What stops you from competing with an ISP in the last mile? You could do it right now..open your own competing cable internet/copper wire internet/fiber internet provider to the premises.... except of course that's currently illegal in most parts of the U.S.
Last mile is not a natural monopoly... if it was, the government wouldn't have to make it illegal to try, people just wouldn't be willing to waste their money trying without any possibility of success.
Are there first mover advantages in many of the last mile connectivity markets? Sure there are, but If your city only allows one cable company to lay any cable, it isn't the market nor private enterprise preventing competition. There's only so much crap customers will put up with from the first mover before they're willing to look elsewhere, but when they're not legally allowed to....
I know it's unusual, so I apologize for the shock, but while I was replying to your post, I was actually agreeing with you.
Specifically, "I really hate how cynical I'm getting, but our corporate and government overlords keep taking our freedoms and most people are cheering them on. Good consumers. No need to be a citizen. Just be a good little consumer.", but just expanding on the mechanism a bit.
The FCC will inevitably kowtow to the corporate and other interests and lock in their vision of what the Internet is and is for, discarding the reality of what it can be and what the rest of us would like it to be.
Once you invite the FCC into regulating the Internet, you end up with a few appointed non-technical guys whose first loyalty is to a political party (In this case, Democrat, but I'm not saying GOP-controlled FCC would do a much better job of regulating) or to the special interest groups they support defining the various parts of the Internet in ways that make no technical sense, but allow them to accomplish their supporters very financially and power-based objectives.
As a result, the Internet becomes required to stagnate under their defined model, severely restricting the ability of the people who actually run it and use it to innovate in order to serve people better and slowing improvements in technology until they can be made to fit under stupid artificial distinctions like "end user" and "edge provider".
They're not actively trying to mess up the Internet, it's just a known side-effect of allowing them power to do so under public choice economic theory.
So for all of you who kept advocating for the FCC to get involved in regulating the Internet under the naive belief they'd impose your personal vision of Network Neutrality, this is the type of regulations you really get, plus distinctions between land lines and wireless, and all the other crap they're going to keep "refining" the rules to cover over time.
Those who kept pointing out the reality of the FCC regulating anything (that it really just puts Verizon, et al in charge) every time a network neutrality discussion occurred on/. will just quietly think "Toldja so" and hope people remember this the next time they advocate for a government commission which will inevitably suffer regulatory capture to control something else.
In the meantime, you'll eventually wish you could just purchase from a provider the service you actually want to have, but by the time they tell you that sort of service is now illegal, it'll be too late.
If you are wondering about the impact of carbon dioxide on say, forests, this type of question is easy to research with a quick Google search. In 30 seconds, I found this NSF study by Harvard researchers, for example, not exactly normally a hotbed of pro-GHG folks.
It's actually quite well-established that increased carbon dioxide levels are very good for plant growth. As it turns out, it also enables them to grow while needing less water, for example.
Ballmer's grandstanding. I'm pretty sure he understands the numbers in Amazon's 10-K filings.
Amazon made $745 million in income from $74 billion in sales last year, for a net income of $274 million.
That even seems understated, because they're obviously spending way more to expand their capacity than they need for just supporting their current operations. Last year, they have a net cash flow of $5.5 billion from operations, then spent $ 3.4 billion on purchases of property, equipment and software. Even after spending that much geared towards growth, that still leaves $2 billion in free cash flow to spend.
Let me put it another way, Amazon's net worth (assets minus liabilities) has gone from $17 Billion in 2010, to $23 Billion, then $27 Billion, now $33 Billion end of 2013. You don't do that without being profitable each year along the way, regardless of what they decide to do with the profit, which is clearly currently to reinvest the cash in order to expand quickly and grab as much market share as they can.
Ballmer's just jealous that no matter what Microsoft does or who they purchase, they can't convert their windows/office cash cows into a worthy reinvestment, because they're essentially out of new ideas, having mostly missed the ground floor of the Internet revolutions. So Microsoft's best bet is to act like a mature company and pay dividends so their stockholders can use that money to invest in something like Amazon.
