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Ma Bell Stifled Innovation, AT&T May Do the Same
An anonymous reader writes "AT&T recently announced it plans to acquire T-Mobile to create the largest wireless network in the US. If the deal is allowed to complete, it will create only three major players in the industry with Verizon being a close second and Sprint being a distant third. Sprint, along with consumer rights groups, have already cried foul. They argue that AT&T's proposed acquisition will stifle competition and innovation."
Ever heard of "Bell Labs"?
That it's even an open question shows how far from actual trustbusting we have gone.
Even as a libertarian, I see this, just as all democracies (as opposed to republics) devolve, so does uncheck capitalism - always in the direction of corporate socialism (rent-seeking, bailouts, etc.)
Stuff never broke, you knew that your neighbor wasn't getting a better deal, and you didn't have to worry about sevrice or dropped calls; ma bells team of engineers and workers kept stuff running smoothly
And, as anyone who travels abroad knows, the supposed "benefits" of competition don't seem so good: in those awful socialist countrys like france, they have, and have had for many years, superior telecoms.
Of course, when the CEO of Verizon makes 18 or 20 million dollars a year, he has an incentive to hire (on Verizon's nickel) economists and journalists to tell the world how great competition and the unbridled capitlism are...
In Canada you have a lot more choice in providers, most of the American companies are available as well as Rogers and Bell, i guess it's just better, like our healthcare...
It's like the mind going AWOL, it's there somewhere
Whats there to be argue. if there is a SINGLE provider monopoly in a nation, more than innovation is stifled. Not even right wing economists argue against that anymore.
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Just less of the technical sort, and more of the "how can we take your money" sort.
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
i remember the days when we had a dozen cell carriers in the US. expensive service, crappy reception almost everywhere you went. as the competition dried up we've had prices drop and better phones come out. 10 years ago when i got my first cell phone in the US i paid $40 a month for 450 minutes. these days the same $40 buys you 450 minutes but the night/weekend minutes and anyone on the same carrier is free minutes. and with some plans you can call any mobile number and not use up your minutess
and 10 years ago i had to buy my phone for $200. these days i can get a "free" smartphone when signing up for a contract. only thing that changed was that the contracts went to 2 years
I am an AT&T Wireless customer as they have good coverage in my area. Mobile to mobile and roll over keep me "loyal." I was initially against this merger, however I read some articles that changed my mind. First T-Mobile has no 4G Spectrum. All the 4G spectrum was sold to Verizon, Sprint and AT&T who acquired theirs from Nextel. The monopoly is created by the spectrum requirements, not the companies themselves. The government messed this up and T-mobile has no opportunity to continue competing.
It makes no sense for Sprint or Verizon to buy T-mobile as the technologies are incompatible. AT&T on the other hands needs more towers and they take time to approve. Acquiring them from T-mobile will speed up the deployment of more radios.
If you want true competition, the government needs to stop selling the spectrum, and instead pay for the infrastructure and let the companies all provide competing services over the same infrastructure. It does not make sense to force T-mobile to compete in a 4G world with 3G service.
... if this deal goes through, I'll probably switch to Verizon whenever my current phone is obsoleted or dies.
All companies are evil, but AT&T has a track record of having really crappy Android handsets while T-Mobile has a track record of having the best.
T-Mobile is the only provider that I've found in the USA that does not truncate the high bit on text messages. I can send text messages in Chinese and Japanese with my unlocked iPhone on T-Mobile. AT&T and Sprint clip the high bit. I hope AT&T won't screw up T-Mobile's network.
That it's even an open question shows how far from actual trustbusting we have gone.
Maybe the problem is too much trustmaking (restricted licensing, monopoly granting, etc.)
Set your phasers on "funky"!
>> i remember the days when we had a dozen cell carriers in the US. expensive service, crappy reception almost everywhere you went. as the competition dried up we've had prices drop and better phones come out.
My first computer ran Doom like a slide show and cost $3,000. I bought an iPod Video for $40 recently, with hacked firmware it runs Doom smoothly. This is the result of technology progressing, not with removal of competition.
I had Comcast cable internet for around 5 years because there was nothing else but even worse DSL in my area. They gave me 50kbytes/s upload and 750kbyte/s download. 2 months before Verizon installed FiOS lines in my area the upload jumped to 200kbyte/s and the download to 1.5mbyte/s.
Hotmail gave you 10mb disk space for eons. Gmail came out then Yahoo and Microsoft had to change.
As long as there is competition, even if it's just 2 mega-corps battling it out, companies can not sit still and must continue to innovate/advance.
Corporate Welfare then. I don't know if "corporate fascism" as you suggest quite makes sense.
In my defense, I'm an American, and I know the meaning of the word socialism. It's a pretty broad and unfair generalization to look at some ignorant fools who happen to be Americans and paint our whole society as a bunch of ignorant fools. If you live outside the US, then you probably only see the products of our media, which is squarely aimed at ignorant fools. That doesn't mean we're all that way. I'm sure I could come to whatever country you live in and find a few people who don't know the meaning of words, or who believe what your media tells them regardless of its veracity.
-Arthur
Cave ne ante ullas catapultas ambules
Yes, it seems that the old AT&T is back. Instead of spending the billions they're putting up for T-Mobile in network improvements, they're just going to buy out the competition. AT&T's Wireless Network sucks, their wired service sucks (I deal with their business units all the time) and it's not like you have a lot of choice out there.
I'm sorry, but I remember having to spend $800/month for a 300 Baud Modem back in the 70s. You could only get it from AT&T and you could only lease it. For those who don't remember what those days are like, just give us a few more years and it will be back but this time Wireless will be in the hands of two carriers in this country, Verizon and AT&T and having been customers of the "New AT&T ala the SBC bought out AT&T" and Verizon I can tell you we're all fucked.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Bullshit.
