I think it's pretty clear that high minimum wages are a forcing function for this transition, and I don't think it's something we really want to force. Ideally, it would be better to slow it down, at least in terms of the human cost, though the most obvious mechanisms for slowing it (labor subsidies) may also dangerously distort the economy.
Try looking at it from a different angle.
I think it's pretty clear that high business profits are a forcing function for this transition, and I don't think it's something we really want to force. Ideally, it would be better to slow it down, at least in terms of the human cost, though the most obvious mechanisms for slowing it (better wages) may also improve the economy.
Chasing profits might be the goal of most businesses, but there's no compelling reason it should also be the goal of a Government for the people and by the people.
P.S. Minimum wages are both (1) low relative to decades of inflation and (2) historically low relative to worker productivity. You can look it up.
Within days it was widely reported in both US and Russian media that the aerosol used was Fentanyl or some related/derivative agent.
No, Russia has never said specifically what it was that they used, but I wouldn't expect any country to disclose the tools they use for anti-terror operations.
Have a good look at the limitations section on Wikipedia: "...that the lidar technology cannot spot potholes or humans, such as a police officer, signaling the car to stop."
We already have technology that can handle potholes to some extent: Semi-active suspension management. It has been slowly trickling down from high end and commercial automobiles.
There's two basic ways the systems work. 1. Magnetic shock fluid whose viscosity can be changed with a magnetic field 2. Actively adjusted shock valving
With the right accelerometers, both systems allow for detection of potholes (actually the detection of rapid drops) and can almost instantly increase the shock dampening to prevent your wheel from dropping deep into the pothole.
There's also active suspension management, which either involves actively generating hydraulic pressure for a piston or using a linear motor. These are far less common because of the extra weight and complexity required, but they can literally pull a wheel up and out of a pothole.
Not having the virtually unlimited bandwidth of all-fiber networks means that, for these populations, many activities are simply not possible. For example, broadband provided over all-fiber networks brings education, healthcare, and other social goods into the home through immersive, innovative applications and services that are impossible without it.
I think this point requires further explaining. Why exactly do I need Gbit service to bring healthcare into my home?
Alternatives to fiber, such as cable (DOCSYS 3.0), are not enough, and they could be more expensive in the long run. The maximum speed a DOCSYS modem can achieve is 171/122 Mbit/s (using four channels), just a fraction the 273 Gbit/s (per channel) already reached on fiber.
Huh?
DOCSIS 3.0 does not have a maximum limit on the number of channels that can be bonded. The initial hardware would only bond up to 8 channels (~304 Mbit/s), but 16 channel (608 Mbit/s) hardware is already being rolled out by Comcast in the form of rebadged Cisco DPC3939 Gateways.
2015/2016 we might see 24 channel (912 Mbit/s) and 32 channel (1.2 Gbit/s) hardware. 2016/2017 is most likely, in the form of DOCSIS 3.1 modems, which use completely different modulation, but will have 24/32 channel DOCSIS 3.0 baked into them so that the ISPs can seamlessly upgrade from DOCSIS 3.0 to 3.1.
Cable's game plan is to use DOCSIS 3.1 to put off pulling fiber to the home, which keeps their costs low and will allow them to offer (multi)gigabit speeds using a hybrid fiber/co-ax infrastructure.
The level of naysayers, resistance to change in Slashdot is the most I have seen in forever and I have been reading Slashdot for quite a while now.
Bundles: stay organized automatically It's like Folders! With keyword filtering! But we do it automatically for you!
Highlights: the important info at a glance They're like Subject lines! But with more information!
Reminders, Assists, and Snooze: your to-doâ(TM)s on your own terms
Calendar and Alarm integration! In your e-mail!
Because we were already reading your e-mail, we used some Google Search magic to pre-fetch information you might want. Gmailâ(TM)s still there for you, but Inbox is something new. Itâ(TM)s a better way to get back to what matters, and we canâ(TM)t wait to share it with you.
/This sounds like really cool stuff, too bad I don't have an Android phone.
The problem must be solved within the leadership of Islam.
The problem cannot be solved within the leadership of Islam, because there is no monolithic Islam.
This is the equivalent of saying that the Roman Catholic Church should involve itself in the affairs of the Southern Baptist Convention, because they're both Christian. Actually, one of them is Protestant. And not only Protestant, but a separatist group from a separatist group. That's three schisms for anyone trying to keep track.