Nice try, but feeding people (or even draft animals) calories to perform manual labor produces more GHG than using more efficient methods like coal power plants.:)
Not that there's anything wrong with more GHG production, but broken window fallacy and all that as well...
Have you considered the possibility that increased carbon dioxide emissions are good for the environment, because it encourages more plant growth? That it's good for people, because it enables them to live a better lifestyle? Even the possibility that a few fractions of a degree of warming would be a net benefit? I'm not suggesting you accept those positions based on a/. post, but have you actually looked into it yourself, maybe talked to an economist or a agricultural biologist about the tradeoffs? From your post, it seems your assumption is that both sides agree on what would be "better", but they don't.
The "leaders" who supposedly agree that carbon dioxide emissions are bad show by their actions that they really don't think so. If you look at what the global warming/climate change/climate disruption/whatever environmentalists actually advocate for and do personally, it's obvious that their goals have more to do with the means of controlling emissions more than the actual emissions themselves.
Why would anyone who disagrees with them take the position that they should empower that crowd to control their lives, when they don't even agree reducing carbon dioxide emissions is a good goal, let alone agree with the proposed means for reaching the goal?
The FDA ordered Zmapp to stop testing back in July and ordered TMK-Ebola research suspended in January.
These were private companies trying to create treatments and vaccines who were literally stopped by the government.
As the government was actively preventing Ebola treatments, before having them "do this vital task", perhaps we should look at their record on the issue?
You apparently didn't read the whole article: "On Tuesday, Health and Human Services (HHS) had to outsource efforts at an Ebola vaccine to the Baltimore-based Profectus BioSciences Inc. The company will receive $8.6 million to research and test their vaccine, a fraction of NIH funding that went to the above projects."
NIH is part of HHS. It is "the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and health-related research".
Are you attempting to disagree with me, or agree with me? It's not very clear...
What is your statement about the CDC in reference to? I don't see anyone here suggesting the CDC is the NIH. Was this meant sarcastically, like, "Well the NIH is no CDC", to imply that despite how screwed up the NIH is, at least they aren't as screwed up as the CDC has demonstrated itself to be recently?
The NIH is the government agency responsible for funding an Ebola vaccine research project (which they've recently assigned a budget of $9 million), which is why wasting $39 Million on other things instead of Ebola in the recent past is relevant.
In terms of the DOD, yeah, I agree that they waste tons (literally) of money, along with pretty much every other government agency, but unless you're trying to make that general point, the relevance to this discussion escapes me... The NIH obviously has the money for funding researching related to Ebola, they just chose not to spend it on that until very recently, previously having "higher priorities", like discovering why fat women go on fewer dates than skinnier women. I mean, hey, these are apparently deep mysteries to everyone in the government which require serious academics to delve into...
Pretty sure if you have the money to spend $39 million on researching why obese girls have a tough time getting dates, developing origami condoms, etc... the problem with not starting a $9 million research effort earlier isn't related to overall funding levels so much as to incompetent administration and politics driven priorities.
Why do we have no good Ebola treatments already right now? Regulations. The FDA ordered Zmapp to stop testing back in July and ordered TMK-Ebola research suspended in January.
How much sense does it make to send a bunch of troops to Africa to build isolation camps (yeah, yeah,call them hospitals) for them? Zero. I mean, to your point, it's not like we couldn't save money by just paying local contractors to put up some buildings. Why do we want the military in the African construction business? Is it because that's the only tool available and the only semi-useful thing they could think of for them to do? Ideally, we wouldn't send anyone near other people with Ebola. It's called quarantine...
Why should I (and others) trust your price determination about various people's value and wages over the preferences of billions of people as expressed in the prices actually paid?
It's all well and good for you to think you know more than everyone else combined about what people's efforts and contributions should cost, but you'll perhaps understand my skepticism of that when you provide no empirical basis for your valuations other than it happens to be your personal opinion.
Is it possible that the markets for CEO/lawyer/engineer/scientist do a better job of pricing those occupations than you would? I'm pretty sure the Soviet Union (and others) have rediscovered the hard way that you can't just get rid of markets and prices for things and believe that some elite knows how to set all the relative needs and values.
