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WSJ Says Gov't Money Injection Won't Help Broadband
Posted by
timothy
on Tue Feb 10, 2009 12:06 PM
from the at-least-they-can-pay-with-free-money dept.
from the at-least-they-can-pay-with-free-money dept.
olddotter writes "According to the WSJ, The US government is about to spend $10 Billion to make little difference in US broadband services: 'More fundamentally, nothing in the legislation would address the key reason that the US lags so far behind other countries. This is that there is an effective broadband duopoly in the US, with most communities able to choose only between one cable company and one telecom carrier. It's this lack of competition, blessed by national, state and local politicians, that keeps prices up and services down.' Get ready for USDA certified Grade A broadband."
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Cognitive dissonance... (Score:5, Insightful)
So the WSJ, viewed by slashdotters as a heavily conservative news source, is advocating a position that most slashdotters agree with?
Head explosions commencing in 3...2...1...
Re:Cognitive dissonance... (Score:5, Informative)
The House bill also calls for "open access." This phrase can include hugely controversial topics such as net neutrality, which in its most radical version would bar providers from charging different amounts for different kinds of broadband content. Now that video, conferencing and other heavy-bandwidth applications are growing in popularity, price needs to be one tool for allocating scarce resources. Analysts at Medley Global Advisors warn that if these provisions remain in the bill, "it will keep most broadband providers out of the applicant pool" for the funds intended specifically for them.
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Re:Cognitive dissonance... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Cognitive dissonance... (Score:4, Insightful)
The article claims such a thing, but does nothing to support that claim. I will quote the claim in full: "In contrast, most other advanced countries have numerous providers, using many technologies, competing for consumers."
The obvious and unanswered question is, why do countries like Japan and France have more and better options for bandwidth? It is because the telecom industries there are controlled by libertarians? I doubt it. My guess is the opposite.
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Re:Cognitive dissonance... (Score:5, Informative)
Dunno about those countries, but here in Finland we have regulation which forces the company which owns my telephone line to let other companies offer Internet connectivity over it. That has led to healthy competition and drop in prices.
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Re:Cognitive dissonance... (Score:5, Informative)
You are absolutely and totally wrong in both your examples.
Japan was lagging behind the US, France, germany and a lot of countries concerning internet access.
Then one particular member of their government (his name eludes me for now) declared that internet access should be a priority, and the big companies followed the impulse up to today's situation.
France has successfully reached a healthy competitive market for internet access, all thanks to proper regulation that FORCED the previously state-owned monopolistic operator, whose lines were paid by french citizen's taxes, to provide access to the last mile to competitors.
Said historical monopolistic operator, france telecom (now orange) had to be pulled into this screaming and kicking, and was using all its weight and dirty tricks to hinder and slow any other company.
If not for the ART (Telecoms Regulation Authority) kicking France Telecom's nuts so they would obey the LAW that opened the market and allowed competition, there would not be such an excellent internet access for citizens today.
Morevover, everyone is impatient to see the arrival of a new operator in the cell phone business. French government wants a 4th cell phone carrier to operate, as the current triopoly has been comdemned in justice already for their pricefixing (colluding to keep prices artificially high).
The US needs proper regulation. Not abscence of regulation nor bailout/incentive/whatever billions of $.
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Re:Cognitive dissonance... (Score:5, Informative)
>>>Actually, the major problem with the US is distance. Japan is the size of California, France is 4/5th the size of Texas
And population. When you compare the U.S. states versus the EU states, we're not being bad at all. We have states that every bit as fast as Europe's fastest:
FASTEST STATES (avg Mbps) ,Colorado, Connecticut, Arizona, Germany(7)
---------------
Sweden(11)
Delaware(10)
Washington(9)
Netherlands, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Massachusetts(8)
Virginia, New York
So if you want speeds faster than France, move to the one of the places listed above. It's that simple. Of course at this point, various readers will ignore this data, the same way a christian ignores 1 million-year-old rocks with fossilized animals. It's easier to cling to religion than think.