The Islamic sects which attract/breed extremists have leadership who support extremism.
The honest leaders of the religion need to become more vigorous about this - expel those inciting violence, denounce them as heretics, cause a schism, all the same shit that the Catholic church had to go through in centuries past.
Islam suffered a defining schism shortly after the death of Mohammed. The Sunnis supported the choosing of Mohammed's father-in-law, Abu Bakr, as the first Caliph. The Shia believed Mohammed chose his cousin and son-in-law, Ali, as successor and have been pissed off ever since that he wasn't elected as the first Caliph.
Then these two groups spent the better part of a millennium fighting each other over who should be in charge, creating splinter factions the entire way.
National leaders who are not religious leaders need to do what they can to support that.
There are more than a few Persian Gulf states who are widely known to tacitly or actively support the funding of extremists. Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Yemen, Kuwait, Iran, and Syria are the first ones that come to mind. Some of them publicly condemn terrorism, but everyone knows that they do almost nothing to stop their very rich citizens from funneling money into the hands of extremist groups.
There's much more to be said on the topic, but I'll close by pointing out that your comments belie either ignorance or a deep misunderstanding about Islam and the Middle East.
then go lose a world war and dismantle most of your armament producing capability under scrutiny by an occupying force.
The USA (under Bush Jr. and Obama) has been encouraging Japan to become increasingly militaristic over the years. They're trying to create a stronger military partner to help counterbalance China's burgeoning military spending.
And the current Japanese PM, Shinzo Abe, is essentially the Japanese equivalent of a Holocaust denier, in that he's repeatedly gone on the record to deny or downplay Japanese war crimes.
His brand of nationalism is also pissing off South Korea, which certainly doesn't promote regional stability.
Despite it's flaws, the near absolute interpretation of the constitutional right to the freedom of speech by the US Supreme Court is a godsend and makes me proud to be an American.
Your response demonstrates that you failed to read and understand my points. There will always be limits to freedom of speech, but those limits are much more restrained in the US than the UK, just to go down the list:
I'm not going to even bother than the rest, because you clearly missed the point. No right is absolute, but the US Supreme Court guards the freedom of expression in the US much more fiercely than European Courts do.
It sounds a lot like you're walking back from "near absolute"
And just for the sake of pedantry, it's worth mentioning that no one has a Constitutional right to free of speech. Our right to free speech is natural and the Constitution limits how the Government can infringe on it.
/I'd also be interested in seeing your citations on the fighting words doctrine being overturned, the Supreme Court doesn't really agree with you.
Despite it's flaws, the near absolute interpretation of the constitutional right to the freedom of speech by the US Supreme Court is a godsend and makes me proud to be an American.
I can't help but think that anyone who believes this is anything less that wildly ignorant about the Constitution and Supreme Court jurisprudence.
Here are some broad exceptions to the constitutional right to the freedom of speech: 1. Libel, slander, and various forms of misleading statements 2. Inciting others to violence 3. Fighting words 4. Disturbing the peace (offensive words can be considered a breach of the peace) 5. Intentional infliction of emotional distress 6. Copyrights & trademarks 7. Obscenity 8. Commercial speech
I may have forgotten one or three, but I think that suffices to make my point that there is nothing remotely like a "near absolute interpretation of the constitutional right to the freedom of speech."
Equally important to the point I'm trying to make is that at least 5/8 of those exceptions were well established as law when the Constitution was written.
The FCCâ(TM)s notice talks about frequencies as high as 90GHz. Anything over 30GHz is classified as âoemillimeter wave frequencies,â which are blocked by walls. Indoor coverage is going to be tough.
âoe[W]hatever licensing regimes we adopt should take into account the fact that signals from carriersâ(TM) outdoor base stations will rarely be able to penetrate into the interiors of buildings, where around 75 percent of cellular data usage occurs today,â the FCC wrote. âoeReaching such spaces will almost certainly require the deployment of indoor base stations.â
The original concept for the cellular network was a series of big outdoor towers which talked to indoor base stations. Of course, building owners didn't want the expense of (retro)fitting small indoor cells, which led to a lot more outdoor towers than envisioned.
I think it's interesting that 100% juice does not have the same effects. Juice is increasingly being treated as junk food by dieticians and nutritionists because of its sugar content. They don't even want juice to be treated as part of your recommended consumption of fruit.