Our current system, although distorted via government regulations, import/export restrictions and licensing, is still the product of literally thousands of years of continuous development and trials in the real world. It effectively results from billions of people's individual choices and the preferences they express through those choices about what to buy and who to buy it from (including labor).
Perhaps you could consider an economics class from someone who isn't a Marxist?
That's why we like it. The rules are made by the people who own/run/create/manage it, by mutual agreement, not enforced from the top down. If people don't agree, they go their separate ways, because you can't be forced to allow someone on your network if they violate your network's rules.
The Internet is fine. We like it how it is. No need for more government regulation to ruin it on behalf of those with influence with government officials/politicians/bureaucrats.
a real mess that he inherited from the Bush administration
And someday (perhaps after he's out of office?), Obama will start being held responsible for his own actions by those who supported him. It's what, only been almost 6 years now? That's longer than many presidents serve in office. Obama's off to a really fast start, isn't he?
Did Obama end us being at war in Iraq? Apparently not...
Giving up and removing U.S. forces isn't the same thing as ending a war. The other guys were still in the neighborhood waiting for our announced removal.
Who looks really stupid now? The Iraqis who trusted the U.S. after we took down Saddam's government. They have a pretty good gripe about our government making promises to them and then not supporting them.
We ended the war against Germany and Japan in such a way that it didn't start back up again a few years later. That took time and leaving troops behind to maintain security and help rebuild the countries in a self-sustainable way so they're good friends of ours now and positive influences on the rest of the world.
Are you talking about the War in Iraq, which Obama boasted continuously about ending, despite loud criticism at the time that he was creating the conditions for what's going on right now with ISIS?
I wouldn't be boasting about that anymore, his related words are now one of those things his opponents publish on Twitter so as to illustrate how incompetent he is.
"His [Schulte's] prior experience as Chief-of-Staff at Priorities USA, the Super PAC supporting President Obama's re-election," assured Zuckerberg in a letter to FWD.us contributors, "will ensure FWD.us continues its momentum for reform."
I guess that rule doesn't apply to everyone. Good thing we have the most transparent administration ever and these lobbying efforts won't influence anyone...
In terms of the economy, Obama has done at least as much damage over time, based on his own administration's charts, even. Remember all those rosy predictions?
This voluntary online survey of academic fieldwork environments primarily shows two things:
1. These people aren't very good at science (See "voluntary online survey" again). 2. What science they've done which someone may consider valid serves only to demonstrate that one of the most left-leading, "liberal", feminist groups in the nation (academics, for whom government bureaucrats and main stream media would be their only real competition for the title) is apparently unable to successfully implement "solutions" to sexual harassment they'd confidently proscribe for everyone else to follow.
A reasonable alternate interpretation to #2, reversing causation, would be that academics are the ones who complain much more about feminist mythology-type topics and propose dramatic solutions because they happen to be the group with the biggest problem in that area, which causes them to be more concerned about it than most folks do.
Of course, they might also just be caught up in the pettiness which comes from arguing about less and less important things over time, but no one would suggest that...
Buying a new fleet of more expensive city buses primarily benefits the politicians who get to decide which of their friends will get to sell the city the buses.
Any arguments around the desirability or suitability of the new buses are just a bonus for their election year propaganda aimed at credulous residents.
So don't worry, they'll come back around to trollies, railways, etc... they just need to allow enough time to pass for voters to forget their last expensive "great" idea.
Who'd want 3 different water/sewer systems connected to their house?
Ummm... me?
I'm currently forced to buy water from only the local government-granted monopoly water provider, who has decided not to provide one type of water I want to purchase (greywater) to residential customers. They sell it to commercial customers at1/10th the cost of their potable water lines, but despite the fact that the pipes and infrastructure supporting it are literally 2 feet from my property, I'm classified as residential, so no using greywater for landscaping for me.
There's another potential water provider less than a mile away in a different political jurisdiction who I could purchase from... if it was legally allowed for them to compete here, which it isn't.