You have to buy spectrum and that isn't cheap. Just look at how much the FCC rakes in for the feds in those auctions and then tell me that the barriers are low.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
The Myth of Natural Monopoly p.56-57
Unnatural Monopoly: Critical Moments In The Development Of The Bell System Monopoly
You have confused Socialism and Communism. Please go fuck off and kill yourself and your family. The World will thank you.
the more your kind keeps silent, the more the other kind, fooled ignorant masses, speak up. and the ones herding them get encouraged and bolder.
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The article claims that Bell stifled innovation by choosing not to bring an invention made by a company employee to market, in this case magnetic tape audio recording. That's such an overblown reading of the event that it's laughable. Companies create ideas all the time they decide not to productize because they're not really in their core business, because they fear (rightly or wrongly) that they'll will have a negative impact on that core business. In this case it was both.
In any case, magnetic audio tape was invented in Germany in the prior decade, and magnetic wire recording technology had existed since the 1890s and was widely commercialized in the 1920s.
On the other hand, in Ma Bell's tenure we had the development of Unix, computer networking, and satellite telephony, in which the company paid key roles. The break-up of the Bell System was motivated in part by the hypothesis that competition would bring new technologies like digital telephony (in this case ISDN) to market faster. While nobody can say what would have happened without the break up, on that goal at least the break up could not be called a success.
The result of the break-up wasn't rapid technological innovation; it was price competition. That was a good thing. By in large the AT&T monopoly worked very well, within the expected limitations of any such regulated monopoly. We had *excellent* telephone service for the era, but it was much more expensive than it might have been. Under the covers it was quite technologically advanced. Ma Bell designed the multiplexed digital transmission system (the T Carrier system) that is still used in North America today back in the 1950s, and did early deployments as early as 1961. The commercial adoption of the Internet occurred a decade after the break up of the Bell System in 1984, but it was based on the T Carrier system and its refinements, all designed and implemented by the Bell system in the 60s and 70s, *before* the break-up.
Which is not to say that monopolies are necessarily a good thing. It was good that the break up lowered long distance prices. Nor are such monopolies always technical successes (BT comes to mind). It is even possible that the columnist is right, and that the Bell System *did* somehow stifle innovation, despite the historical fact of all the innovations it brought to market as a monopoly. The problem is his argument, which is pure, ignorant BS.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
they are just cozy with believing what they are told and parroting others. thats their problem. they do not dare wander out of their comfort and safety zone and do research.
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You are correct. The correct term for "corporate socialism" is fascism (not corporate fascism). Of course the difference between fascism and socialism is just one of degree. Both believe that some policy wonk knows better than you what is best for you. There is nothing about socialism that involves democracy, although socialism could be established in a democracy where the people elect who tells them how to live their lives The biggest success of the left was defining fascism as the opposite end of the spectrum from communism, leaving all of the true alternatives to state control completely off of the political spectrum.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
No. you have confused socialism and social democracy. it is appalling how daring and aggressively you speak. maybe that boldness is coming from your ignorance.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_democracy
however, EVEN in this case, it is still impossible to call what the grandgrandparent was trying to picture as social democracy even. because it doesnt have any relevance to that either.
unbelievable how bold and ignorant some of you people can be. you dont know what is what, yet you are WAY too bold. why.
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but Ma Bell did a HELL OF A LOT of innovating. All thjose service you take for granted? pretty much invented by Me Bell.
Call forwarding - yep.
Call waiting - yep
Central voice mail - yep
star 69 - yep
answering machine - yep
magnetic storage tape - yep
insulated telephone wires - yep
and I could go on and on.
Ma Bell also gave it's Scientist a ton of freedom to innovate.
Ma Bells problem was in customer service. If they had spent more money in getting rid of the multi hour lines, and creating good call in phone service they would still be around.
Of course the new AT&T his stating to show all those problems and very little innovation.
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Read somewhere that it was the iPhone tie-in with AT&T that sounded the death knell for T-Mobile in the States. Their contract sales went down the toilet after the thing was launched....
If spectrum were unregulated, you wouldn't be able to make a call because every tom, dick, harry, fong, dieter, and sandeep would be broadcasting willy-nilly on whatever spectrum they liked and your phone calls would be interrupted with snatches of porn. Let one big wireless company run amok, and it would be like AT&T prior to 1984 when they charged a dollar a minute for long distance service and if you didn't like it then you didn't call long distance.
Corporate Welfare then. I don't know if "corporate fascism" as you suggest quite makes sense.
Of course it does, at least according to the lead of Wikipedia's article about fascism: "Fascists seek to organize a nation according to corporatist perspectives, values, and systems, including the political system and the economy (Wiarda 1996, p. 12)."
corporate fascism maybe.
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I have been with T-Mobile for a few years now and I oppose this merger because of the following reasons.
1. T-Mobile is the #1 carrier in customer service and AT&Terrible (who I left to go to T-Mobile) sucks at customer service.
2. T-Mobile doesn't throttle their data plans like AT&T and they allow Tethering and make no attempt to block it unlike AT&T
3. T-Mobile has some of the most competitive pricing I have an unlimited everything plan that T-Mobile just started offering and I only pay 99.00 a month with that said I agree with the stifle competition statement because AT&T doesn't offer anything even comparable to the plan I am on. The next closest is Sprint but their unlimited only includes mobile to mobile no lanlines.
So, in my opinion AT&T can go f*&^ theirselves and if they do end up getting their way with this merger I will be going straight to Sprint and I assure AT&T that most T-Mobile customers will most likely be leaving as well because T-Mobile customers are used to being treated like people and not like customer numbers like AT&T treats thier customers.
I don't think that's a fair comparison to make. The main reason why coverage is better now than it was in the 80s and early 90s is because technology has advanced that much and there are more towers, there's absolutely no reason why we couldn't have a dozen or more cell phone carriers all jacked into the same network, that's managed either collectively or by another company that bids to provide the service on a regular basis for whatever region.
