Most economists understand that an unregulated "free market" leads to a lack of stability, corporate control, income inequality, and eventually the enslavement of the people. Yet this is exactly what the right wing proposes each time they have the authority to make changes. And this is what invariably happens everytime: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/08/07/bad-ratings "Internet service was deregulated during the George W. Bush Administration, with the theory that fewer rules would foster greater competition. For a time, as A.T. & T. and Verizon started building fibre-optic networks to compete with cable Internet, there seemed to be truth to the idea. Over the past few years, however, the companies have largely abandoned those projects; according to Crawford, the capital investments required were too high. President Trump’s newly appointed F.C.C. chairman, a former Verizon lawyer named Ajit Pai, has done little to suggest that the agency will improve the situation—in fact, he has introduced a plan allowing companies to raise rates even further, and abandoned a program that would bring competition into the market for cable set-top boxes. Rather than fuel vigorous competition and lower prices, the rise of these giant companies has meant that Americans are paying inflated costs for poor service. In Lexington, a university city with a burgeoning technology industry, the mayor’s office started getting calls from constituents shocked by their bills almost as soon as the Charter-Time Warner merger was complete; one city employee now devotes much of his time to fielding the complaints, which are entered in a huge spreadsheet. (“Man with a severe mental disability was sold a Spectrum package,” one reads. “His sister wants to know how he was signed up for service since he doesn’t know his Social Security number or birth date.”) Spectrum said that the price changes simply reflect the fact that Time Warner’s promotional deals have expired. Last week, Democratic leaders issued a new agenda that singled out the cable industry as an example of bad antitrust law. “We are going to fight to allow regulators to break up big companies if they’re hurting consumers,” Chuck Schumer, the Senate Minority Leader, promised. Such pledges won’t do much to help Lexington. The city scheduled a town-hall meeting later this month to air grievances against Spectrum, and eight hundred people are expected to attend (along with at least one brave representative from the company), but there’s little the town can do. As a letter from Lexington’s chief administrative officer to the cable companies last month read, “The city is left wondering what abuse will be heaped upon it next.”
1) if so why so afraid to name just one time?? 2) USSR had massive regulation and 60 million starved to death. Doesn't that argue for deregulation? 3) France has way more regulation the we do but they live at the per capita income of Arkansas, about our poorest state. Doesn't that argue for deregulation?
The USSR regulated out of a desperate need to get control and prevent catastrophe. Their "success" was partial and created problems under their system of state capitalism. You can't compare such a national need in the context of such a system addressing such extreme problems with ours. It is necessary to study our system and learn where the problems are in this specific case, and then devise solutions. Deregulation has been a disaster. France is not an impoverished country.
It all comes back to free stuff. Service is an expectation, not a service that one must pay for. Quality doesn't ever matter, only the access which is a newly found "right" of the left. Free stuff. We demand free stuff. We're entitled to it. We breath, therefore, we get free internet and can rip off any intellectual property because it's free......
??????capitalism is liberty or freedom or deregulation. it transformed the earth in 200 years erasing 10,000 years of stagnate liberal central govt regulation history in a mere second!! Capitalists survive only by offering the best possible jobs and products in the world. They are merely servants to their customers and employers.
Some on the right ...... make that "MOST on the right", go out of their way to try to equate a desire and quest for reasonable pricing with a demand for "free stuff", especially if the interest in reason threatens capitalism in any way. They try to make such concerns to appear to be extreme. So they take extreme measures to spin it into something extreme, like "free stuff". But we all, including the right, know very well it's not valid.
France is embarrassing with the per capita of Arkansas about our poorest state. They need to borrow our air tankers to operate their fighter planes outside of France.
totally illiterate liberal gibberish I 'm afriad . If you know what your point is please tell us or if anyone knows what his point is please tell us. Thanks
libcommies regulate everywhere as a matter of philosophy. Our Constitution is about deregulation. Welcome to America.
Building a new broadband network to compete with cable is too costly, as Verizon’s experience with its FiOS network shows. Verizon has halted FiOS expansion because the colossal expense of tearing up streets to lay fiber-optic cable, or even stringing cable on utility poles, made replicating the cable company’s local network uneconomic except in the densest urban areas. Even mighty Google has made slow progress. Google Fiber has built out competing networks in just three medium-sized cities thus far. More are planned, but it will be many years, at least, before Google Fiber provides meaningful competition across the nation.
OK. So you cannot prove "Obama's changes to Net Neutrality killed investment in fiber optic". Just more right wing fake news.
Net Neutrality was bipartisan when it was introduced in 2006. The Obama admin made drastic changes to it in 2015 implementing a 1930s style regulation to it basically nationalizing private infrastructure investments. Why invest in something you now have no control over? AT&T now relies on their Direct TV satellite system to bring you cable and have abandoned adding new fiber optic. The change to Net Neutrality was an attempt to bring more government control and less freedom to the internet while they pushed it using the original idea that was already in place.
Yawn. More of your "opinion" with no sources: https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/13/15949920/net-neutrality-killing-small-isps
It's situational, one ideology might be more appropriate in certain situations. That doesn't mean it's the superior ideology over the entire economy. Clear examples of this are the impracticality of putting a toll booth on every road, or charging entry admission to every public park.
I got a kick out of you providing proof that the government implemented a 1930s rule. Also, if you actually read it you will find one of the complaints is that larger providers could, gasp, provide the internet cheaper. So basically Obama's changes made the internet more costly.
Fiber sounds great in theory but it is extraordinarily labor intensive. They are fragile and places that have tried just stringing them between utility poles have largely learned first hand that is a huge and costly mistake. The end of the net neutrality rules, however, should foster more broadband access and investments which died down when the prior rules went into effect. It is a competitive marketplace and just because something is good or bad for one part of the sector does not mean it isn't the opposite for another.
What is so ironic is that so many GOPers are blue collar and vote against their own best interests because of the propaganda they lap up - they would vote to repeal the inheritance ("death tax") tax even tho it now only impacts millionaires. The way I see it is that government stands between me and corporations that would rape me for profit if they can get away with it. The GOP feels a corporation can sell you something that can kill you, because the free market will take care of things - if it kills you, you won't buy it any more - see? No government needed. Every chance they get the GOP tries the Tax cuts for the rich Trickle Down huey. Thank the supreme court for saying "corporations are people" and "Money is free speech". Without a limit on campaign financing, the GOP is the best government money can buy.
Yes, and I sadly note how people such as yourself will gladly allow corporate America to destroy competition, or did you not notice in the article as to how there are thousands of small providers. And out of those thousands you claim one provider who complains has more "authority" then the many others who say just the opposite. Of course, you also ignore that the Courts have upheld the Obama BACKED regulations (not rules he instituted as you claim) as an attempt to keep competition alive. Then too, say it is not so, you (as right wingers tend to do) ignored this part of the article in an attempt to make it appear as if you had really read the article: "Many smaller ISPs said they saw net neutrality as an advantage for their business, too. “If you’re looking at what companies will get paid by big providers like Netflix, it’s not smaller ISPs, it’s large ISPs who already have practically a monopoly position,” Dolgenos says. “They’ll just cement their position, and it’ll just crush competition.” Dane Jasper, CEO of Sonic, says he’s concerned that larger internet providers will use paid traffic agreements and privacy-invasive ad-tracking policies to force smaller providers out of the market. Using that added revenue, he says, “it could be a dominant market player could sell to that subscriber for $5 to $10 a month less because they have these behind-the-scenes revenue sources that fall to them as a result of the overturn of the privacy protections and the re-categorization of Title II for broadband internet access.” Better luck next time in trying to prove you know what you are talking about.
