Comcast Fights - For Its Right - To Get Bigger > As the cop said

As the cop said

Youre missing the point; the economy doesnt govern companies successes, consumers do. People bought Microsoft Windows because it made computers easier to use (as opposed to DOS or Linux which both are much more technical). If Comcast, or any other TV/Broadband provider has a good product, and they end up owning 99% of the market, so be it.

People will buy a product they want, that is at a fair price. Should we tell WalMart to close half of their stores because we dont have retail store regulations? Or are the low prices they offer good for budget conscience families. Should we tell 15% of PC users they have to buy an apple with leopard so the competition is more even? Cmon.

If a corporation fails, they fail for 1 of 2 reasons. The product they had isnt in demand anymore (SUVs GM), or they end up cooking the books and lying about PE share. What needs to be regulated more than anything is what indivduals take away from the company (million dollar bonus' for everyone at Enron!), not how many customers a company has. That is more of a task of the SEC, not the FCC. The FCC just needs to make sure that these large companies help subsidize local goverment needs. In the case of cable/telcom, that would be the 911 call centers, municipal buildings, and televised high school and government events.

Personally, I have always found Linux and MAC easier to use than Windows.

Scheduler is a simple cron
stdin/stdout/sterr
Everything is either a process or a file - a process is a file that is running.

Windows doesn't share that simple philosophy, and has a super bloated piece called registry.

reply to baineschile
um.. The only factory/prebuilt computer I've purchased was my first one.. IT had windows already on it.. And at the time, I thought/knew that was the only os there was to use.. I've learned sense granted.. But I as far as choice was lacking knowledge of such options to even put in my request for another... But ignorance is bliss..

reply to baineschile
No, you miss the point. Do you really think the FCC has communications regulations in place to hurt business? Yeah, they're all commie plants
If anything, they're inept dolts, but they're ostensibly in place to police the market. We're still witnessing what happens when markets run unfettered, or have you forgotten that?

The FCC, and I'm no fan of government, is an arbiter for the communications market, not retail packaged products, and they don't care whether a company fails on merit or not. Certain regulations are in place & designed to prevent monopolies from existing, not for the punishment of success. If the percentage of market share should be adjusted, let it be by public referendum rather than a smattering of Atlas Shrugged koolaid drinkers.
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reply to Titus Pullo
Thank you!
[from a Political Science major)

reply to Titus Pullo

quote:

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Comcast sued the FCC almost exactly a year ago for the agency's decision to block any pay TV provider from controlling more than 30% of the market, a rule the FCC says was "designed to ensure that no single cable operator or group of operators, because of its size, can unfairly impede the flow of programming to consumers."

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The best part is everyone in this country has forgotten why these media ownership controls were put in place in the first place. The phrase rose-bud comes from the movie which portrayed the man that came to control ALL the media in the US before the depression. A man that suppressed the movie made about him from ever being shown in a theater he owned (and he owned 96% of the theaters).

Thanks to the smaller government mantra of the republican party that has been hell bent on destroying all regulation much of those restrictions are already gone. Because of William Randolph Hearst it was illegal to own both a newspaper and a TV station in the same market, those days are long gone now and it will be impossible to roll them back. Now history is beginning to repeat with providers now owning content and refusing to sell at reasonable prices to their competitors if at all. M

urdoch has suppressed reporting of material he disliked and he now controls a significant media empire. Liberty-Media isn't far behind with ownership of nearly every major paper in the US along with DirecTV and other major assests. Disney with it's control of ABC has worked hard to use it's media empire to re-write copyright law in their favor.

As Comcast grows and it uses subscriber revenue to purchase media providers they will have the ability to directly apply propaganda in their favor to a vast section of america. And contrary to what you might think Propaganda is still highly effective. Although there is still some competition that pool is growing smaller. There is no such thing as a benevolent dictator, and massive market control is a monopoly. A monopoly is being allowed to reform after being ripped to pieces, mostly by government intervention after Hearst died. But this certainly isn't the first monopoly to be recreated, nor do I believe it will be the last. Murdoch's Fox is working hard to rewrite public opinion and whitewash history in favor of deregulation. It won't be long before people forget what the Banks have done without regulation. Ironically the best thing that could happen to fix this perception problem would be to allow the financial disaster to continue and sink the world into another great depression. Such an occurrence would rewrite public opinion in favor of strict regulation and allow our country and middle class to prosper again for at least a generation as it has done previously.

reply to baineschile
That over-simplfies the situation. Consumers can only choose if they have choices, and sometimes they have to choose the status quo despite better options because they can't stand alone against the punitive actions of a large monopolizer.
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"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." -- Benito Mussolini

reply to Titus Pullo
Just look at this thread, Titus.... folks are extolling the virtues of consumerism, as their rationale for the cap, instead of sensible foundations for the cap, like economic impact, impact on employment, etc. The Average Joe in the US is blind to what's really important to the economy, blinded by their own avarice. I'm well-known here as a big business supporter, and yet I support the cap, but I support it for the right reasons, not the self-centered, myopic reasons that some folks rely on.

reply to baineschile
And your way each additional customer implies greater incremental cost-of-service, since you have a bigger footprint to maintain but the same number of customers. That means that the company is being prompted to discard customers that want to pay less, in favor of picking up customers who are willing to pay more. That's fair. Just don't complain about it when it happens.

reply to NetAdmin1
Comcast doesnt control the media that is broadcast, that is up to the networks themselves.

reply to baineschile

reply to NetAdmin1
When they abuse their ability to control which news outlets that viewers have access to, THEN you can bring that up and we'll make sure they don't get away with it.

reply to bicker

reply to bicker

Your comments are rude and clueless.

reply to bicker