All that is do to manufacturing and technology innovation done outside of the phone companies.
Of course, what do you mean by worse? is price the only factor? phone quality has gone down. meaning how people sound.
Doubling contract length is no little thing either.
Here is the biggy for my: It's fragmenting. Phone service being offered by Apple aren't compatible with other devices and this is extremely bad.
20 years ago, if you introduced a phone whose featured could only be shared with people who bought the same phones you would be laughed at and possible sued unless you made the standard available for others to implement. Under that way, anyone could create a phone that could also be used with face time. That was the only reason we could have a phone service where anyone could communicate with anyone else regardless of where they bought their phone, or who the provider was.
So while I can get more features for the same price, other areas are getting worse.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Going too far in either direction leads to authoritarian systems. Reasonable alternatives exist on the spectrum, but you won't find them at either extreme. That said, a single line is insufficient to define political systems (even a 2-D grid has some weaknesses), but approaching the edge of just about any spectrum (1-D or 2-D) will eventually circle back to authoritarianism, in practice. Too much freedom allows for monopolies to develop and a corporate oligarchy to replace (de facto if not de jure) the existing government, while too little freedom leads there directly (it doesn't really matter whether you call it communism or fascism, the end result is that people have little say in their own lives).
$_ = "wftedskaebjgdpjgidbsmnjgcdwatb"; tr/a-z/oh, turtleneck Phrase Jar!/; print
The problem is that most urban areas in the US have at least 2 choices of ISP, the problem is that they've figured out that they don't have to compete, they just can't discuss it or make it formal. Any competition you see is going to be pretty superficial. Around here we've got Qwest and Comcast. I suppose you could include Clear and Hughes, but nobody does as the latency is even worse.
But, they've figured out that they don't have to compete with each other which means that we're now in the situation where the speed hasn't increased more than nominally in a decade and for the price in other parts of the country we could get a much, much faster connection. But we're poking along at 5mbps and feeling lucky because other parts of the city can't even get that.
Before you ask, no this wasn't always the case. Before we spread to every corner of the globe, you usually had the opportunity to opt out of government entirely by leaving existing civilization. The options on that front have largely disappeared, unless you really like the coast of Antarctica as a home.
$_ = "wftedskaebjgdpjgidbsmnjgcdwatb"; tr/a-z/oh, turtleneck Phrase Jar!/; print
Doesn't T-Mobile have a bunch of 4G commercials?
The fine print on T-Mobile's "4G" commercials states that T-Mobile's 4G is HSPA+.
The company called "AT&T" is not, was not, and has only a tenuous relationship with the entity "Ma Bell," American Telephone a Telegraph. The company called AT&T is actually the old SBC, Southwestern Bell Communications, one of the RBOCs, that took over AT&Ts name and trademarks after buying the AT&T Corporation in 2005.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
The FTC uses the Herfindahl index to evaluate market competitiveness. Using just the top 5 carriers (the big four and Tracfone), the current index is 1810 (market share data from here).
'According to the DOJ-FTC 2010 Horizontal Merger Guidelines, the agencies will regard a market in which the post-merger HHI is below 1500 as "unconcentrated," between 1500 and 2500 as "moderately concentrated," and above 2500 as "highly concentrated." A merger potentially raises "significant competitive concerns" if it produces an increase in the HHI of more than 200 points in a moderately concentrated market or more than 100 points in a highly concentrated market. A merger is presumed "likely to enhance market power" if it produces an increase in the HHI of more than 200 points in a highly concentrated market.'
So by their own definition this merger will raise "significant competitive concerns" since the HHI will increase by 650 points to 2460. With all the other little guys added in, it is fair to say that the final number would be more than 2500, i.e. "highly concentrated."
I'm a T-mobile customer with a Nexus S phone that I bought 2 weeks ago. I have learned that my phone won't work on the AT&T network -- at least not for data. That phone cost me over $600 with tax and accessories. It's supposed to take awhile for regulatory review and there's supposed to be some phase out period blah blah blah but I'm losing roughly half of the useful life of my phone -- and I'm the kind of guy that hangs onto my gadgets for a long time so this pisses me off. I cannot switch to another provider in the US because there will be no other GSM provider. If I choose a CDMA provider then my phone won't work abroad.
More importantly, my bill right now for unlimited minutes and 5GB of data per month (one GB more than AT&T's top-of-the-line data plan) plus 400 text messages is a mere $95 per month -- and that's the whole bill taxes and all. I'm not sure how much that'll go up because when I called AT&T to inquire about rates, the poor girl on the phone couldn't figure it out due to the byzantine service options/restrictions imposed by management. From the information I did get, I believe I can expect this to increase to anywhere between $125 and $150 *before* taxes.
T-Mobile is the low cost leader in our phone market. They provide excellent customer service. The were the first to offer an Android phone. AT&T was the last. For those who moan about big government hampering business, I invite you to prepare yourself to deal with the bureaucratic nightmare that AT&T will become. When you are only one of 130 million customers, dealing with your phone company is going to make a trip to the DMV feel like a vacation.
And by the way, I've been to AT&T's headquarters in New Jersey. I attended a business meeting there in the mid 90's as a management consultant. The building was in the middle of a *private golf course* left over from the monopoly days when a long distance call cost around a dollar a minute. The so-called strategists that we met with had no clue what the Internet was all about. In those days, the only reason AT&T was making money was because they had millions of aging customers who didn't realize that they could switch to a different long distance provider and slash their bill by roughly 75%.
This merger sucks for all of us except the fat cats at the top of AT&T and T-Mobile.
Cue the horde of libertarians who think that it's Ma Bell's *right* to stifle innovation and how dare anyone criticise them!