Anyone who actually needs a 5k display should already have a backup system in place. It's only real purpose is so graphics designers can work on 4k media without dual screens and for industrial/medical fields where high res images are normal.
The truth is, if you want to watch 4k media, you're better off with a 4k display. Upsampling &/or stretching to fill a 5k display is less than ideal.
They were hydraulically powered humanoid robots that beat on each other until either one of them stopped functioning or it went to the judges' decision.
We agree that in a environment where people do routine work, so many people share the required skill that identity of who provides this skill no longer matters. And that's where vast majority of the working population is employed.
You seem to completely ignore the value of institutional knowledge.
Maybe in your world, everything is documented, but everywhere else, knowledge of certain critical business processes is only retained in the memory of a few employees.
The SSA may assign a new Social Security number to you if you are being harassed, abused, or are in grave danger when using the original number, or if you can prove that someone has stolen your number and is using it. You must provide evidence that the number is being misused, and that the misuse is causing you significant continuing harm.
Also, Cheerios overcame a common problem in growing fungi. Standard growth media varies in composition from batch to batch. These small variations can alter fungi growth, meaning researchers canâ(TM)t consistently produce the same set of metabolites with each experiment. However, one Cheerio is the same as another, box to box, batch to batch, today or years from now.
"Standard" media that isn't consistent sounds like a massive failure of quality control by the manufacturer. Does no one make a quality growth media?
We're supposed to be 'the land of the free and the home of the brave.' Free and brave people would not sacrifice fundamental liberties and allow worthless government thugs to search everyone at airports in the name of safety.
You might want to re-read the 4th Amendment and then pick up a history book.
The Founding Fathers have always considered border searches reasonable. The first Congress passed a law about it in 1789.
To avoid summarizing 225 years of jurisprudence, I'll give the broad outlines of what isn't a reasonable border search. 1. Anything personally invasive or painful: strip searches, body cavity searches, x-rays, surgery 2. Destructive searches of property 3. Lengthy detention
And that's pretty much it. You've never had an expectation of privacy at the border.
Americans for Fair Taxation rejects the Treasury Department analysis, objecting that Treasury considers only the income tax. By leaving out payroll taxes (which are actually regressive) Treasury's chart makes the FairTax look worse by comparison. We found that including all the taxes that the FairTax would replace (income, payroll, corporate and estate taxes), those earning less than $24,156 per year would benefit. [David Burton, chief economist of the Americans for Fair Taxation] agreed that those earning more than $200,000 would see their share of the overall tax burden decrease, admitting that "probably those earning between $40[thousand] and $100,000" would see their percentage of the tax burden rise.
Show me an alternative tax structure that doesn't lower the tax burden for corporations or high earners by passing it onto the middle class and I'll support it.
Defacto monopolies exist when only one company decides to compete.
You might want to re-read your Econ 101 textbook.
The most important aspects of a monopoly is its ability to raise market prices (abnormal profits) and/or exclude competitors. Technically a company with 50% market share could do this, but for practical purposes, the threshold is considered 70%~80% of the market.
Markets with very few competitors (oligopolies and oligopsonies) can behave like cartels, without any formal collusion, giving everyone a chance to earn monopolistic profits.
Cable tv and utilities (power/water/gas/phones/sewage) are considered natural monopolies, but they weren't always. If you dig around in US history, competition for utility infrastructure was tried and it failed miserably.
Slashdot Mirror
I think it's pretty clear that high minimum wages are a forcing function for this transition, and I don't think it's something we really want to force. Ideally, it would be better to slow it down, at least in terms of the human cost, though the most obvious mechanisms for slowing it (labor subsidies) may also dangerously distort the economy.
Try looking at it from a different angle.
I think it's pretty clear that high business profits are a forcing function for this transition, and I don't think it's something we really want to force. Ideally, it would be better to slow it down, at least in terms of the human cost, though the most obvious mechanisms for slowing it (better wages) may also improve the economy.
Chasing profits might be the goal of most businesses, but there's no compelling reason it should also be the goal of a Government for the people and by the people.
P.S. Minimum wages are both (1) low relative to decades of inflation and (2) historically low relative to worker productivity. You can look it up.
Within days it was widely reported in both US and Russian media that the aerosol used was Fentanyl or some related/derivative agent.
No, Russia has never said specifically what it was that they used, but I wouldn't expect any country to disclose the tools they use for anti-terror operations.