The truth is that taking a government-created monopoly and saying that's proof that a market wouldn't support a non-monopoly setup is really saying that the legal framework creating the monopoly in the first place isn't really needed. So let's get rid of the government enforcing monopolies and see what's really a persistent natural monopoly vs what's actually a favor for buddies of the local politicians instead?
If you want to get all strict-constructionist on this matter though, planes, cars, buses, and rail didn't even exist when the Constitution was written, so one could argue that there's no Constitutional protection when travelling by anything beyond horseback, carriage, or walking.
This argument doesn't make any sense, and certainly wouldn't to a strict-constructionist.
Either the Constitution was intended to cover any type of travel when originally written, or it wasn't.
If it was, then any type of travel is protected, because nothing in the Constitution authorizes the government to restrict travel.
If (as you argue) it wasn't intended to cover, say, flying, because it didn't exist at that time yet (silly, no one really argues that but let's go with it...), then still, nothing in the Constitution authorizes the government to restrict travel via flying.
The fallacy you seem to be falling into is thinking that the Constitution needs to explicitly permit or protect a particular freedom (like travel) or else the government can do what they want in regards to it. The Constitution doesn't grant people rights and doesn't protect only enumerated freedoms. It enumerates specific powers for the government and reserves everything not specifically granted to the States and the people.So if the Constitution doesn't apply to something, then the Federal government doesn't have any authority whatsoever in regards to that something.
In actual fact, the courts have ruled that any limitation on the fundamental right to travel must pass strict scrutiny. See a few hundred thousand links from Google.
There are maybe 4 authors that are obviously right wing and published by the big 6 in fiction.
And none of them got started in the last 15 years or so, they're all established names who sell too many books to justify dumping. You know TOR's editors hate that Card is their biggest selling author, but they can't come up with an excuse to drop him as long as he still sells well.
Anyone newer than that will be with Baen, or one of the smaller or indie imprints.
Slashdot Mirror
What stops you from competing with an ISP in the last mile? You could do it right now..open your own competing cable internet/copper wire internet/fiber internet provider to the premises.... except of course that's currently illegal in most parts of the U.S.
Last mile is not a natural monopoly... if it was, the government wouldn't have to make it illegal to try, people just wouldn't be willing to waste their money trying without any possibility of success.
Are there first mover advantages in many of the last mile connectivity markets? Sure there are, but If your city only allows one cable company to lay any cable, it isn't the market nor private enterprise preventing competition. There's only so much crap customers will put up with from the first mover before they're willing to look elsewhere, but when they're not legally allowed to....
I know it's unusual, so I apologize for the shock, but while I was replying to your post, I was actually agreeing with you.
Specifically, "I really hate how cynical I'm getting, but our corporate and government overlords keep taking our freedoms and most people are cheering them on. Good consumers. No need to be a citizen. Just be a good little consumer.", but just expanding on the mechanism a bit.
The FCC will inevitably kowtow to the corporate and other interests and lock in their vision of what the Internet is and is for, discarding the reality of what it can be and what the rest of us would like it to be.
So, carry on...
Once you invite the FCC into regulating the Internet, you end up with a few appointed non-technical guys whose first loyalty is to a political party (In this case, Democrat, but I'm not saying GOP-controlled FCC would do a much better job of regulating) or to the special interest groups they support defining the various parts of the Internet in ways that make no technical sense, but allow them to accomplish their supporters very financially and power-based objectives.
As a result, the Internet becomes required to stagnate under their defined model, severely restricting the ability of the people who actually run it and use it to innovate in order to serve people better and slowing improvements in technology until they can be made to fit under stupid artificial distinctions like "end user" and "edge provider".
They're not actively trying to mess up the Internet, it's just a known side-effect of allowing them power to do so under public choice economic theory.
So for all of you who kept advocating for the FCC to get involved in regulating the Internet under the naive belief they'd impose your personal vision of Network Neutrality, this is the type of regulations you really get, plus distinctions between land lines and wireless, and all the other crap they're going to keep "refining" the rules to cover over time.