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
Ralph Nader Coined it. read the link and note that this was before the current economic issues.
http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0718-02.htm
"Corporate socialism" -- the privatization of profit and the socialization of risks and misconduct
You and I and everyone bears the effects of the risk of large corporation. Everyone on of us ends up paying. That's the socialism part.
here are some more socialisms:
Revolutionary socialism
State socialism
Libertarian socialists
Utopian socialists
Market socialism
You might want to take some time and deconstruct the words Social, socialist, and socialism. Or, you know keep looking like an idiot.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
If decision making is dispersed, why was this law passed? You are correct that the system in America currently allows the power to fall into the hands of the few. And you know what, every time they pass one of the laws or regulations that you support, it gets worse.
Since you talk about being bound by the society you live in, I guess you have no problems with making partial birth abortion illegal? And I am sure, you do not support "homosexual marriage"?
The problem is this law does not reflect the "collective will" of society. If this law on light bulbs reflected the collective will of U.S. society, it would not serve any purpose, people would be migrating to energy efficient light bulbs anyway.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
No, authoritarianism is not on both ends of the spectrum. Authoritarianism is one end of the political spectrum. Anarchy is the other end. Anarchy is arguably as bad as totalitarianism, but it is not the same as totalitarianism. And yes, a totalitarian may take over a society that was in anarchy, but that does not make totalitarianism a logical extension of anarchy.
One of the problems we have in these discussion is combining economic systems with political systems. While there is overlap, they are two separate types of systems. The other problem is not making a distinction between governments that follow rule of law vs governments that follow rule of edict. I beleive that if you have a strong repsect for the idea of rule of law, you will not end up with a totalitarian government, but as respect for rule of law diminishes the likelihood of totalitarianism rises. One of the problems with rule of law is that as the number of laws and regulations rises, there are more and more special cases that need exceptions until there are more people who fall under one or more of the exceptions to the general laws than those to whom they all apply. When that happens, people no longer view the law that applies equally to everyone (because it doesn't) and then it becomes a battle to be one of those to whom the law does not apply.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Corporate fascism is exactly what corporatism is.
They are even going to orphan the phones.
I'd say some things have gotten better, and some worse over the years:
Better:
1: Domestic roaming. When I had either AT&T and SBC Wireless [1], if I drove a small distance out of Austin, and if I ended up calling someone from a cafe, the roaming charges were pretty substantial. These days, it doesn't matter, because one isn't going to get hit by roaming charges in the US. Outside the US, and across the pond, this is different.
2: Cost of a phone. $400-$600 for a phone as well as a year contract. Blergh. These days, one can pay 15 bucks, get a T-Mobile to go prepaid phone, and periodically toss some money for minutes at the device, and have basic communication. If one wants a 1-2 year contract, one can get a decent Android phone for the price of the contract.
3: Cloning. Before AMPS was shown the door, it was pretty common for someone to be able to grab one's ESN/MIN info and go to town. These days, the resources to even copy an IMEI to a different device are beyond all but the most sophisticated attackers.
4: Text messaging. In the past, this was fairly expensive. These days for someone like me who sends/receives a good amount of SMS/MMS messages a month, it is well worth it.
What has gotten worse:
1: Tethering. I bought my T-Mobile MDA (HTC Wizard), and it allowed tethering out of the box, where one just flipped the modem on, and one had rather slow Internet access pretty much everywhere. EDGE was sluggish, but it did get the job done. Now, tethering costs a good chunk a month.
2: ETF charges. $150 from SBC Wireless, I don't mind. $350... yeesh.
3: Bandwidth charges. There are times when I can easily run over 10GB/month on a device, especially with cloud based backups and storage.
4: Tinkerer-hostile devices. Motorola we all know tells modders to go elsewhere, HTC is being held up to the wall and bitch-slapped by the carriers to make their phones unable to take unofficial Android upgrades. Other phone makers are touch and go. In the past, if one bought a smartphone, it was essentially open to whatever you wanted to do with it. Even Apple's devices are getting harder and harder to completely JB and unlock.
[1]: SBC Wireless was a CDMA provider, and AT&T was TDMA at the time. I am glad we have GSM-based networks now, just for the ease of changing out phones with SIM cards.
I think it's fair to say that it's not that all Americans are ignorant, just that the loudest Americans, that the rest of the world has to deal with are pretty damn ignorant. Seriously, the world is full of stupid, ignorant people but you Americans have your own special breed that is almost totally unique.
Actually, most of the problem in such discussions are the labels.
Insisting on applying labels rather then describing ideas has a way of descending to inanity and name calling.
Some terms, like "Socialism" (or "Fascism"), are only very vague and their definitions change depending on who is talking. The Wikipedia definition you insist on is far from authoritative (in fact there is no authoritative definition of any kind amongst even the scholars). And to add to the squabbling over the definition, you get the historical record of multiple regimes calling themselves "socialist" (such as USSR - the official government stance was that they were a "socialist" state in their "transition" to "communism") etc. while engaging in pervasive activities in direct contravention of even their own definition of the term.
Then you have confusion about what "corporatist" means in the ideology of "Fascism" (Mussolini was talking about "corpora" as in "businessmen" or "workers" not "corporations" as in GE or Microsoft).
In the end, one can only talk comparatively about individual policies of various regimes who called themselves this or that, irrespective of what the actual theoretical definition was claimed to be. Some of these policies (or their combinations) are unique to a class of regimes and that is how the labeling goes: Mussolini's Italy and Hitlers Germany shared the extreme nationalism, militarism, merger of the state and the wealth elites, racism etc. Contrast with the Warsaw Pact states (all claiming to be "socialist") where the wealthy elites were essentially eradicated and the state itself took their place (which is why some label the USSR as a "state capitalist" entity)
That is why in political discussions, excepting a very common and well established basic terms, when I use a label as a short-cut (which is all that labels are) in a discussion, I am rather prepared to explain in full what I mean by it, rather than point to a (rather controversial) Wikipedia page. Because politics, unlike hard sciences, has this issue with subjective terminology.