Have a good look at the limitations section on Wikipedia:
"...that the lidar technology cannot spot potholes or humans, such as a police officer, signaling the car to stop."
We already have technology that can handle potholes to some extent: Semi-active suspension management.
It has been slowly trickling down from high end and commercial automobiles.
There's two basic ways the systems work.
1. Magnetic shock fluid whose viscosity can be changed with a magnetic field
2. Actively adjusted shock valving
With the right accelerometers, both systems allow for detection of potholes (actually the detection of rapid drops) and can almost instantly increase the shock dampening to prevent your wheel from dropping deep into the pothole.
There's also active suspension management, which either involves actively generating hydraulic pressure for a piston or using a linear motor. These are far less common because of the extra weight and complexity required, but they can literally pull a wheel up and out of a pothole.
Not having the virtually unlimited bandwidth of all-fiber networks means that, for these populations, many activities are simply not possible. For example, broadband provided over all-fiber networks brings education, healthcare, and other social goods into the home through immersive, innovative applications and services that are impossible without it.
I think this point requires further explaining.
Why exactly do I need Gbit service to bring healthcare into my home?
Alternatives to fiber, such as cable (DOCSYS 3.0), are not enough, and they could be more expensive in the long run. The maximum speed a DOCSYS modem can achieve is 171/122 Mbit/s (using four channels), just a fraction the 273 Gbit/s (per channel) already reached on fiber.
Huh?
DOCSIS 3.0 does not have a maximum limit on the number of channels that can be bonded.
The initial hardware would only bond up to 8 channels (~304 Mbit/s), but 16 channel (608 Mbit/s) hardware is already being rolled out by Comcast in the form of rebadged Cisco DPC3939 Gateways.
2015/2016 we might see 24 channel (912 Mbit/s) and 32 channel (1.2 Gbit/s) hardware.
2016/2017 is most likely, in the form of DOCSIS 3.1 modems, which use completely different modulation, but will have 24/32 channel DOCSIS 3.0 baked into them so that the ISPs can seamlessly upgrade from DOCSIS 3.0 to 3.1.
Cable's game plan is to use DOCSIS 3.1 to put off pulling fiber to the home, which keeps their costs low and will allow them to offer (multi)gigabit speeds using a hybrid fiber/co-ax infrastructure.
The level of naysayers, resistance to change in Slashdot is the most I have seen in forever and I have been reading Slashdot for quite a while now.
Bundles: stay organized automatically
It's like Folders! With keyword filtering!
But we do it automatically for you!
Highlights: the important info at a glance
They're like Subject lines! But with more information!
Reminders, Assists, and Snooze: your to-doâ(TM)s on your own terms
Calendar and Alarm integration! In your e-mail!
Because we were already reading your e-mail, we used some Google Search magic to pre-fetch information you might want. Gmailâ(TM)s still there for you, but Inbox is something new. Itâ(TM)s a better way to get back to what matters, and we canâ(TM)t wait to share it with you.
/This sounds like really cool stuff, too bad I don't have an Android phone.
The problem must be solved within the leadership of Islam.
The problem cannot be solved within the leadership of Islam, because there is no monolithic Islam.
This is the equivalent of saying that the Roman Catholic Church should involve itself in the affairs of the Southern Baptist Convention, because they're both Christian. Actually, one of them is Protestant. And not only Protestant, but a separatist group from a separatist group. That's three schisms for anyone trying to keep track.
The Islamic sects which attract/breed extremists have leadership who support extremism.
The honest leaders of the religion need to become more vigorous about this - expel those inciting violence, denounce them as heretics, cause a schism, all the same shit that the Catholic church had to go through in centuries past.
Islam suffered a defining schism shortly after the death of Mohammed.
The Sunnis supported the choosing of Mohammed's father-in-law, Abu Bakr, as the first Caliph.
The Shia believed Mohammed chose his cousin and son-in-law, Ali, as successor and have been pissed off ever since that he wasn't elected as the first Caliph.
Then these two groups spent the better part of a millennium fighting each other over who should be in charge, creating splinter factions the entire way.
National leaders who are not religious leaders need to do what they can to support that.
There are more than a few Persian Gulf states who are widely known to tacitly or actively support the funding of extremists. Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Yemen, Kuwait, Iran, and Syria are the first ones that come to mind. Some of them publicly condemn terrorism, but everyone knows that they do almost nothing to stop their very rich citizens from funneling money into the hands of extremist groups.