Those who kept pointing out the reality of the FCC regulating anything (that it really just puts Verizon, et al in charge) every time a network neutrality discussion occurred on /. will just quietly think "Toldja so" and hope people remember this the next time they advocate for a government commission which will inevitably suffer regulatory capture to control something else.
In the meantime, you'll eventually wish you could just purchase from a provider the service you actually want to have, but by the time they tell you that sort of service is now illegal, it'll be too late.
If you are wondering about the impact of carbon dioxide on say, forests, this type of question is easy to research with a quick Google search. In 30 seconds, I found this NSF study by Harvard researchers, for example, not exactly normally a hotbed of pro-GHG folks.
It's actually quite well-established that increased carbon dioxide levels are very good for plant growth. As it turns out, it also enables them to grow while needing less water, for example.
Ballmer's grandstanding. I'm pretty sure he understands the numbers in Amazon's 10-K filings.
Amazon made $745 million in income from $74 billion in sales last year, for a net income of $274 million.
That even seems understated, because they're obviously spending way more to expand their capacity than they need for just supporting their current operations. Last year, they have a net cash flow of $5.5 billion from operations, then spent $ 3.4 billion on purchases of property, equipment and software. Even after spending that much geared towards growth, that still leaves $2 billion in free cash flow to spend.
Let me put it another way, Amazon's net worth (assets minus liabilities) has gone from $17 Billion in 2010, to $23 Billion, then $27 Billion, now $33 Billion end of 2013. You don't do that without being profitable each year along the way, regardless of what they decide to do with the profit, which is clearly currently to reinvest the cash in order to expand quickly and grab as much market share as they can.
Ballmer's just jealous that no matter what Microsoft does or who they purchase, they can't convert their windows/office cash cows into a worthy reinvestment, because they're essentially out of new ideas, having mostly missed the ground floor of the Internet revolutions. So Microsoft's best bet is to act like a mature company and pay dividends so their stockholders can use that money to invest in something like Amazon.
Nice try, but feeding people (or even draft animals) calories to perform manual labor produces more GHG than using more efficient methods like coal power plants. :)
Not that there's anything wrong with more GHG production, but broken window fallacy and all that as well...
Because you're assuming the conclusion.
Have you considered the possibility that increased carbon dioxide emissions are good for the environment, because it encourages more plant growth? That it's good for people, because it enables them to live a better lifestyle? Even the possibility that a few fractions of a degree of warming would be a net benefit? I'm not suggesting you accept those positions based on a /. post, but have you actually looked into it yourself, maybe talked to an economist or a agricultural biologist about the tradeoffs? From your post, it seems your assumption is that both sides agree on what would be "better", but they don't.
The "leaders" who supposedly agree that carbon dioxide emissions are bad show by their actions that they really don't think so. If you look at what the global warming/climate change/climate disruption/whatever environmentalists actually advocate for and do personally, it's obvious that their goals have more to do with the means of controlling emissions more than the actual emissions themselves.
Why would anyone who disagrees with them take the position that they should empower that crowd to control their lives, when they don't even agree reducing carbon dioxide emissions is a good goal, let alone agree with the proposed means for reaching the goal?
You should have started at the top of the thread.
The FDA ordered Zmapp to stop testing back in July and ordered TMK-Ebola research suspended in January.
These were private companies trying to create treatments and vaccines who were literally stopped by the government.
As the government was actively preventing Ebola treatments, before having them "do this vital task", perhaps we should look at their record on the issue?
You apparently didn't read the whole article:
"On Tuesday, Health and Human Services (HHS) had to outsource efforts at an Ebola vaccine to the Baltimore-based Profectus BioSciences Inc. The company will receive $8.6 million to research and test their vaccine, a fraction of NIH funding that went to the above projects."
NIH is part of HHS. It is "the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and health-related research".
Are you attempting to disagree with me, or agree with me? It's not very clear...