So your insistence that your definition is the "right" one is only going to encourage people to show up and insult you because, don't you know, it is theirs, and only theirs that is the "right" one ... and so the Holy Flame Wars commence.
I know AT&T doesn't make the phone, but they were the ones willing to take a chance with Apple. Now, the iPhone has defined what is a smartphone. AT&T had to work with Apple to support visual voicemail. Their Mark the Spot app let's me give them real-time field reports on dropped calls, weak signal, no data, so they can improve the network. As far as competition, Apple has redefined the carrier relationship, taking much of the carriers control from them. I would like to say Android follows this trend, but it doesn't. I think carriers see Android as a way to wrest control back. I am betting my LTE iPhone 5 next year makes carriers interchangeable, and I am betting Android ends up more like Linux than Windows.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from Macintosh...
Seems like you agree with parent then.
That definition must be incorrect because that sounds just like the United States of Freedom and Democracy-loving America and that can't be right!
I prefer the term America-Fuck-Yeahism.
This is a good story about stifling innovation, but did the fact that AT&T was a monopoly really stifle it? It's easy for us to look back and say, "This one guy made something game changing and it was covered up by a monopoly", but why was it just that one guy? How was the monopoly preventing others from finding this out on their own? Was AT&T running around and silencing everyone in the world who could have experimented with magnetic tape? Did busting up the monopoly free this technology up?
Even in the current market, it's possible for some dude at AT&T to come up with something that threatens their business model and be stifled. Is it somehow better because t-mobile is still out there? Nobody came up with that idea at t-mobile or verizon. it's still just as stifled and in 60 years we can look back and say, "oh man, if at&t hadn't hidden this we'd have had gigabit wireless everywhere for decades!" or whatever it is.
I was at a baby bell in the 90's, just after and during the time when these labs were getting torn down. After struggling for years to generate high income quick-hit research, the budgets of these labs were quickly transitioned into IT and software development in an effort to generate service profits and enlarge the short-term profits. The baby bells built caller-id, call waiting and bigger billing systems. Excess R&D was given to Universities and funded many academic labs.
So developers should probably be thankful for the opportunities really... It's likely that the demise of pure R&D was a big contributor to the growth of PC hardware, software and internet development.
I said no... but I missed and it came out yes.
You talk about your view of the political spectrum as if it is an absolute. But there are a few ways to describe it, and totalitarianism exists both from the extreme left (the orwellian extension of communism that the soviet union so aptly demonstrated) and from the extreme right (fascism is by definition totalitarian). Anarchy is orthogonal to that continuum (and the two totalitarian states are next to each other). Your description of the rule of law fits with what has been happening in the US for the past 200 years, and is largely without regard to political party (all political parties have moved to increase the number of laws and regulations on the books), and seems more to be a fact of government (government wants to get bigger and grab more power). Certainly in the modern USA both the republican and democratic parties can be seen as growing the size and scope of the government, both in step with corporate influence. This seems to be marching to totalitarianism from the right side of the political spectrum. There has been no social redistribution of wealth to the poor, merely a thin gauze of social welfare to keep those on the brink of nothing at that point, while the wealth collects more and more with the top 5% of the population.
Of COURSE innovation will go down. As someone who remembers the old ma-bell days....when they came out with a phone that WASN'T any color but black, people thought it couldn't get any better than this! Once Ma-Bell was split, we had these neat things that came along. Cordless (landline) phones, answering machines, voice mail, pagers (that were affordable!) and in the late 80's bag phones and then the Motorola brick! The rest, is history. Once at&t gobbles up t-mobile (and they will...they've greased enough palms), even though they say they won't, you can bet Verizon will throw a ton of money at Sprint to get them. Sprint's CEO says he wouldn't sell, but, you know 99.9% of the people will take the money and run. Once you have Verizon & at&t as the only companies providing wireless service, they can come up with a new gadget every once in a while, but with the bulk of people on contracts anyway, you won't get the churn like you did when there were a dozen wireless providers, not to mention the cool whiz-bang devices to use. Two things will happen, to say the least. 1. Prices will go up 2. Service will go down
Fascism: an authoritarian, nationalistic, anti-intellectual political theory in which individuals are subservient to the nation. Under fascism, your role as an individual human is meaningless -- you find your glory in action, usually violent, to glorify the Motherland under the strong leadership of your beloved dictator.
Socialism: an economic system based on the exchange of labor. Contrasts with capitalism, an economic system based on the state-backed private ownership of capital. Variants of socialism range from anarchism, which seeks to do away with the state and empower workers directly, to Marxism, which seeks to establish a powerful state which will be (in its theory) the agent of the workers and will (in its theory) eventually wither away. Marxism, as history shows, was easily perverted into authoritarian systems like Stalinism or Maoism. However, all forms of socialism are international to some degree, seeing the meaningful struggle as working people against the aristocracy, rather than as nation against nation.
Fascism and socialism are in no way degrees of one another.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Fascism is totalitarian, but it is not extreme right. Both fascism and communism sacrifice the individual for the group. The only useful political continuum runs from complete individualism to complete subjugation of the individual to the group (totalitarianism is the most likely expression of this).
All political attempts to redistribute wealth will fail. They will either result in collapse of society or they will result in greater concentration of wealth in the hands of the few (often times the second followed by the former).
The only way to stop the tendency of wealth to concentrate in the hands of the politically connected is to reduce the role the government plays in deciding winners and losers in the economy.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Socialism subjugates the individual to the group. Fascism subjugates the individual to the group. I disagree with your definition of capitalism. Capitalism is an economic system based on the voluntary exchange of goods and services. Socialism on the other hand is an economic system based on the exchange of goods and services at the determination of the group.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
"Cell phones" were invented independently many times, it's a fairly obvious idea.
However, its implementation is very complex. It was not technically possible to build a true cellular network until late 70-s.
