said by nasadude:I wish it were that simple, but unfortunately there are a lot of things wrapped up in this.
clearly, you believe that govt should either not regulate any industry at all or at least very lightly. the undertone seems to be that if industry were regulated, in the absence of meaningful market competition, to be more consumer friendly this is a bad thing and the poor industry would suffer.
you say nobody is putting a gun to consumer's heads and making them buy these services as a way to justify and excuse the actions of the industry.
turn this around: let's say the government imposes consumer friendly conditions (network neutrality, carterphone, reqts to wholesale to competitors - yes, truly a fantasy) on the 700Mhz auction. I presume your position would be (just like ATT, Verizon, etc): why that's horrible! the auction won't make as much money! nobody will bid under those conditions!
guess what my response would be? nobody is holding a gun to these companies head to make them bid; if they don't like the conditions they don't have to participate.
so why can't we have govt regulate for the benefit of consumers? if the industry doesn't like it, they don't have to play - except that's not what they do, they buy legislators and get the rules changed to overwhelmingly benefit themselves at the expense of consumers.
companies are in the business of making money, not being nice to consumers - I understand that. companies are nice to consumers either because of competition or govt regulation or maybe a combination of the two. In the absence of meaningful competition, the government should step in to regulate for the benefit of consumers. That being said, I would much prefer this happen by competition rather than regulation, but sometimes the government chooses not to encourage or even allow competition and sometimes companies are very successful at rent seeking (buying legislators) and are able to distort the market for their benefit.
I would much prefer competition, but when the market won't allow it, the govt should step in to correct the situation.
I see that you are trying to me more open-minded and I don't want to squash that. You are close but not there yet.
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