What is your statement about the CDC in reference to? I don't see anyone here suggesting the CDC is the NIH. Was this meant sarcastically, like, "Well the NIH is no CDC", to imply that despite how screwed up the NIH is, at least they aren't as screwed up as the CDC has demonstrated itself to be recently?
The NIH is the government agency responsible for funding an Ebola vaccine research project (which they've recently assigned a budget of $9 million), which is why wasting $39 Million on other things instead of Ebola in the recent past is relevant.
In terms of the DOD, yeah, I agree that they waste tons (literally) of money, along with pretty much every other government agency, but unless you're trying to make that general point, the relevance to this discussion escapes me... The NIH obviously has the money for funding researching related to Ebola, they just chose not to spend it on that until very recently, previously having "higher priorities", like discovering why fat women go on fewer dates than skinnier women. I mean, hey, these are apparently deep mysteries to everyone in the government which require serious academics to delve into...
Pretty sure if you have the money to spend $39 million on researching why obese girls have a tough time getting dates, developing origami condoms, etc... the problem with not starting a $9 million research effort earlier isn't related to overall funding levels so much as to incompetent administration and politics driven priorities.
Why do we have no good Ebola treatments already right now? Regulations. The FDA ordered Zmapp to stop testing back in July and ordered TMK-Ebola research suspended in January.
How much sense does it make to send a bunch of troops to Africa to build isolation camps (yeah, yeah,call them hospitals) for them? Zero. I mean, to your point, it's not like we couldn't save money by just paying local contractors to put up some buildings. Why do we want the military in the African construction business? Is it because that's the only tool available and the only semi-useful thing they could think of for them to do? Ideally, we wouldn't send anyone near other people with Ebola. It's called quarantine...
Why should I (and others) trust your price determination about various people's value and wages over the preferences of billions of people as expressed in the prices actually paid?
It's all well and good for you to think you know more than everyone else combined about what people's efforts and contributions should cost, but you'll perhaps understand my skepticism of that when you provide no empirical basis for your valuations other than it happens to be your personal opinion.
Is it possible that the markets for CEO/lawyer/engineer/scientist do a better job of pricing those occupations than you would? I'm pretty sure the Soviet Union (and others) have rediscovered the hard way that you can't just get rid of markets and prices for things and believe that some elite knows how to set all the relative needs and values.
Our current system, although distorted via government regulations, import/export restrictions and licensing, is still the product of literally thousands of years of continuous development and trials in the real world. It effectively results from billions of people's individual choices and the preferences they express through those choices about what to buy and who to buy it from (including labor).
Perhaps you could consider an economics class from someone who isn't a Marxist?
The Internet has already descended into Anarchy.
That's why we like it. The rules are made by the people who own/run/create/manage it, by mutual agreement, not enforced from the top down. If people don't agree, they go their separate ways, because you can't be forced to allow someone on your network if they violate your network's rules.
The Internet is fine. We like it how it is. No need for more government regulation to ruin it on behalf of those with influence with government officials/politicians/bureaucrats.
And someday (perhaps after he's out of office?), Obama will start being held responsible for his own actions by those who supported him. It's what, only been almost 6 years now? That's longer than many presidents serve in office. Obama's off to a really fast start, isn't he?
Did Obama end us being at war in Iraq? Apparently not...
Giving up and removing U.S. forces isn't the same thing as ending a war. The other guys were still in the neighborhood waiting for our announced removal.
Who looks really stupid now? The Iraqis who trusted the U.S. after we took down Saddam's government. They have a pretty good gripe about our government making promises to them and then not supporting them.
We ended the war against Germany and Japan in such a way that it didn't start back up again a few years later. That took time and leaving troops behind to maintain security and help rebuild the countries in a self-sustainable way so they're good friends of ours now and positive influences on the rest of the world.
Iraq? Not so much...
Are you talking about the War in Iraq, which Obama boasted continuously about ending, despite loud criticism at the time that he was creating the conditions for what's going on right now with ISIS?
I wouldn't be boasting about that anymore, his related words are now one of those things his opponents publish on Twitter so as to illustrate how incompetent he is.