A predecessor of cellular networks - a trunked mobile phone network was simultaneously developed in multiple countries. For example, the Soviet "Altai" mobile trunked phone system went live back in 1958 (about 4 months before analogous system in the USA).
My only option from the phone company is still the same shitty 3.0Mbps/768kbps ADSL service that was introduced to our town in 1999. Where's that innovation I've been hearing about again?
Hughes is typically called 'fraudband'- and from the recent implosion Clear's apparently undergoing and the spat with them and Sprint (with rumors of Sprint planning to go LTE here shortly...) they probably ought to be called that as well... >;-D
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
definition of socialism has been the same since 1.5 centuries. the definition in wikipedia, is that definition. you right wingers in america are the ones inventing definitions from your ass, in your crusade to scare people away from socialism.
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fascism is extreme right. it is how it was defined for around a century. you cannot just redefine it depending on your own political views.
fascism doesnt even redistribute ANYthing. fascism, in all cases, gets the backing of the established rich. this was so in italy, was so in germany. if rich capital didnt back the nazis, they would never have gained enough traction to get into power.
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socialism does not subjugate individual to the group, you moron. in socialism, individual PARTICIPATES in the group to take decisions. in fascism, individual has NO authority over what is being done, unless it is in the ruling caste. but what am i saying. its irrational to expect wisdom from someone who has a quote from fucking margaret thatcher, the moron which threatened the ally of its country with nuclear weapons over some minor incident. morons quoting morons.
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For a ~century long history of the pattern of innovation vs. consolidation in media and communications, see Tim Wu's "The Master Switch", 2010.
AT&T started as a "benevolent monopoly", and only became virulently anti-competitive when challenged in the 70's, until finally broken up by the feds.
The resurrected AT&T has all the anti-competition monopolist tendencies, complete with revolving door government lobbyists to write laws for them - and none of the civic duty, for-the-common-good impulses institutionally prescribed by Theodore Vail.
"The Master Switch" http://www.amazon.com/Master-Switch-Information-Empires-Borzoi/dp/0307269930
Tim Wu's Homepage http://timwu.org/
Fascist corporatism uses the word "corporation" in a different sense from the modern law definition.
in socialism, the decision making is dispersed. everyone participates in decision making, as opposed to the best democracy.
Socialism is an economic system, the primary distinctive trait of which is ownership of the means of production. It is entirely orthogonal to the issue of how decision making is organized. You can have both democratic (in many different implementations - republic, council democracy etc) or authoritarian socialism.
fascism doesnt even redistribute ANYthing. fascism, in all cases, gets the backing of the established rich. this was so in italy, was so in germany.
This is obviously false - there were numerous welfare programs in both Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany (even though Nazis are quite different from fascists). For example, the Reich had a single state-run trade union, which did in fact implement various protections of workers from abuse by their employers. Then there was KdF, very much successful.
Yes, Nazis didn't implement full-fledged socialism with all factories etc taken over by the state with workers running said state. That doesn't mean that they didn't have a significant social welfare component to their ideology, which necessarily involves redistributing wealth.
(Of course, this does not mean that wealth redistribution is inherently bad.)
in all cases of socialism, the decision making mechanism selection still passes through the people. even in authoritarian cases, authorities making the decisions gets elected to their positions. this was so in the heavy handed socialism attempt of eastern european nations.
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nay, nazi party and italian fascists have come to power by meshing support from various sources. ranging from capital backers to the army. especially in the case of germany, because there was a quite big social democrat voter population (approx 25-30%), the fledgling bunch of thugs that were the core of the nazi party had had incorporated seemingly socialist jargon and plans into their rhetoric as well. this was mainly to get votes. they had also incorporated the army cult, banking on the prussian tradition and pride of german populace. its not that nazi party was socialist, but they had had paid lip service to its ideals, and had had practiced a few stints (ranging from the volkswagen to the south america cruises) to advertise. a few traces of a practice being there, does not establish relevance to the concept of socialism. else, we could easily link, democracy with aristocracy.
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even in authoritarian cases, authorities making the decisions gets elected to their positions. this was so in the heavy handed socialism attempt of eastern european nations.
I'm sorry - did you just claim that Soviet Union and its satellite states had meaningful elections of political leadership?
I don't see why you're so desperate to dismiss the connection. After all, Nazis did grow up from a genuinely socialist party, and even though Hitler threw out a lot of more radical ideas once he took over in full, there were plenty remaining. And Hitler himself also noted that his ideology was a response to, and alternative to, communism, which he believed to be an evil ploy masquerading as a reprieve for the genuinely destructive capitalist practices. Consequently, Nazism, as the "real" reprieve, would have to ameliorate those same destructive practices - which is really a fancy way of saying "we have to give the workers some of what they want before they revolt and take it all for themselves as they did in Russia" (It's all spelled out in much detail in "Mein Kampf").
As you say yourself, a lot of people supported Nazis largely due to their social policies; and even after the war, many Germans, when asked, said that "Nazism was a good idea, badly applied" - and when asked to clarify, most pointed out various social programs as the main factor for this belief. This indicates to me that, whatever the motivation, Nazis did have a solid social welfare program in place.
What you should attack instead is the logical fallacy of "Nazis did it, therefore it's evil", so often used by conservatives in context of social welfare. Nazis did a lot of positive things - promoting health and hygiene, building roads etc. This is orthogonal to other concepts of their ideology which are universally reviled, such as totalitarianism, racism and forced eugenics. We shouldn't simplify it by mixing it all together, much less cherry picking what we like and claim that the rest is "a few traces of a practice".
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soviet union and its satellite states were (majority of them) democratic countries, most of them having the word democratic, in their name.
mostly they had one party democracy. however, still it was democracy.
'meaningful' word there, is a bit subjective dont you think.
