Sender: •••@••.••• (Richard L. Emery)
> >This one snippet certainly weighs lightly against the evidence that
> >deregulation provides the best choice at the best price for the consumer.
>
> What does high-school economics have to do with the real world?
> Deregulation has nothing to do with enabling competitive free-market
> forces, and everything to do with establishing monopolies.
>
> Pac Bell & GTE, by the way, are applying for "rate relief" under a
> _regulatory_ system. That's the problem with regulation, that the process
> is dominated by mega corporations -- a solution is needed, but it's not to
> give them a free reign (:>).
>
Glen Raphael responds to this point far more eloquently than I.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
"Dorothy K. Dean" <•••@••.•••> writes:
> Have you ever heard of monopolies? Like THE PHONE COMPANY before
>the government required that it decentralize.
The phone company was a perfect example of a regulated, government-created
monopoly. This is basically the worst of both worlds; in such a situation
you get lousy service and high prices and it's ILLEGAL to start a competing
service! Free market advocates think that the government should never
prevent people from entering an industry, whether that industry be the
national phone company, a local phone company, a local taxi franchise, a
local cable franchise, or first-class mail delivery. The country started
out with multiple competing phone services, but the biggest player was able
to convince the government to lock out competition in that market. That was
the first mistake. Breaking it up was an attempt to rectify the mistake.
Most of the monopolies that really are abusive have been
government-protected monopolies, not the result of free competition. This
is exactly what we don't want to have happen in telecommunications, and
that is why I want to remove the current governmental barriers to entry in
that market. We need to let anybody who wants to start a phone or cable
company, do so. Yes, this will allow big players to compete. It will also
allow small players to compete. Either is better than the status quo in
which NOBODY is allowed to compete!
--
Glen Raphael, •••@••.•••
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