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WSJ says (Score:4, Informative)
Of course they do. The Wall Street Journal is a temple of supply-side economics. According to them, the government can't do anything right, except cut capital gains taxes. I would have been very surprised if they'd had anything good to say about this bill.
Even a broken clock is right twice a day (Score:5, Insightful)
You may not agree with their economic policies, but they have a point here. There has been a lot of fraud, waste and abuse in the use of the funds from the universal service fund that was set up to subsidize rural communications. Chances are, this $10B would just go into the money pit and end up padding the pockets of the major telecoms rather than being pumped directly into infrastructure development.
If you want to see a real change, then get rid of the franchising laws. If the federal government could help the railroads deal with local and state laws in the 19th century, it can do so today with franchising laws that restrict access to these markets.
There, I'll bet you never thought a conservative-libertarian would champion federal intervention.
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And they'd be right (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course they do. The Wall Street Journal is a temple of supply-side economics. According to them, the government can't do anything right, except cut capital gains taxes. I would have been very surprised if they'd had anything good to say about this bill.
So the WSJ is pro-market... that doesn't invalidate their argument. This bill still stinks. Stimulus spending doesn't work the way it's being advertised... it has little to no effect on short term job preservation or creation. While we all need things like roads and bridges, spending tax dollars on roads and bridges does not stimulate the economy in the short term... that money takes too long to percolate through the economy.
Stimlus spending didn't cure the Great Depression, nor did it shake Japan out of it's 90's doldrums. Admirers of the New Deal take great offense at the notion that the New Deal was a failure in reversing the Depression, but even left-leaning historians and economists agree that it was WWII production, not the New Deal, that finally brought us out of the depression. Shouldn't the metric of whether an anti-depression program worked be the elimination of the depression?
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Re:And they'd be right (Score:5, Interesting)
Stimlus spending didn't cure the Great Depression. Admirers of the New Deal take great offense at the notion that the New Deal was a failure in reversing the Depression, but even left-leaning historians and economists agree that it was WWII production, not the New Deal, that finally brought us out of the depression.
The main difference between the New Deal spending and the WWII spending is that the WWII spending was even more massive and with much greater government control. For example, wages and benefits for a large proportion of workers were set by government regulators. What could be produced was set by government bureaucrats. During WWII, the domestic economy was something approaching a Communist command economy.
So if WWII-style spending is what gets us out of a Depression, then expect more government control than you have in the current stimulus bill, not less.
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Re:WSJ says (Score:5, Insightful)
And if you can't protect your rights, you deserve to lose them. Why do you think that right to life is less deserving of protection than other rights?
Still, at least you deserve credit for being honest about what libertarian ideology means: the poor should just die. Not that it wouldn't be obvious to anyone anyway, which is why libertarians get so few votes; but at least you aren't trying to hide behind "voluntary charity" or other bullshit.
Since death prevents you from exercising any rights, it logically follows that you lose all of them in the end, and thus none of them are inalienable.
And since we've already established that death strips your rights, it follows that people who would deny me the resources I need to live are included in that list. Not that that matters; I value my life higher than liberty, since without life I can't have anything, including liberty.
Government and companies both. That's why you need to play them against one another; use government to limit corporate power.
I am. I'm voting for politicians who are for regulating companies, thus forcing them to behave.
Like I said above, voting for more regulation is doing something about it.
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Actually? (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem is that local governments (municipalities, primarily) have signed exclusive agreements with these companies. Because laying wires requires approval of each municipality, installing new infrastructure literally requires tens of thousands of permits, applications, meetings, etc., to get anything worthwhile installed. Our "marble cake" form of government, creates a tangled mess of conflicting rules and legislation that create such a high cost to enter the market that $10 billion could easily be spent just negotiating. That money will largely dissipate the same way it vanished in Iraq -- because everyone believes they deserve part of the pie.