There's much more to be said on the topic, but I'll close by pointing out that your comments belie either ignorance or a deep misunderstanding about Islam and the Middle East.
Only liability insurance industry can force the change. Otherwise it will be impossible to put a monetary value on this effort.
Only the insurance industry can force change without getting buried in lobbying and politics.
But even then, the insurance industry will still end up negotiating the industry standards with device manufacturers.
It's the buzzword of the year. Give it 3-4 years to die out.
Please let me know when all the companies with "-ly" names are expected to die off.
Embedly, Nextly, Locately, Drizly, Intelligent.ly, Delightfully, Crowdly, Bitly, Attentive.ly, etc
I cannot wait to bid you goodbye.
/I also hold a special hatred for adf.ly and their link shortening interstitial ad-pages.
Several month old data?
Isn't that like... 90% of Windows operating files?
Most OS files are never overwritten until an update changes something.
Banning firearms will not finish the problem, but will very likely decrease it.
In a Mailbox: A Shared Gun, Just for the Asking
If you search for "community gun" you can find some more articles, from different cities, all saying the same thing.
then go lose a world war and dismantle most of your armament producing capability under scrutiny by an occupying force.
The USA (under Bush Jr. and Obama) has been encouraging Japan to become increasingly militaristic over the years.
They're trying to create a stronger military partner to help counterbalance China's burgeoning military spending.
And the current Japanese PM, Shinzo Abe, is essentially the Japanese equivalent of a Holocaust denier,
in that he's repeatedly gone on the record to deny or downplay Japanese war crimes.
His brand of nationalism is also pissing off South Korea, which certainly doesn't promote regional stability.
Despite it's flaws, the near absolute interpretation of the constitutional right to the freedom of speech by the US Supreme Court is a godsend and makes me proud to be an American.
Your response demonstrates that you failed to read and understand my points. There will always be limits to freedom of speech, but those limits are much more restrained in the US than the UK, just to go down the list:
I'm not going to even bother than the rest, because you clearly missed the point. No right is absolute, but the US Supreme Court guards the freedom of expression in the US much more fiercely than European Courts do.
It sounds a lot like you're walking back from "near absolute"
And just for the sake of pedantry, it's worth mentioning that no one has a Constitutional right to free of speech.
Our right to free speech is natural and the Constitution limits how the Government can infringe on it.
/I'd also be interested in seeing your citations on the fighting words doctrine being overturned, the Supreme Court doesn't really agree with you.
Apple has an excellent track record on privacy issues. Not because they are super nice people, but because that's not their business model.
Or because Apple hasn't (acknowledged that they have) been hacked yet.
Why exactly is that not already the case through existing law?
It is, they're just increasing the punishment.
Despite it's flaws, the near absolute interpretation of the constitutional right to the freedom of speech by the US Supreme Court is a godsend and makes me proud to be an American.
I can't help but think that anyone who believes this is anything less that wildly ignorant about the Constitution and Supreme Court jurisprudence.
Here are some broad exceptions to the constitutional right to the freedom of speech:
1. Libel, slander, and various forms of misleading statements
2. Inciting others to violence
3. Fighting words
4. Disturbing the peace (offensive words can be considered a breach of the peace)
5. Intentional infliction of emotional distress
6. Copyrights & trademarks
7. Obscenity
8. Commercial speech
I may have forgotten one or three, but I think that suffices to make my point that there is nothing remotely like a "near absolute interpretation of the constitutional right to the freedom of speech."
Equally important to the point I'm trying to make is that at least 5/8 of those exceptions were well established as law when the Constitution was written.
The FCCâ(TM)s notice talks about frequencies as high as 90GHz. Anything over 30GHz is classified as âoemillimeter wave frequencies,â which are blocked by walls. Indoor coverage is going to be tough.
âoe[W]hatever licensing regimes we adopt should take into account the fact that signals from carriersâ(TM) outdoor base stations will rarely be able to penetrate into the interiors of buildings, where around 75 percent of cellular data usage occurs today,â the FCC wrote. âoeReaching such spaces will almost certainly require the deployment of indoor base stations.â
The original concept for the cellular network was a series of big outdoor towers which talked to indoor base stations.