But, how is this possible? I thought Obama banned his team from becoming lobbyists after they left him???
I guess that rule doesn't apply to everyone. Good thing we have the most transparent administration ever and these lobbying efforts won't influence anyone...
What's the difference between Bush's illegal wars and Obama's illegal wars?
In terms of the economy, Obama has done at least as much damage over time, based on his own administration's charts, even. Remember all those rosy predictions?
This voluntary online survey of academic fieldwork environments primarily shows two things:
1. These people aren't very good at science (See "voluntary online survey" again).
2. What science they've done which someone may consider valid serves only to demonstrate that one of the most left-leading, "liberal", feminist groups in the nation (academics, for whom government bureaucrats and main stream media would be their only real competition for the title) is apparently unable to successfully implement "solutions" to sexual harassment they'd confidently proscribe for everyone else to follow.
A reasonable alternate interpretation to #2, reversing causation, would be that academics are the ones who complain much more about feminist mythology-type topics and propose dramatic solutions because they happen to be the group with the biggest problem in that area, which causes them to be more concerned about it than most folks do.
Of course, they might also just be caught up in the pettiness which comes from arguing about less and less important things over time, but no one would suggest that...
Buying a new fleet of more expensive city buses primarily benefits the politicians who get to decide which of their friends will get to sell the city the buses.
Any arguments around the desirability or suitability of the new buses are just a bonus for their election year propaganda aimed at credulous residents.
So don't worry, they'll come back around to trollies, railways, etc... they just need to allow enough time to pass for voters to forget their last expensive "great" idea.
Ummm... me?
I'm currently forced to buy water from only the local government-granted monopoly water provider, who has decided not to provide one type of water I want to purchase (greywater) to residential customers. They sell it to commercial customers at1/10th the cost of their potable water lines, but despite the fact that the pipes and infrastructure supporting it are literally 2 feet from my property, I'm classified as residential, so no using greywater for landscaping for me.
There's another potential water provider less than a mile away in a different political jurisdiction who I could purchase from... if it was legally allowed for them to compete here, which it isn't.
The truth is that taking a government-created monopoly and saying that's proof that a market wouldn't support a non-monopoly setup is really saying that the legal framework creating the monopoly in the first place isn't really needed. So let's get rid of the government enforcing monopolies and see what's really a persistent natural monopoly vs what's actually a favor for buddies of the local politicians instead?
If you want to get all strict-constructionist on this matter though, planes, cars, buses, and rail didn't even exist when the Constitution was written, so one could argue that there's no Constitutional protection when travelling by anything beyond horseback, carriage, or walking.
This argument doesn't make any sense, and certainly wouldn't to a strict-constructionist.
Either the Constitution was intended to cover any type of travel when originally written, or it wasn't.
If it was, then any type of travel is protected, because nothing in the Constitution authorizes the government to restrict travel.
If (as you argue) it wasn't intended to cover, say, flying, because it didn't exist at that time yet (silly, no one really argues that but let's go with it...), then still, nothing in the Constitution authorizes the government to restrict travel via flying.
The fallacy you seem to be falling into is thinking that the Constitution needs to explicitly permit or protect a particular freedom (like travel) or else the government can do what they want in regards to it. The Constitution doesn't grant people rights and doesn't protect only enumerated freedoms. It enumerates specific powers for the government and reserves everything not specifically granted to the States and the people.So if the Constitution doesn't apply to something, then the Federal government doesn't have any authority whatsoever in regards to that something.
In actual fact, the courts have ruled that any limitation on the fundamental right to travel must pass strict scrutiny. See a few hundred thousand links from Google.
And none of them got started in the last 15 years or so, they're all established names who sell too many books to justify dumping. You know TOR's editors hate that Card is their biggest selling author, but they can't come up with an excuse to drop him as long as he still sells well.
Anyone newer than that will be with Baen, or one of the smaller or indie imprints.
Quick, name one publicly right-wing midlist fiction writer currently published by one of the big 6.
Take all the time you want to think about it.
Non-fiction and (especially) celebrity/best-sellers who can write their own contract are treated differently.