If you want options, two things need to happen. First, the infrastructure -- that is, the wires that carry the data, need to be owned and operated by an entity separate from the users of that system, and that exclusive contracts be ended immediately. Secondly, we need to eliminate municipality-level and move it to at least the county level. The fewer people that have a voice in the process, the less resources wasted dealing with them. Because city-level employees are amongst the most petty, corrupt, and difficult to work with of any class of government official in the Union.
HA! (Score:3, Informative)
Man, that would be so awesome, to have a separate phone and cable company. I would have two places I could get internet service from, instead of one!
These "other countries" should start to lag behind (Score:4, Interesting)
I wish Australia would "lag behind" like the US, maybe then we could get almost unlimited download quotas too.
Sure compared to technology heaven like Japan it might seem like you're lagging behind, most of the world is probably lagging right there with you.
But you're far from the worst off.
ridiculous (Score:4, Insightful)
the reason the usa lags behind other countries is that the other countries are small, compact and densely populated. like korea, or any european country
if you were to examine say, new york and new england, alone, or california, alone, the usa does fine in broadbrand penetration. but the usa is still sparsely populated in vast rural areas in the middle
want proof? look at canada. canada obviously has different governmental mechanisms, but it has virtually the same digital access ratings as the usa:
http://www.internetworldstats.com/list3.htm#dai [internetworldstats.com]
broadband penetration has to do with only two factors:
1. how rich the country is
2. population density
all other factors, including government policy, are neglible in comparison
Re:ridiculous (Score:4, Informative)
the reason the usa lags behind other countries is that the other countries are small, compact and densely populated.
Ok, so let's check the first country on your list: Sweden. The fourth largest country in Europe by area, and a population density 2/3rds of the whole United States, and that's including all your rural areas.
Somewhat the reference list you used contradicts your argument.
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Re:ridiculous (Score:4, Insightful)
So what's their excuse here. It's too densely populated?
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Re:ridiculous (Score:4, Informative)
I live in NYC in an expensive neighborhood, and though I suppose I have broadband, the highest upload rate I can get is 512k. That's kind of stupid. And there's no sign that it's going to get any better anytime soon.
Now, you might argue that it's because of too little regulation or too much regulation, but obviously someone is doing something wrong.
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Did you guys already give them billions... (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm sure they got some nice jets, and while they can hold a tremendous amount of data, the latency on the things is terrible.
It won't help fix the core issues. (Score:4, Insightful)
This massive injection of money, which is being obtained through printing money and borrowing, will not fix the core problems that caused this mess, namely:
All this talk about need more credit and more lending is a red herring. Over-consumption and over-spending is what got us into this mess in the first place. The US$1.5 trillion would be better spent buying up bad mortgages or just giving an equal share to every legal resident in the U.S. than what they are doing with it.
This will only put off the inevitable correction (crash), and it when it does happen, and it will, it will be even worse.
Re:It won't help fix the core issues. (Score:5, Insightful)
Here is the problem I have with the FairTax. It hurts lower class the most. Poor people, college students, etc who already struggle to get buy now have a 30% markup on goods and services?
Additionally how does it take into account people who have massive amounts of wealth, assets, etc. but live frugally? Are they paying their fair share?
Neglecting the fact it will never happen because Congress would never authorize it. It would likely increase their own taxes. No congress person would ever vote to increase their expenses.
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Re:It won't help fix the core issues. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not a "FairTax" supporter by any means, but your first point has been answered a number of times already. Yes, everyone would pay a 30% markup on new goods -- but everyone would also get a yearly refund amounting to 30% of whatever the government deems to be a base level of spending. Essentially, if you spend exactly that amount you'd pay no net taxes; if you spend less than that amount you'd get an automatic handout. (Talk about not paying their fair share!). The lower class actually does extremely well under the "FairTax" proposal.
