Is Comcast a monopoly? In my area an alternate provider with the same performance is very much more expensive. Is that because Comcast has better technology, or because the barriers to entry are too high?
No, the reason Comcast has that monopoly is because there was a law that allowed local municipalities to grant a local monopoly and Comcast bought the companies that held those franchises.
A alternate question is whether there is case where there was a high cost to entry in a field with a distributed infrastructure (railways, roads. internet, pipelines, telecom etc) where there was no government intervention and there was not a monopoly. (honest question, I can't think of one, but would be interested to hear an example).
The problem here is that I can't think of one of those that did not have the government step in and impose a monopoly.
The Mississippi river flows through Louisiana. You ain't getting to the gulf from Iowa without going through Louisiana.
Sure you can. You go east to the Atlantic Coast and then take a ship to the gulf.
There are three power grids in the USA. East, West, and Texas. You want to sell power over the grid, you have to hook up to the one in your area. They don't overlap. No body is stopping you from laying down your own transmission lines.
I am pretty sure that there are laws preventing you from doing that. I know that there were laws that limited who was allowed to sell electricity in a given area. I remember a time when only one company was allowed to sell electricity in the area I live in. The law still only allows one company to run electrical transmission lines to retail customers in my area.
There are no "natural monopolies". The idea of "natural monopolies" was one that was popularized to justify the government interfering in the telephone market to create the original AT&T monopoly.
No, the claim that the government will limit itself to what you call Net Neutrality is the lie. Yes, most of the people who argue for Net Neutrality are arguing for something that would prevent the ISP big players from shutting out competitors, but all of the proposed government "net neutrality" plans are about regulating content. Just because you mean the obvious by a term, doesn't mean that's what the politicians and bureaucrats mean when they use the same term.
And of course allow the government to know exactly what you do with your money. Although to be perfectly honest, if they do make it impossible to do business without the government tracking your money, I expect to see some kind of unofficial currency appear. I have no idea what form it will take, but some way to conduct business without being traced by the government will be developed. It will be in some good that is easily transportable and can be changed for official currency without attracting attention (at least at first).
That's what this story is about. The government being able to track the movement of cash. First they will put these electronic circuits in the money so that when someone wants to check if a bill is legitimate they can scan the bill for the electronic code, the scanner will check with the centralized database that the electronic code in the bill is one of the legitimate ones. After these scanners become common, they will be required for all business transactions.
According to the gentleman I referred to earlier, studies show that "gender reassignment" does not prevent them from drowning in depression and eventually committing suicide. Having the surgery does not provide them with the ability to be a happy and productive human being. Someone who is unhappy as a result of something outside of their control is never happier after that something is changed, they just start blaming something else for their unhappiness.
In economic areas naturally suited for monopoly building (having big barriers to the entry of new players), government regulation is the only thing that protects you from dealing with a single extorsionist.
Government regulation is one of the largest barriers to entry in those areas that are "naturally suited for monopoly building".
Krugman says whatever supports his political agenda. He is an unreliable source. In 2003 he said that federal spending was too large to be sustainable. In 2009 when it was much larger, he said it wasn't enough.
The worst part about it is that Maryland courts have already ruled that it is perfectly legal to record a police officer on the public street. Oh yeah, the motorcyclist with the helmet cam was more than two months ago.
The thing is, governments with lots of regulations like big corporations. It is easier to control a few big corporations than it is to control a lot of small companies. The more government regulates business the more business needs to influence government to survive. The more business influences government, the more people like you want the government to regulate business thus driving small businesses out of business leading to more dominance of the market place by big corporations, increasing the influence that those corporations have over the government. This is what has been demonstrated throughout history. The less the government regulates the economic sphere (beyond enforcing basic contract law), the more the individual prospers. The more the government regulates the economic sphere, the more big business prospers and individual liberty suffers.
Let's see who am I going to think has a better understanding of the real world: a woman who successfully pulled her country back from the brink of destruction, or a comedian whose only claim to fame is doing a bad caricature of conservative commentators. Oh yeah, Margaret Thatcher said that long before Stephen Colbert made his statement.
This is correct because courts have ruled in several states that recording a police officer in the process of a traffic stop or otherwise conducting his official duty on a public street is not a violation of the "all parties" wire tap laws, yet prosecutors keep bringing these charges.