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I don't see why you're so desperate to dismiss the connection. After all, Nazis did grow up from a genuinely socialist party, and even though Hitler threw out a lot of more radical ideas once he took over in full, there were plenty remaining
are you aware that, the above calls for determination of whether we can call something what it was before, after it being partially replaced/merged by something else ? ie, an ideology that merges any preferred practice from any other ideology, can be linked with the others ? what percentage of aristocracy is democratic, and what percent of democracy is still aristocracy ?
also, i didnt say a lot of people supported nazis due to their social policies - i said they adopted socialist jargon to cater to social democrat voters, just like they adopted army uniforms to cater to the prussian heritage, nationalism and army's support base among voters.
nazis didnt have a solid social welfare program in place. what they did, except from few token programs or advertising was they employed everyone through working of the military machine.
as for rationing with conservatives - its pointless. they are already using the fallacious 'corporate socialism' wordage, a term which their opponent coined, as a scareword for their own means. irony, meet the contradiction.
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mostly they had one party democracy. however, still it was democracy.
No, it's not.
'meaningful' word there, is a bit subjective dont you think.
Not in the least. When the ballot has a single name on it, and the only two options are to vote "for" or "against", and you know that secret vote is not really guaranteed, and not being at the poll booth on election day will have repercussions - there's nothing subjective about saying that this is about as democratic as a divinely appointed king.
In fact, there wasn't always an option to vote against. Here is a ballot from the 1974 elections to the Supeme Soviet of the USSR, from Moscow electoral district #1. The text above the list (on the right) says: "Leave the last name of a SINGLE candidate for which you are voting in the ballot, and strike out the rest". And the ballot has only one name in it (Kosygin), so the only alternative to voting for the guy is to spoil the bulletin.
This is precisely the system used in DPRK today (well okay, so they have three parties and you get three options - but all parties are in a single bloc with Kim at head). Are they a democracy?
My passport says "Country of birth: USSR" in it. I was too young to meaningfully observe the system before perestroika began, but my parents lived in it for a good part of their lives, and told a lot about it. So it's not just "some stuff from the Internet".
Fascism is historically a right-wing concept. The more you reduce the influence of government in society, the more powerful corporations become. Without government's trust-busting and regulation powers, corporations run roughshod over competition, merge and buy out their peers until there are monopolies. There is no other conclusion. Every legitimate scientific paper has demonstrated the bottom-feeding, consolidating nature of pure capitalism.
Let's be honest. The only reason you want smaller government is because you want less taxes. Maybe you've convinced yourself otherwise by constructing an elaborate viewpoint based on selective interpretation of historical events, but what it comes down to with you is money. You want to benefit from the vast wealth and resources a controlled and disciplined society provides you with, while avoiding the taxes required to maintain that society. I've seen it so many times identifying your type only requires a few choice words from them.
Just be honest and stop side stepping the issue. Greed is a human trait we all deal with. Pretending you're on some noble crusade to prevent the destruction of society by government overreach, while believing everyone else is brainwashed, is childish. Let's just be serious here. You don't like paying taxes, and that's what it boils down to.
Socialism subjects the powers of the elite to the group. You're obviously misunderstanding what socialism refers to. The choices of society are based off of the will of the group. Fascism subjects individuals to the will of a few leaders.
what percentage of aristocracy is democratic, and what percent of democracy is still aristocracy ?
I won't give you percentages, but there is certainly a significant "aristocratic" factor in most modern implementations of representative democracy, especially in countries with a big wealth divide (such as USA).
i didnt say a lot of people supported nazis due to their social policies
I misunderstood you then; nonetheless, the above is still true. Especially among workers, they were very popular for that reason (after taking over and installing dictatorship).
. what they did, except from few token programs
Um, KdF is a "token program"? Did you see the numbers of its scale of operation?
they employed everyone through working of the military machine.
Military was definitely a major source of new jobs, but by far not the only big one, especially early on. Pre-war, Nazi economists were essentially Keynesians, promoting heavy deficit spending on public construction works to ensure high employment.
Immediately before (since Nazis were preparing for it) and during the war military production took most of working hands, yes. This was the same in the USSR.
I won't give you percentages, but there is certainly a significant "aristocratic" factor in most modern implementations of representative democracy, especially in countries with a big wealth divide (such as USA).
quite so. and then, can we link current democracy and aristocracy, reasonably, to justify such linkages ?
Um, KdF is a "token program"? Did you see the numbers of its scale of operation?
how many other programs were there like these ? how much of the produced value from the factories, did workers own ? see ...
Military was definitely a major source of new jobs, but by far not the only big one, especially early on. Pre-war, Nazi economists were essentially Keynesians, promoting heavy deficit spending on public construction works to ensure high employment.
just like any other country at the time. yet, still not acceptably socialist.
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Not in the least. When the ballot has a single name on it, and the only two options are to vote "for" or "against", and you know that secret vote is not really guaranteed, and not being at the poll booth on election day will have repercussions - there's nothing subjective about saying that this is about as democratic as a divinely appointed king. In fact, there wasn't always an option to vote against. Here [wikipedia.org] is a ballot from the 1974 elections to the Supeme Soviet of the USSR, from Moscow electoral district #1. The text above the list (on the right) says: "Leave the last name of a SINGLE candidate for which you are voting in the ballot, and strike out the rest". And the ballot has only one name in it (Kosygin [wikipedia.org]), so the only alternative to voting for the guy is to spoil the bulletin.
fraud and repression during an election is not particular to soviet democracies or eastern democracies. it happens everywhere. it doesnt define an ideology.
that being said, even if there is a single party rule, and the party elects the candidates in itself through their own votes, its still a form of democracy.
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This former Sprint employee seems to recall this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MCI_Inc.
This is not your fathers's AT&T. This is the "new" AT&T, grown like a cancer from SBC, spun out of the original AT&T by divestiture in 1984. SBC is a nasty bunch. I would rather do business with the "old" AT&T than the"new" SBC-AT&T. Hell, I'd rather do "business" with "Old Scratch" than the new AT&T.