As for the frugally wealthy: that depends on what you mean by "fair share". If you refer to the (somewhat arbitrary) market value of the services they receive, they already pay far more than that under the current system, and would likely continue to pay much more than their "fair share" under the "FairTax" as well; someone has to fund those handouts and "free" services to the lower classes. On the other hand, if you mean "would the 'FairTax' be as effective as current income taxes at confiscating and redistributing wealth from the materially rich to the materially poor", then I certainly hope not.
My main problem with the "FairTax" (aside from the simple fact that no nontrivial tax can ever be "fair") is that it assumes the new sales tax would replace the current income tax. In my estimation it's far more likely that we would eventually end up with both, eliminating any possible benefit.
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High speed internet trains. (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's a wild idea.
We need a decent rail system in the US, we have trackbeds all over the place in bad shape. Railroads ran through almost every major town. Take the trackbeds, fix them up for a new rail system. While that's being done, since you're digging up anyway, lay new commuinication cables to each town alongside the rail bed. Now you've pretty much addressed broadband and rail transportation at the same time.
Last mile can be handled either through local cables that the town can build out, OR wireless broadcasts at the railroad stations and using the local post offices as repeaters.
There, federal rail, and unified communication. Oh, and don't let the NRPC or the USPS run this, they have enough problems.
Re:High speed Internet trains. (Score:5, Interesting)
Would you like to do the environmental impact study? We're talking years.
You don't build anything great in a week.
The other challenge is that the few places that actually have high-quality rails for Amtrak barely breaks even. Amtrak as a whole has never turned a profit. It is likely that even an improved passenger rail system would need a larger permanent subsidy to survive.
The Interstate highway system doesn't turn a profit either, what's your point?
I never said this should make money, this is a public works project to improve the country. Improving transportation and communication improves business and education.
(Also, I said keep the NRPC out of this, the rails don't have to be all-passenger all the time, you can move express when there's no passenger trains running)
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Re:Big Surprise (Score:5, Insightful)
They don't think government can help with anything.
Do you think the government issuing franchises that creates monopolies backed by the power of the state has helped?
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Re:Big Surprise (Score:5, Insightful)
A government mandated monopoly whose goal is to maximize private profit is a whole lot different than a government administered network whose goal is public service.
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More help from the Moderators (Score:3, Insightful)
The WSJ article is opinion, and is leaving out the fact that the monopolies will not be broken without government interference.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
You can tell the US needs a network upgrade when I'm halfway around the world away getting the first post on a dial-up?
Guess we don't need the upgrade cuz you didn't get the first post ;) Thanks for confirming that our tubes are working properly and saving Uncle Sam a cool $10,000,000,000.00!
Re:Right Wing Nuts (Score:4, Insightful)
The article does a poor job of identifying two separate problems: rural areas with no broadband vs all other US areas with crappy and overpriced broadband. We need to solve both problems, and the WSJ article doesn't offer a real answer to either, so the main point of the article appears to have been to whine about the stimulus package.
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Re:Right Wing Nuts (Score:4, Insightful)
From TFA:
Firstly, note the loaded language, with words like "controversial" and "radical". The bias is obvious. It implies that anyone who would have the audacity to believe that our main information arteries should not be throttled and/or censored is some kind of unrealistic dreamer. Never mind that this openness itself has been the primary reason why the internet has been such a success. Without the internet, we'd be paying exorbitant sums for proprietary services such as AOL. Their bias is short sighted, shallow, and mechanical.
The idea that competition will solve all of our problems in regards to the internet is a fallacy. Network access will always be a monopoly/duopoly or and oligopoly. The idea that the network business could actually sustain enough market players to allow true competition is laughable. And they know it. Other countries that have better network infrastructures have highly regulated duopolies/oligopolies, with strong enforcement of the regulations. The market players in other countries know that if they abuse their monopoly power, they will be punished. Their apparent bias against net-neutrality indicates they are likely against other regulations too.