Why would a phone manufacturer spend all the extra time and money to develop a platform with this level of accessibility for such a small segment of sales?
The problem is that they are doing the reverse, they are spending extra time and money to deny this level of accessibility on a platform that otherwise has it.
No, they are proposing that we would have been better off if we had gone that route in the first place. I remember when the complaints people have about Android were the complaints they had about the PC market. It was why the Mac was better and why everybody should have bought a Mac.
That's because Iphones only come from one company. So, what you are saying is that monopolies are good.
Would the market be better for developers if HTC, LG and Motorola all came out with a device that used its own OS and was competitive with the Iphone, Because that appears to be what you are asking for. Either that or you want everybody else to give up and for everyone to use Iphones.
Can you describe when such a regulation has been proposed by anyone in a position to implement it? Proponents of Net Neutrality keep asking me to explain why I oppose this mythical regulation. I don't oppose that mythical regulation. I oppose the one that is 25 pages long that politicians and bureaucrats tell me will do that.
Net Neutrality boosters keep saying that net neutrality is prohibiting ISPs from discriminating between packets based on destination or source. If the regulation were to say "You may not distinguish between packets based on destination or source.", I could support it. But none of the proposed regulations have ever been that short.
People keep arguing that that is what they are for and I keep telling them, that's not what you are going to get.
The financial meltdown happened because Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (quais-governmental organizations) were taking actions which implied that certain risky actions were being guaranteed against failure by the government. The way that government regulation encouraged banks and other financial institutions to take risky actions is complicated, but if you trace the actions of various government agents you can see how they lead to the problem.
Sorry, I've already paid for that bridge thanks to the government that you think doesn't have enough power.
The whole financial melt down was a product of the success of government regulation of the financial markets. The financial firms over extended themselves and the government bailed them out at the expense of the little guy and then passed laws to make it harder for the little guy to make money in the market.
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Is Comcast a monopoly? In my area an alternate provider with the same performance is very much more expensive. Is that because Comcast has better technology, or because the barriers to entry are too high?
No, the reason Comcast has that monopoly is because there was a law that allowed local municipalities to grant a local monopoly and Comcast bought the companies that held those franchises.
A alternate question is whether there is case where there was a high cost to entry in a field with a distributed infrastructure (railways, roads. internet, pipelines, telecom etc) where there was no government intervention and there was not a monopoly. (honest question, I can't think of one, but would be interested to hear an example).
The problem here is that I can't think of one of those that did not have the government step in and impose a monopoly.
The Mississippi river flows through Louisiana. You ain't getting to the gulf from Iowa without going through Louisiana.
Sure you can. You go east to the Atlantic Coast and then take a ship to the gulf.
There are three power grids in the USA. East, West, and Texas. You want to sell power over the grid, you have to hook up to the one in your area. They don't overlap. No body is stopping you from laying down your own transmission lines.
I am pretty sure that there are laws preventing you from doing that. I know that there were laws that limited who was allowed to sell electricity in a given area. I remember a time when only one company was allowed to sell electricity in the area I live in. The law still only allows one company to run electrical transmission lines to retail customers in my area.
Please name a "natural monopoly" which occurred without the intervention of government regulation.
There are no "natural monopolies". The idea of "natural monopolies" was one that was popularized to justify the government interfering in the telephone market to create the original AT&T monopoly.
Regulations are how we ended up with Comcast in the first place.
No, the claim that the government will limit itself to what you call Net Neutrality is the lie. Yes, most of the people who argue for Net Neutrality are arguing for something that would prevent the ISP big players from shutting out competitors, but all of the proposed government "net neutrality" plans are about regulating content. Just because you mean the obvious by a term, doesn't mean that's what the politicians and bureaucrats mean when they use the same term.
And of course allow the government to know exactly what you do with your money. Although to be perfectly honest, if they do make it impossible to do business without the government tracking your money, I expect to see some kind of unofficial currency appear. I have no idea what form it will take, but some way to conduct business without being traced by the government will be developed. It will be in some good that is easily transportable and can be changed for official currency without attracting attention (at least at first).
That's nice.
That's what this story is about. The government being able to track the movement of cash. First they will put these electronic circuits in the money so that when someone wants to check if a bill is legitimate they can scan the bill for the electronic code, the scanner will check with the centralized database that the electronic code in the bill is one of the legitimate ones. After these scanners become common, they will be required for all business transactions.
According to the gentleman I referred to earlier, studies show that "gender reassignment" does not prevent them from drowning in depression and eventually committing suicide. Having the surgery does not provide them with the ability to be a happy and productive human being. Someone who is unhappy as a result of something outside of their control is never happier after that something is changed, they just start blaming something else for their unhappiness.
If they can't make good decisions regarding the body they were born with, why would I trust them to make good decisions under the pressure of war?
In economic areas naturally suited for monopoly building (having big barriers to the entry of new players), government regulation is the only thing that protects you from dealing with a single extorsionist.
Government regulation is one of the largest barriers to entry in those areas that are "naturally suited for monopoly building".
By that logic we may as well have multiple power companies each running their own power lines down our roads.
Why not?
Krugman says whatever supports his political agenda. He is an unreliable source. In 2003 he said that federal spending was too large to be sustainable. In 2009 when it was much larger, he said it wasn't enough.
The worst part about it is that Maryland courts have already ruled that it is perfectly legal to record a police officer on the public street. Oh yeah, the motorcyclist with the helmet cam was more than two months ago.
The thing is, governments with lots of regulations like big corporations. It is easier to control a few big corporations than it is to control a lot of small companies. The more government regulates business the more business needs to influence government to survive. The more business influences government, the more people like you want the government to regulate business thus driving small businesses out of business leading to more dominance of the market place by big corporations, increasing the influence that those corporations have over the government. This is what has been demonstrated throughout history. The less the government regulates the economic sphere (beyond enforcing basic contract law), the more the individual prospers. The more the government regulates the economic sphere, the more big business prospers and individual liberty suffers.
Let's see who am I going to think has a better understanding of the real world: a woman who successfully pulled her country back from the brink of destruction, or a comedian whose only claim to fame is doing a bad caricature of conservative commentators. Oh yeah, Margaret Thatcher said that long before Stephen Colbert made his statement.
This is correct because courts have ruled in several states that recording a police officer in the process of a traffic stop or otherwise conducting his official duty on a public street is not a violation of the "all parties" wire tap laws, yet prosecutors keep bringing these charges.
Well, the feeling is mutual.
Why would a phone manufacturer spend all the extra time and money to develop a platform with this level of accessibility for such a small segment of sales?
The problem is that they are doing the reverse, they are spending extra time and money to deny this level of accessibility on a platform that otherwise has it.
No, they are proposing that we would have been better off if we had gone that route in the first place. I remember when the complaints people have about Android were the complaints they had about the PC market. It was why the Mac was better and why everybody should have bought a Mac.
That's because Iphones only come from one company. So, what you are saying is that monopolies are good.
Would the market be better for developers if HTC, LG and Motorola all came out with a device that used its own OS and was competitive with the Iphone, Because that appears to be what you are asking for. Either that or you want everybody else to give up and for everyone to use Iphones.
Can you describe when such a regulation has been proposed by anyone in a position to implement it? Proponents of Net Neutrality keep asking me to explain why I oppose this mythical regulation. I don't oppose that mythical regulation. I oppose the one that is 25 pages long that politicians and bureaucrats tell me will do that.
Net Neutrality boosters keep saying that net neutrality is prohibiting ISPs from discriminating between packets based on destination or source. If the regulation were to say "You may not distinguish between packets based on destination or source.", I could support it. But none of the proposed regulations have ever been that short.
People keep arguing that that is what they are for and I keep telling them, that's not what you are going to get.
The financial meltdown happened because Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (quais-governmental organizations) were taking actions which implied that certain risky actions were being guaranteed against failure by the government. The way that government regulation encouraged banks and other financial institutions to take risky actions is complicated, but if you trace the actions of various government agents you can see how they lead to the problem.
Sorry, I've already paid for that bridge thanks to the government that you think doesn't have enough power.
The whole financial melt down was a product of the success of government regulation of the financial markets. The financial firms over extended themselves and the government bailed them out at the expense of the little guy and then passed laws to make it harder for the little guy to make money in the market.