I canceled my home phone service and internet data service just to get rid of those pricks. I am a T-Mobile customer now, but I will surely abandon if AT&T takes over. Worst customer service ever. Worst attitude ever. Worst Telco Ever. I'd even go into the arms of the Dread Verizon (another RBOC) to avoid these turds. Yecch!
there are 3 kinds of people:
* those who can count
* those who can't
Then calling the Tea Party "right wing" is completely out of line, because they are not on that political spectrum at all. If fascist are right wing and communists are left wing, then your entire political spectrum is composed of demons. From where I stand, fascists and communists are right next to one another. They both make the same mistake. They think that the economy can be centrally managed efficiently.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
In socialism, what happens when the individual disagrees with the group?
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
As I said to someone else, if fascism is the right wing of your political spectrum and communism is the left wing, there are no acceptable alternatives on your political spectrum.
I find it funny that you say that the more you reduce the influence of government in society the more powerful corporations grow. I really can't speak to that, because I have never seen the influence of government in society reduced. But I can tell you this, over my lifetime, as the influence of government in society has grown, the more powerful corporations have become.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
And both subject the will of the individual to the will of the group (whether that will is determined by a few leaders or some majority, it still looks the same to the individual).
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
quite so. and then, can we link current democracy and aristocracy, reasonably, to justify such linkages
Sure, I think that it's quite reasonable to conclude that traditional representative democracy breeds aristocracy, because it effectively makes "politician" a profession.
That's why I personally would like to experiment with a council system (early Soviet-style, but with universal franchise as opposed to class restrictions), or perhaps even with Net-based pure direct democracy.
fraud and repression during an election is not particular to soviet democracies or eastern democracies. it happens everywhere. it doesnt define an ideology.
Nothing was said about defining an ideology. The simple matter of fact is that Soviet Union was 1) socialist, and 2) non-democratic. Which means that socialism is not necessarily democratic. It may be otherwise, but it wasn't so in USSR.
that being said, even if there is a single party rule, and the party elects the candidates in itself through their own votes, its still a form of democracy.
The process for selecting the candidates within the party was not really any different from the final universal election. At some point, yes, you could see some form of collective decision (though it was way above the rank-and-file members of the Party). Even then, at the peak, there were ~20 million members in CPSU, in a country with a population of >280 million, and of course most of those were rank-and-file - so it was a very tiny minority that actually had any meaningful say. This is democracy as much as, say, Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (where nobles voted) was a democracy. Yeah, in theory you could join the Party, and you could work your way up high enough to have a voice that counts. In practice this is about as likely as becoming a billionaire in USA from a garage business today.
I will begrudgingly concede this point. There are a lot of rational, well spoken, intelligent people in the US. Unfortunately they don't yell as loud as the stupid ones. Please accept apologies on behalf of my country for that. :-/
-Arthur
Cave ne ante ullas catapultas ambules
That is why you make me laugh so much.
The "you right-wingers" bit is a particularly precious example of your broad-brush tarring everyone who dares to fail to be awed by your religious fervor of choice, me in particular who finds all "right-wing" one-size-fits-all ideologies no less laughable than their "left wing" equivalents, exceeded in their humorous irony only by their Fevered Converts and Unwavering In The Face Of Mere Mortal Facts True Believers, such as you.
And so as soon as some inconvenient thing is said of your "1.5 century", one-and-only, Straight From the Mount, the Anointed Guru's mouth to your ear, the Ultimate Truth (TM) and Unchallengeable By All You Little People, Grand And Final Definition, you lash out at all of them "right wingers!" crowding you, right next to the "Bad people Mom told me about!'.
I also found it very educational to learn from you how all of these Most Evilly Evil Foes of yours are on a "Crusade", apparently to lure the hapless, innocent flock from the Sweet Waterhole of The Everlasting Happiness and to challenge the Ultimate And Divine Truth That Will Save Us All As Sayeth Unity100.
But we should fear not! For if you could only round up enough followers to setup a "reeducation" camp or two, to detect and Righteously Smite the Evil Crusaders, things would be set back on the The One And Only, 1.5 Century, Verily True, Shining Path To Universal Happiness And Endless Glory! No?
I jumped from the new AT&T to T-Mobile precisely because it stifled innovation and was more interested in locking down systems than providing any kind of useful service. They're seriously the only telco I've ever come across that couldn't reverse their own admitted mistake on an account.
...and now my only reasonable option for a much-needed upgrade is the G2X, because if AT&T is allowed to eat T-Mobile, not only will I be stuck having to opt out of what was a great contract, I'll have to use the only phone in the lineup that would actually function on the network once they've dismantled it.
Hell, AT&T can't even figure out how to get Amazon's Appstore to function on their network due to their policy of locking everything until forced to do otherwise. It's Ma Bell all over again, but without the benefits. Blocking the merger shouldn't even be a question of "if". As it is, AT&T is essentially a re-assembled zombie under more obnoxious management. Does anyone actually believe they would wield newfound and wholly unfettered power with any measure of responsibility?
I used to work for AT&T Bell Labs. There was plenty of good research, development and innovation going on then. Yes, it took a lot of money because real innovation is not cheap and more competition only guarantees cheap products and services, not (necessarily) innovation. Yes, they were heavily regulated (even after 1984). Anyone who says Ma Bell stifled innovation did work there. Today's at&t is a result of the merger of some of the Regional Bell Operating Company's (RBOCs) that were spun off when the U.S. government broke up AT&T in 1984 (so are Verizon and Qwest). All their innovation came from what is now long gone and/or sold to Alcatel. There hasn't been much innovation for at&t to stifle, so the argument against the acquisition is really only about its effect on the cost to the consumer.
Anyone who says Ma Bell stifled innovation didn't work there. (Of course ;-)