I would argue that internet access can be helped by "competition", but that such competition will in actuality be a highly regulated oligarchy. As soon as the regulations disappear, the system will break, and the oligarchy players will show their true colors, charging whatever the market will bear for as bad a service as possible. The Wall Street Journal is hypocritical for promoting competition, when they surely must know that true competition is impossible in this industry.
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Re:Right Wing Nuts (Score:5, Insightful)
You cant really call it overpriced if people are buying it.
That argument doesn't really work in a monopoly. For instance, when AT&T was broken up, nearly everyone in the US already had phone service, and yet prices came down. It's hard to argue that AT&T monopoly phone service wasn't "overpriced". At the very least, it illustrates how hard it is to determine a fair price in the absence of competition.
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Re:Right Wing Nuts (Score:5, Informative)
If I'm charging $50 per ounce for onions and I'm the only source of onions in a city and getting an "onion reseller license" ("building infrastructure") is really expensive (but I got mine since I used to runt the government-owned onion store wouldn't you say that my onions are overpriced?
And good luck trying to boycott someone who's got a regional monopoly, that's like when guys complain about always having to make the first move and some woman says "well why don't you guys get together and stop hitting on women? then we'd have to hit on you guys.", any sane person understands that it doesn't work.
/Mikael
(Why do I even bother replying to AC trolls?)
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Re:Right Wing Nuts (Score:5, Interesting)
What, they have a point. If companies were competing freely, instead of this messed up system of little fiefdoms we have now, you can bet that you'd see Comcast and Time Warner trying to outdo each other, while AT&T and Verizon raced to shove fiber everywhere. Remember - competition is good for the consumer. It forces companies to innovate or die, while keeping prices low.
But as it stands now, you basically have "The cable company" or "The phone company". Even independent DSL providers are still using the copper run by The Phone Company, and often costs more than if you got DSL from them directly.
Even the Economist points out that this stimulus package probably won't have the effect Obama is hoping for because the companies will simply sit back and wait for the government to pay them for the upgrades they would have had to pay for themselves.
The way I see it, the only way things will change is through good old capitalist competition. Someone needs to really step in with a reliable WiMAX solution for about $25/mo, and seriously start sucking business away from the DSL/Cable duopolies. In fact I'm rather surprised the cell phone companies aren't trying to jump into the residential data market. They already have the little notebook dongles, just shove that into an antenna you set on your roof (for better reception) and plug it into your router. Better yet, offer residential phone service over this as well, and really put a dent in the landline and cable telephony companies.
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Re:Right Wing Nuts (Score:5, Insightful)
And if you happen to live in an area that isn't profitable to run service to I suppose you should just move then, right?
Yes. Just because you want the benefits of living further from other people, don't expect me to subsidize the costs that decision incurs.
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Re:Right Wing Nuts (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Right Wing Nuts (Score:4, Interesting)
Offered at a price they're unwilling to pay?
Verizon wanted $24,500 to run 1.1 miles of cable to my house. There is no way I can afford that, and my neighbors who are making $20,000 a year working on a farm are never going to afford it.
Oh, I'm sorry, you were referring to satellite or wireless, not actual broadband. Both have such high latency that they are useless for games or VOIP, and such slow download speeds that they are worthless for anything besides email. If it's rainy, cloudy, or overcast you can bet that you'll only be getting about twice dial up speeds. Even better, the local monopoly on wireless runs an unbelievably shitty service. Downtimes are frequent and can last 24 hours or more.
Give me this ten billion (or even a fraction of it), and I'd set up locally owned cooperatives (max size 2-3 DSLAMs) that split the cost of operating directly amongst their members. Government subsidies would be necessary only for initial purchase of the backbones, workers (and policies like packet prioritization) would be elected on a short-term basis, and I'd have a 24 hour help-desk set up that would provide support for every coop in the state. A non-profit business could provide good competition to the big telcos while avoiding the problems brought up here about a government run service.
