Posted on 11/28/2017 5:46:05 AM PST by FreedomNotSafety
Please see post #16.
From your article:
” Much like Netflix’s ongoing standoff with Verizon FiOS, the drop in speeds wasn’t an issue of the ISP throttling or blocking service to Netflix. Rather, the ISPs were allowing for Netflix traffic to bottleneck at what’s known as “peering ports,” the connection between Netflix’s bandwidth provider and the ISPs.
“As we’ve pointed out before, the issue of peering was not covered by the recently gutted net neutrality rules. Those guidelines only dealt with whether an ISP deliberately blocked/throttled or unfairly prioritized traffic to a website. The congestion at peering ports occurs further upstream and is a matter of capacity.”
Hoisted by your own petard.
The single best example Limbaugh gave was that we could've had cellphones back in the 1950's. Seriously. (Not the size we have no, but along the lines of the first Motorola brick phones probably.)
Because of lobbying and other efforts by AT&T and other Telco hardline related providers and manufacturers, it took 25 years for the FCC to finally start licensing the band space for Cellphones to operate in and it took years after that for the first "portable" cellphones to hit the market. Even then the FCC wanted to limit the usage of the bands that cellphones operate in today to Military applications.
I hope Limbaugh publishes the list, it had some very good examples and it convinced me that "net neutrality" is a hoax.
Glad I listened to Rush yesterday.
“Monopolies only exist when force can be used to sustain them. IE - they are approved by government.”
“I think what you’re saying is if you don’t want monopolies the government must disapprove - that is, regulate. I agree.”
His statement is correct. Your’s is not. How do you twist, in your mind, what he says monopolies must be approved by the government to your thinking that the government must regulate?
I will restate the point. Monopolies are enforced by government approval and coercion. If you do not like monopolies then the government should stay out. The government is responsible for monopolies.
So you live in a rural area that does not makes sense to service at $50 per month for streaming videos. I find that completely plausible.
What is your local government doing? Have they granted a monopoly franchise to Comcast?
Simple. Government can approve, that is allow, a monopoly or it can disapprove, that is regulate.
If you want to say government must take specific action in order for a monopoly to exist, fine, but that flies in the face of history.
Anti-trust enforcement is a key part of free-market economic theory.
Why where you for “net neutrality”? Please do not add yourself to the list of Freepers who were worried about Netflix streaming.
“Anti-trust enforcement is a key part of free-market economic theory.” Whose theory is that? I have never seen it in any of the classical literature or even more recent literature. That is utter nonsense.
In a free market the government has no role in approving or disapproving of monopolies. In a free market monopolies rarely happen and not for long if they do.
Governments are responsible for the creation of enduring monopolies. Monopolies are formed by government actions and sustained by government regulation.
My reasons were my own (no, not Netflix) and I’m not going to put them on the table for debate. Not worth it at this point.
Oh, I agree and don't blame the cable companies for not wanting to lose money running wire to the farm. My point was only that today cell and satellite aren't real competition to wired broadband.
What is your local government doing? Have they granted a monopoly franchise to Comcast?
I don't know the history but I wouldn't be surprised if Cox was given a monopoly at one time.
The issue in many places is that the first movers who installed the cable infrastructure now have a de facto monopoly on broadband since the cost for new provider to install 'last mile' coverage is prohibitive.
I think this will change as broadband wireless services become more widely deployed, but for now many consumers have only one realistic choice.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if Cox was given a monopoly at one time.” That would explain why you are having such a hard time.
Governments create monopolies.
Come on. Ever hear of Adam Smith and The Wealth of Nations?
"According to Adam Smith, markets and trade are, in principle, good things—provided there is competition and a regulatory framework that prevents ruthless selfishness, greed and rapacity from leading to socially harmful outcomes. But competition and market regulations are always in danger of being undermined and circumnavigated, giving way to monopolies that are very comfortable and highly profitable to monopolists and may spell great trouble for many people. In Smith’s view, political economy—as an important, and perhaps even the most important, part of a kind of master political science, encompassing the science of the legislator —has the task to fight superstition and false beliefs in matters of economic policy, to debunk opinions that present individual interests as promoting the general good and to propose changing regulatory frameworks for markets and institutions that help to ward off threats to the security of society as a whole and provide incentives such that self-seeking behaviour has also socially beneficial effects."
Source: Adam Smith on markets, competition and violations of natural liberty
This is just from the abstract of an academic article but Smith's stance on monopolistic behavior is famous and his own words are readily available if you do a search.
As another example, Hayak wrote extensively about monopolies. He felt that they were frequently the result of governmental interference in the market but not exclusively, and that some regulation was required.
Can you name an economic theory that advocates absolutely no government regulation of competition?
Sorry, I could have spilled more ink to explain - I posted that link because it demonstrates that Comcast will gouge people to an inch of the law whenever they can - i.e. even when net neutrality regulations were in place they would do everything they could within any legal loophole to hurt competition. It’s an argument for expanding net neutrality to prevent discrimination at peering ports.
Comcast previously blocked p2p apps. More recent examples from Verizon and ATT:
https://www.wired.com/2012/09/factime-fcc-flap/
Or more recently Robert Bork’s Antitrust Paradox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Antitrust_Paradox
Hayak = Hayek
Net neutrality isn’t neutral.
5.56mm
I see your point. But “Net Neutrality” was just the Trojan horse for regulating the internet by government fiat.
Both of those worthies would be closer to the idea that governments ar the reason monopolies exist.
From the Hayek link:
“Even though he discerns a strong case for prohibiting by general rules price discrimination by monopolists, he thinks governments’ record in such en- forcement is “so deplorable that it is astounding that anyone should still expect that giving governments discretionary powers will do anything but increase” obstacles to market entry.
He further cautions that all governments that have attempted to mitigate the abuses of monopolies have ended up favoring some “good” monopolies and disfavoring “bad” ones, which only makes matters worse. Turning transitory mo- nopolies into permanent ones is the artifice of governments.”
For Smith, The book itself is clear enough, from page 61 of The Wealth of Nations:
A monopoly granted either to an individual or to a trading company has the same effect as a secret.… The monopolists, by keeping the market constantly under-stocked … sell their commodities much above the natural price … the price of free competition.…
The exclusive privilege of corporations, statutes of and apprenticeship, and all those laws which restrain, in particular employments, the competition to a smaller number than might go into them, have the same tendency, though in a less degree. They are a sort of enlarged monopolies, and may frequently … in whole classes of employments keep up the market price of particular commodities above the natural price.… Such enhancements of the market price may last as long as the regulations of police which give occasion to them.3
mises.org would be the best place for your studies instead of a liberal NY law school.
So you think this, excerpt below, somehow supports “Net Neutrality”?
“Thus, while it was appropriate to prohibit cartels that fix prices and divide markets and mergers that create monopolies, practices that are allegedly exclusionary, such as vertical agreements and price discrimination, did not harm consumers and so should not be prohibited. The paradox of antitrust enforcement was that legal intervention artificially raised prices by protecting inefficient competitors from competition.”
Bork wrote a law book that felt with among other thing the Sherman act. His book was not one meant to explain the nature of monopolies. It was intended to interpret and apply existing law. Bork would not break with established jurisprudence be it good or bad.
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