Of course, building owners didn't want the expense of (retro)fitting small indoor cells, which led to a lot more outdoor towers than envisioned.
I think it's interesting that 100% juice does not have the same effects.
Juice is increasingly being treated as junk food by dieticians and nutritionists because of its sugar content.
They don't even want juice to be treated as part of your recommended consumption of fruit.
Anyone who actually needs a 5k display should already have a backup system in place.
It's only real purpose is so graphics designers can work on 4k media without dual screens and for industrial/medical fields where high res images are normal.
The truth is, if you want to watch 4k media, you're better off with a 4k display.
Upsampling &/or stretching to fill a 5k display is less than ideal.
The closest thing to what you're describing was a 2013 SciFi series called http://www.syfy.com/robotcombatleague.
They were hydraulically powered humanoid robots that beat on each other until either one of them stopped functioning or it went to the judges' decision.
We agree that in a environment where people do routine work, so many people share the required skill that identity of who provides this skill no longer matters. And that's where vast majority of the working population is employed.
You seem to completely ignore the value of institutional knowledge.
Maybe in your world, everything is documented, but everywhere else, knowledge of certain critical business processes is only retained in the memory of a few employees.
Slashdot even had a nice conversation about it a few years ago
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/12/04/1742211/institutional-memory-and-reverse-smuggling
The hardest part of getting a new SSN is gathering up originals/certified copies of the documents you need to support your application.
http://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0248-do-you-need-new-social-security-number
Applying for a New Number or Replacement Card
The SSA may assign a new Social Security number to you if you are being harassed, abused, or are in grave danger when using the original number, or if you can prove that someone has stolen your number and is using it. You must provide evidence that the number is being misused, and that the misuse is causing you significant continuing harm.
Please don't spread misinformation.
Also, Cheerios overcame a common problem in growing fungi. Standard growth media varies in composition from batch to batch. These small variations can alter fungi growth, meaning researchers canâ(TM)t consistently produce the same set of metabolites with each experiment. However, one Cheerio is the same as another, box to box, batch to batch, today or years from now.
"Standard" media that isn't consistent sounds like a massive failure of quality control by the manufacturer.
Does no one make a quality growth media?
We're supposed to be 'the land of the free and the home of the brave.' Free and brave people would not sacrifice fundamental liberties and allow worthless government thugs to search everyone at airports in the name of safety.
You might want to re-read the 4th Amendment and then pick up a history book.
The Founding Fathers have always considered border searches reasonable.
The first Congress passed a law about it in 1789.
To avoid summarizing 225 years of jurisprudence, I'll give the broad outlines of what isn't a reasonable border search.
1. Anything personally invasive or painful: strip searches, body cavity searches, x-rays, surgery
2. Destructive searches of property
3. Lengthy detention
And that's pretty much it.
You've never had an expectation of privacy at the border.
Everyone essentially pays no taxes on necessary food/housing/etc... So it's actually better for the poor than the middle and upper classes.
Better for the poor, better for the rich, worse for the middle class.
http://www.factcheck.org/2007/05/unspinning-the-fairtax/
Americans for Fair Taxation rejects the Treasury Department analysis, objecting that Treasury considers only the income tax. By leaving out payroll taxes (which are actually regressive) Treasury's chart makes the FairTax look worse by comparison. We found that including all the taxes that the FairTax would replace (income, payroll, corporate and estate taxes), those earning less than $24,156 per year would benefit. [David Burton, chief economist of the Americans for Fair Taxation] agreed that those earning more than $200,000 would see their share of the overall tax burden decrease, admitting that "probably those earning between $40[thousand] and $100,000" would see their percentage of the tax burden rise.
Show me an alternative tax structure that doesn't lower the tax burden for corporations or high earners by passing it onto the middle class and I'll support it.
Defacto monopolies exist when only one company decides to compete.
You might want to re-read your Econ 101 textbook.
The most important aspects of a monopoly is its ability to raise market prices (abnormal profits) and/or exclude competitors.
Technically a company with 50% market share could do this, but for practical purposes, the threshold is considered 70%~80% of the market.
Markets with very few competitors (oligopolies and oligopsonies) can behave like cartels, without any formal collusion, giving everyone a chance to earn monopolistic profits.
Cable tv and utilities (power/water/gas/phones/sewage) are considered natural monopolies, but they weren't always.
If you dig around in US history, competition for utility infrastructure was tried and it failed miserably.