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Re:Right Wing Nuts (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the "authority" model might work. Let a local authority handle the connection to the home, just as they do with water, sewer, etc. Then allow you to utilize the data pipe in any way you wish - select from any ISP willing to hook up to the authority. This way it would be up to the local authority how to best connect each home... fiber, copper, even over-the-air. When it comes to these hookups to the home, you can't have unbridled competition... so why do we pretend?
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Re:WTF? (Score:5, Insightful)
The way to stimulate the economy is to get the banks lending [slashdot.org] again and get consumers spending again.
Ah, the hair of the dog. Wasn't it poor lending standards and people living beyond their means (i.e: greed on everyone's part) that got us into this mess? Just once I'd like to hear somebody talking about people needing to save in addition to talking about them needing to spend....
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Re:WTF? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry for getting off topic, but I figure if I kill off my debt, save up my cash to give an emergency buffer and can still once a paycheck afford a nice steak dinner, I should be happy. The 'I need it now' mentality, almost killed me here.
I guess what I'm getting at is this 'Gotta have it now!' mentality and the illusion of easy money got more than just me into trouble with money.
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Re:WTF? (Score:4, Informative)
really? where have you been hiding..
Lenders began to offer more and more loans to higher-risk borrowers, including illegal immigrants. Subprime mortgages amounted to $35 billion (5% of total originations) in 1994, 9% in 1996, $160 billion (13%) in 1999,and $600 billion (20%) in 2006.
A study by the Federal Reserve found that the average difference between subprime and prime mortgage interest rates (the "subprime markup") declined from 280 basis points in 2001, to 130 basis points in 2007. In other words, the risk premium required by lenders to offer a subprime loan declined. This occurred even though the credit ratings of subprime borrowers, and the characteristics of subprime loans, both declined during the 2001-2006 period, which should have had the opposite effect.
In 1995, the GSEs began receiving government incentive payments for purchasing mortgage backed securities which included loans to low income borrowers. Thus began the involvement of the GSE with the subprime market.[105] Subprime mortgage originations rose by 25% per year between 1994 and 2003
--
from wiki
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Re:WTF? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, because the way to get out of a 10 foot deep hole that is filling with water is to dig deeper.
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Re:So we've got a duopoly (Score:5, Insightful)
You think that a non-governmental for profit company is going to take a massive guaranteed permanent loss to give Joe Redneck in the sticks a 20mb/s connection?
why not? they did it with the copper wires for phone. and last I checked, 4 pair Fiber was cheaper than 4 pair copper.
Oh and laying copper costs EXACTLY THE SAME as laying fiber.
If they could get off their asses in the 60's and 70'stio lay the copper then they can get off their overpaid asses and lay the fiber or upgraded copper. Honestly moving telcos from a regulated agency that had to do things the Govt said to unregulated caused more issues than anything.
Right now they all care only about maximizing profits. They dont give a flying rats ass about the customer or future.. If they could cut 90% of their infrastructure and charge the difference to the 10% in the big cities and tell all rural people to go to hell they would do it in a heartbeat.
The only thing keeping telcos from telling most of america to "GO AWAY" is government regulations.
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Re:So we've got a duopoly (Score:5, Informative)
We already paid $200 billion [newnetworks.com] for a nation wide fiber optics network that never delivered. When is anyone going to ask what happened to all that money?
We paid for nation wide fiber optics, and it never got delivered. The telcos should give us our money back, all of it. If they can't afford it, go bankrupt, get nationalized, and let someone competent take over. Oh, and send the execs who squandered it all to jail.
Not one red cent should go to the telcos until they pay back what we're owed.
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Re:I used to read the WSJ (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:I used to read the WSJ (Score:4, Interesting)
The terms "left", "right", "liberal", "conservative", and the derived term "centrist" mostly just serve to confuse any attempt at useful political discussion. These terms lump all of politics into two piles of mostly unrelated positions on mostly irrelevant topics.
