisfying screed on why all of us should stop complaining and do something about it. 'They own politicians - Sure, it's just phones. In a world where worse things happen all the time amid the muck and despair of human existence, having to pay for premium text is hardly worth worrying about, is it? You can (and should) opt out, and not sign on the dotted line to begin with. But today's cell towers might be tomorrow's Pony Express: they're TV stations, internet access, emergency 911 and news networks all rolled into one. WWAN could well end up supplanting copper sooner than anyone expects: do you want these companies in charge of it?'"
In a world where worse things happen all the time amid the muck and despair of human existence, having to pay for premium text is hardly worth worrying about, is it?
That depends. Are you paris hilton? If yes, then yes.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Since a lot of those same reasons can apply to ISPs and other companies in general, I propose we just hate all corporations whose profit margins are above 1 million annually. If we can assume that money corrupts, I think it's fair to say that any company in excess of $1,000,000.00 has doing something wrong to somebody on their way to that point. This blanket hatred will make it easier for me to keep track of what companies I do and don't like.
Yeah, I think cell phone companies in America suck. What am I supposed to do about it? The author suggests not owning a phone at all. Well, I guess I would do that if I could get a land line. But wait, those are owned by the same companies. The only alternative is phone service through a cable/satellite company, but those companies are just as corrupt and dreadful as the cell phone companies (and in a lot of cases worse). Hell, the state of broadband in America is 100x worse than the state of cell phones, and there is literally nothing we can do about that. Cutting yourself off from the phone companies (a lesser evil) just bolsters cable/satellite companies (a greater evil). The only real solution is some sort of uprising. First senator that gets the ball rolling on fixing broadband (making it comparable to the rest of the world) gets my write-in vote for president.
Such futures can't be relied upon if innovation is permitted So, no company should invest heavily in innovation because that stifles progress. Check.
The remaining [author couldn't be bothered to count] reasons are similarly kvetching and dripping with angst.
Today: Anonymous prepaid
- buy a pre-activated T-mobile 2 Go SIM off of ebay
- buy an unlocked GSM phone off ebay
No contracts, no fees, no lame choice of stupid phones, nobody knows who you are or how to hassle you. You put minutes on the SIM card and that's that.
This is the "plan" my wife and I have been on since May. Works nicely. Some friends just asked me to set them up with the same deal, since they were sick of paying $90/mo for a set of phones they barely used.
Tomorrow:
Replace handset you bought in "step A" wth an openMoko device. My next handset will hopefully be 100% open-source. I can get partway there with the P2k tools and what not for Motorola, but a truly open device just makes it all that much easier.
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
The REAL question we should be asking is why are none of the companies willing to step up and offer better, cheaper plans? In a free market, we would have the same plans (if not better) as the Europeans do. Businesses undercut each other in a free market in order to steal customers. So why are no cell phone companies doing this? Don't we have laws that are supposed to prevent companies from banding together to screw the consumer? I was under the assumption that price-fixing was against the law (and is clearly what's going on; the cell phone companies have agreed to offer minimal features for similar prices, so everyone gets part of the pie without any real competition)
You say that as if there is any other kind of corporation. Seriously, if you were to opt out of the services of every corporation that has politicians in it's pocket you would be so alienated from society as to be unable to affect any change with-in society. To put it in concrete terms, how are you going to have a house without a bank account? How are you going to have a job without any telephone number? How are you going to vote when you are an unemployed homeless person?
Corruption is one of the prices we pay for having such a large society. Even if all corporations and government entities had wonderful transparency there would be an unfeasible amount of oversight needed to prevent corruption. Here is an excerpt from an article that explains "Why big things fail":
So preventing corruption in our international mega-corps and our global military and our world police government is about as likely as finding a Humpback Whale with no barnacles. It's never going to happen because we are too big to find and reach all of the parasites.
Our best chance at lowering corruption and improving the average citizen's voice in government would be to break up our behemoth government by transferring most of the budget and power to the individual States. But with that transition we would be sacrificing our superpower status and the Federal level players wil never willingly let that happen.
We are all just people.
The problem with realists is they admit the democracy is dead in America. The problem with idealists is they believe the system works. The problem with America is that...never mind, my TV show is on.
Don't be such an idiot.
In the "real world" people get along just fine without cell phones.
Many people have jobs which require them to be on call. What would you say to them? Quit? I guess you don't really want medical care, right?
In the "real world" people make ethical decisions for their company every single day even when the "real world" makes that supposedly impossible.
What does this have to do with anything? I never advocated making unethical decisions while on the job.
However, lots of companies make unethical decisions all the time, and there's nothing you can do about it.
In the "real world" people get the companies they pay for and the government they deserve.
Maybe so, at the societal level, but at the individual level, there's nothing you can do about what everyone else does. You can become a hermit if you wish.
In the "real world" not everyone waffles on their principles because they are afraid or because someone waives a dollar under their nose.
Right, those are the hermits. Everyone else has to compromise because they have to live in a society with other people, who don't abide by the same principles. Do you buy services from any large, evil company like Comcast, Cox, Verizon, etc.? After all, you're here on Slashdot, so I presume you have an internet service provider. Well, you just compromised on principles by buying from a company with poor ethics. Do you grow your own food? If not, you're probably buying from some large agribusiness with poor ethics. I can cite lots of other examples.
And in the "real world" claiming something is unavoidable and not in our control (especially when we're funding it!) is just a way to apologize for our own hypocrisy.
So you think you're not a hypocrite? How do you explain your post here? You're using the products and services of large companies which have committed ethical transgressions in the interest of profit. It sounds like you're the hypocrite.
Incumbents don't lose. 93% of House elections (and something like 96% of state legislative elections) were decided shortly after the 2000 census. Voting doesn't matter, with the possible exception of the party primaries (since the parties function as kingmakers).
The problem is that too many people vote for the familiar when they don't know anything about either candidate. If people would follow a simple rule, "Vote the ins, out," it would change things immensely. If you don't have an overwhelmingly compelling reason to vote for the incumbent, you should vote against him/her, even if you think the other guy is a bad choice. You can always vote him out next election. He won't have the chance to do much harm in one term. The longer a person is in the legislature the more harm he/she can do.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison