We Americans may only import like 10% from the Gulf (half of that from Iraq, would you believe) but the American producers aren't going to sell for less than that price because they don't have to. Oddly enough, America is also an oil exporter -- the best price wins.
Whenever somethong like this comes along, the debate degenerates into one side exaggerating their "right" to cheap, fast service versus the other trumpeting the miracle of capitalism and dubbing the complainers "whiners."
But the just objective is fairness. The way economic freedom is most efficiently pursued is regulated competition. The buyers and sellers may want to cheat each other, but competition means each is more likely to get what's fair.
The problem is that you can't say free-market, problem solved. One of the biggest stumbling blocks is monopoly, and cable is one of our most familiar non-public monopolies. We happen use a cable modem (having switched from DSL on price) and its reliability and performance happen to be very good. Yet I wonder what unimagined options we might get if there were any competition. Although we can also access DSL, many in this country can't, and DSL isn't the same thing as cable anyway (our cable, for one has much faster dowstream of over 5 Mbps, another reason for our switch). Then there is also satellite, but as the recent FTC block of the DirectTV/Echostar merger illustrates, competition in the sky is already very limited as well. Then there is often the equipment to buy or abandon when getting or leaving satellite.
So... in a nascent field like broadband, the absence of competition can only increase cable company profits. Whether they tighten the screws on bandwidth usage or not is irrelevant: the abiding problem is that either the low-bandwidth users are being overcharged, or the networks are overbuilt, or the wide-bandwidth users are getting a free ride. I would suspect a little of each to be true, and that in most cases the cable company comes out farther ahead that it "should" in a competitive market.
I believe the common problem to be monopoly and the resulting absence of multiple, competitively-priced package plan providers such as we have in conventional long-distance telephones... which were monopolies not all that long ago. Remember how improvements like fiber-optics burst on the scene when AT&T was chopped up? I bet the internet was an incidental benficiary of that -- of competition.
There, how many times did I use the word "competition"? I get $5 for each one from the Competition Institute for Competitive Competing Competitors.
Gee -- here I thought eneryone would leap to Microsoft's defense!
Thank you all for your comments. It might help if I explain that I live next to Washington, DC, so my mind is on (1) the sniper(s); (2) the NRA headquarters 10 miles down the road; and (3) the capitol from whence wonderful legislation comes. We'll see how these three factors interact once the (*%^! sniper is caught (if not already).
As for the NRA or the DMA or other abbrs. -- I would not trust them for definitive constitutional or legal analysis. Spirited advocacy often blurs the vision of even the honest, so I argue for skepticism. I didn't intend a thumbs-up or -down on the NRA, though I'll provide one discreetly on request....
The DMA (or the gun lobby or you name it) gets involved when they see that regulation is inevitable. Their purpose? To "shape" the law according to their perogatives -- i.e., eviscerate it. Microsoft uses a similar strategy with "embrace, extend, extinguish."
The DMA's job is to promote DMA, not to tailor it to our desires or rights -- requiring opt-out is a good example. They provide a limited opt-out for junk mail and telemarketing primarily to silence their critics and head off decisive government intervention.
Many states already have anti-spam legislation on the books, but it is rarely enforced because of the difficulty in tracking these cretins down. A federal law would provide uniformity and predictability of everyone's rights and obligations. And hey, it might even work.
A recent article reported with a straight face a major spammer's contention that they HAD to forge the headers because otherwise anti-spam zealots would complain to their ISP and get them shut down -- making opt-outs impossible. Ha!
But but but... it's inaccurate! The landmasses aren't all green! Where are the deserts, the mountains, the clouds, the subtle silhouette of the atmosphere??? (see http://www.solstation.com/stars/earth.jpg) I liked the abstract Aqua one better, though I realize Apple is mercilessly aggressive about its intellectual property.
OK, I'm a Mac (l)user.
Having digressed to browsers, I hope everyone has tried the very nice free beer/speech Chimera for OS X.
Slashdot Mirror
We Americans may only import like 10% from the Gulf (half of that from Iraq, would you believe) but the American producers aren't going to sell for less than that price because they don't have to. Oddly enough, America is also an oil exporter -- the best price wins.
Whenever somethong like this comes along, the debate degenerates into one side exaggerating their "right" to cheap, fast service versus the other trumpeting the miracle of capitalism and dubbing the complainers "whiners."
... in a nascent field like broadband, the absence of competition can only increase cable company profits. Whether they tighten the screws on bandwidth usage or not is irrelevant: the abiding problem is that either the low-bandwidth users are being overcharged, or the networks are overbuilt, or the wide-bandwidth users are getting a free ride. I would suspect a little of each to be true, and that in most cases the cable company comes out farther ahead that it "should" in a competitive market.
... which were monopolies not all that long ago. Remember how improvements like fiber-optics burst on the scene when AT&T was chopped up? I bet the internet was an incidental benficiary of that -- of competition.
But the just objective is fairness. The way economic freedom is most efficiently pursued is regulated competition. The buyers and sellers may want to cheat each other, but competition means each is more likely to get what's fair.
The problem is that you can't say free-market, problem solved. One of the biggest stumbling blocks is monopoly, and cable is one of our most familiar non-public monopolies. We happen use a cable modem (having switched from DSL on price) and its reliability and performance happen to be very good. Yet I wonder what unimagined options we might get if there were any competition. Although we can also access DSL, many in this country can't, and DSL isn't the same thing as cable anyway (our cable, for one has much faster dowstream of over 5 Mbps, another reason for our switch). Then there is also satellite, but as the recent FTC block of the DirectTV/Echostar merger illustrates, competition in the sky is already very limited as well. Then there is often the equipment to buy or abandon when getting or leaving satellite.
So
I believe the common problem to be monopoly and the resulting absence of multiple, competitively-priced package plan providers such as we have in conventional long-distance telephones
There, how many times did I use the word "competition"? I get $5 for each one from the Competition Institute for Competitive Competing Competitors.
Gee -- here I thought eneryone would leap to Microsoft's defense!
Thank you all for your comments. It might help if I explain that I live next to Washington, DC, so my mind is on (1) the sniper(s); (2) the NRA headquarters 10 miles down the road; and (3) the capitol from whence wonderful legislation comes. We'll see how these three factors interact once the (*%^! sniper is caught (if not already).
As for the NRA or the DMA or other abbrs. -- I would not trust them for definitive constitutional or legal analysis. Spirited advocacy often blurs the vision of even the honest, so I argue for skepticism. I didn't intend a thumbs-up or -down on the NRA, though I'll provide one discreetly on request....
The DMA (or the gun lobby or you name it) gets involved when they see that regulation is inevitable. Their purpose? To "shape" the law according to their perogatives -- i.e., eviscerate it. Microsoft uses a similar strategy with "embrace, extend, extinguish."
The DMA's job is to promote DMA, not to tailor it to our desires or rights -- requiring opt-out is a good example. They provide a limited opt-out for junk mail and telemarketing primarily to silence their critics and head off decisive government intervention.
Many states already have anti-spam legislation on the books, but it is rarely enforced because of the difficulty in tracking these cretins down. A federal law would provide uniformity and predictability of everyone's rights and obligations. And hey, it might even work.
A recent article reported with a straight face a major spammer's contention that they HAD to forge the headers because otherwise anti-spam zealots would complain to their ISP and get them shut down -- making opt-outs impossible. Ha!
But but but ... it's inaccurate! The landmasses aren't all green! Where are the deserts, the mountains, the clouds, the subtle silhouette of the atmosphere??? (see http://www.solstation.com/stars/earth.jpg) I liked the abstract Aqua one better, though I realize Apple is mercilessly aggressive about its intellectual property.
OK, I'm a Mac (l)user.
Having digressed to browsers, I hope everyone has tried the very nice free beer/speech Chimera for OS X.