In the United States, the absolute biggest political issue at the federal level should be the reduction of military expenditures. We've been spending a third of our tax revenue bombing civilians and maintaining major bases in many different foreign countries. We've never been able to afford this foolishness, and we certainly can't afford it now.
But "left" and "right" doesn't help on that at all. The mainstream "left" and "right" both consistently raise our military spending. The "far left" and "far right" completely agree: this military spending needs to be cut.
Isn't it suspect that in our mainstream political discussion there isn't even a single *term* for a group that wants to reduce our military back down to a reasonable size? It's the "extremist crazies" who want that, called by the same terms as "skinheads" and "hippie terrorist sympathizers".
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Re:I used to read the WSJ (Score:5, Insightful)
Oddly enough, most so-called "conservatives" today are actually from what, classically, is the center of the political spectrum. It just doesn't look that way because so much of the major media outlets are hard-core lefties claiming that they are the "center."
Actually, both American political parties are what most of the rest of the world would call right wing parties. Just a few examples: neither party argues against unfettered capitalism (although you're starting to hear some from the public after the events of the last six months), neither party argues against massive military spending, neither party argues for gay marriage, and neither party argues for more liberal drug laws.
You may honestly believe that the country is in the hands of left wing lunatics, but let me assure you that, by international standards, neither the Democrats nor the Republicans are left wing.
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Re:I used to read the WSJ (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:stuff that matters (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course WSJ says this.
They doctrinally believe, and are paid to amplify the message that the ills of the world can be cured by giving a free hand to the same people responsible for the global financial collapse.
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Re:Two Extremes (Score:4, Insightful)
"One said screams that we need to regulate everything and have the government put everything in order so that everything works one way.
The other side screams that we need to degregulate everything and let companies do what they want to do in order to make more money."
Straw man.
One side says deregulate everything, that government is incapable of doing good, that only business, unencumbered by anything other than the profit motive, can solve problems. That is the right, who call themselves conservative. That truly IS the definition of the right, of Bushism, of Reaganism, of Limbaughism.
And there is everyone else, whom the conservatives call "liberals". And not a one, not a solitary, single, identifiable human-unit of those "liberals" has ever said the government needs to control everything so that everything works one way. Not even communists, should you find the odd one in a coffee shop, would say such a thing.
Your other points are well made. The problem with the argument is the above, because you are letting the right define the terms. No such opponent to the right exists. Our "left" is so far to the right that we can barely find money to buy textbooks. We won't even build schools anymore, for such activity is socialistic. Such cash was cut from the stimulus fund because Republicans find it so.
We had - emphasis *had* - government licensed monopoly in cable TV franchises for two simple reasons. First, it was damned expensive to drop cable to American homes, and no company wanted to do it if another company were to drop cable down as well, causing competition. They impressed upon localities to regulate things so they could make a nice profit by making sure individual companies were gifted with exclusive zones of coverage. Some gimmes like public access and a standard package of broadcast TV was included, and we were off. I was there, I remember.
Secondly, because of *deregulation*, NOT regulation, the cable companies started to absorb each other and formed powerful monopolies of their own design. The few real competing cable companies were ruthlessly forced out of business by underpriced services or being bought outright.
We have a duopoly because, after we collectively decided to open the business up to competition, over the EXTREMELY VOCIFEROUS objections, both vocal and campaign-contribution-wise of the cable companies, we let the telcos in to play. And then let AT&T reform after so agonizingly breaking them up. So now, thanks to dereg, we have two real players left. And they are cutting up the pie according to their own internal profit lines, making enough money to buy god.
Can you imagine how much roads would cost if we had built them up this way, rather than competitive contracts according to government (ie people-driven) specs? Ever tote up how much our "free" market internet has cost us as consumers? Vs. how much it would have cost had a federal plan simply dropped the fiber to every house - once and for all, and let a price controlled, competitive bid system decide who provided the internet access itself?
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