2010-08-16, 14:56
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Banned
Join Date: Oct 2009
Location: Somewhere over the rainbow, in a house dropped on an ugly, old woman.
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Anyway, the nature of markets is to move to a monopoly; and when a company reaches that point they WILL do anything and everything under the sun in the name of profit. I hate more government, but there does need to be some degree of regulation. How much and in what forms, are open for debate, though. While I don't doubt that congressmen can get greedy, I feel CEO's and board members far outweigh them on the greedy scale. Anyway, this is kinda going off topic, I think. |
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2010-08-16, 15:03
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Link #42 | |
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Senior Member
Join Date: Mar 2007
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2010-08-16, 15:07
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Yuri µ'serator
Join Date: Nov 2009
Location: FL, USA
Age: 36
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2010-08-16, 16:04
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Link #44 |
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blinded by blood
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Join Date: Jun 2009
Location: Oakland, CA
Age: 40
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You're both fooling yourselves. A lot of our elected government officials are greedy corporate types. Many of them are major shareholders in big corporations.
I don't trust politicians because they're unpredictable. At least with the "greedy corporate types" I know what they want--more money. They do what's economically expedient. Politicians want money, but they also want political power, which tend to be at odds with each other most of the time. So they can do unpredictable and absolutely boneheaded things.
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2010-08-17, 03:39
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Link #45 |
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Senior Member
Join Date: May 2004
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@ synaesthetic
Here, in Finland, it's not that bad. Parlament members do their job and so far the results have been adequete. There are many problems, but not enough to label them all as greedy moneygrabbers. I know it's difficult in US, though, since the country seems to be so polarized. Last edited by Ending; 2010-08-17 at 06:27. |
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2010-08-17, 07:51
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Link #46 |
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廉頗
Join Date: Feb 2004
Location: Massachusetts
Age: 34
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Our regulations should be anti-trust and anti-monopoly... Only those regulations that help preserve conditions close to a true perfect competition model. Unfortunately, 'regulations' in the modern US political system tend to be something else in disguise - barriers to entry for smaller business owners/entrepreneurs. Having to abide by countless regulations that, on the surface, are meant to 'protect' industry, drives every business's costs up. The unseen consequence of that is large businesses can throw away such money whereas smaller businesses are hit much harder since they don't have the financial muscle. A big company can afford to constantly pay for new government standards to be enforced, or even pay fines. Smaller business owners can't do that without taking losses, thus making the conditions for an economy controlled by oligopolies and monopolies.
IMO we need to find a balance between what we have now (too many corrupt regulations) and what we had a hundred years ago (not enough anti-monopolistic regulations). Last edited by ChainLegacy; 2010-08-17 at 08:03. |
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2010-08-17, 08:47
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Link #48 |
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Frandle & Nightbag
Join Date: Oct 2009
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I won't deny that monopoly is a concern, but what I'm more concerned about is artificial scarcity. There's a reason there is a package system for your television service provider, especially the ad-reduced channels. The content provided--movies and television--cost a lot of money to create. The studios thus reasonably want to garner profit from their work however possible. Apart from advertisement and direct sales, licensing the content off to channels is part of how they do that. The channels see profit in their availability through service providers. The providers, in turn, want to see a profit off of the content they've licensed, so it behooves them to charge you to have access to it. While there is no actual material scarcity here to merit price-tiering, there is a functional scarcity, since the intellectual property being used has a hard cost in the form of its budget.
With internet content, however, revenue generation is a different beast. ISPs do not operate under the financial burdens that TSPs do. The former has infrastructure costs to think of, yes, but they do not have the hefty licensing costs which the latter has to deal with. In the world of television, the channels you are not charged extra for are the ones that the provider itself is not charged for, because they are capable of thriving on different revenue sources--mainly advertisement. But when have you ever heard of an ISP having to pay AnimeSuki to allow their users to access the page? The same infrastructure that gets you to any one site on the internet gets you to any other with no additional cost to your ISP, so there is neither material scarcity nor functional scarcity to justify price-tiering. Whether or not one company monopolizes ISP functionality, if any companies engage in artificial scarcity creation, it's a betrayal of consumer trust.
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2010-08-17, 09:08
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Komrades of Kitamura Kou
Join Date: Jul 2004
Age: 39
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Which makes such and endeavor a gargantuan, if not impossible, task. You have to start from practically absolute zero.
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2010-08-17, 10:36
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blinded by blood
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Join Date: Jun 2009
Location: Oakland, CA
Age: 40
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For instance, everyone here knows about Amazon's "FREE Super Saver Shipping," as well as the free two-day shipping you get with a Prime membership, right? Did you know that in certain European countries, offering that sort of service is considered "anti-competitive practices" and because of it Amazon is being fined every day the service is allowed. They don't care. They make more money from the service than they lose from the fine. This is a glaring example of just how boneheaded the laws can be, and how they don't affect the big boys. Amazon is so huge and makes so much money every day, they aren't going to give a shit about a sub-100k fine every day for something that makes them millions. But any small business, perhaps a little electronics e-tailer that wants to offer the same service to compete better with the big boys... would be totally wiped out by those daily fines. These kinds of laws just lock out small businesses so thoroughly. I find it hilarious when people say that Democrats, left-leaning people and socialists are anti-corporate. They aren't anti-corporate; in fact, they love the corporate world. They want the big boys to be as big as possible and make as much money as possible--so they can tax them as much as possible. Obama's assertion to help small businesses is completely laughable. It's true; the middle class doesn't exist anymore, but not for the reasons the left believe. Quote:
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2017-11-23, 03:26
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Link #51 |
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Takao Tsundere Cruiser
Join Date: Oct 2008
Location: Classified
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Oh boy. here we go again.
Justin Trudeau Is ‘Very Concerned’ With FCC’s Plan to Roll Back Net Neutrality The reason this is happening again is because three of the five heads of the FCC are corrupt businessman who want the Net Neutrality scrapped so their corporate buddies can charges high prices to users unopposed. The man responsible for this, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, tries to claim it's win a for the people when in fact it's a big lie and the opposite since the only ones benefiting from this are telecommunication companies. Like before and like many times, the people are fighting back to prevent this, which includes supporting the two FCC heads who are pro Net Neutrality and criticize the three heads who are anti Net Neutrality and telling them to change their minds.
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2017-11-23, 07:49
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Link #52 |
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今宵の虎徹は血に飢えている
Join Date: Jan 2009
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At least he saved (for now) Asia-Pacific countries from the stupid pro-USA IP and net privacy killing laws of the CPTPP. Meanwhile brainwashed idiots can still claim that it somehow made the new CPTPP less "high-quality"
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2017-12-01, 10:36
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Link #54 |
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Takao Tsundere Cruiser
Join Date: Oct 2008
Location: Classified
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I been noticing on some messageboards posted by some so called anti Net Neutrality proponents who argue repealing NN is a "good thing" with false facts.
Here's the real deal with Net Neutrality and why it's not a good thing if it get's repeal.
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2017-12-02, 01:57
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Link #55 |
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Sekiroad-Idols Sing Twice
Join Date: Oct 2009
Location: Blooming Blue Rose
Age: 33
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The one saving grace America would have with Net Neutrality repeal is the FTC being able to hold the ISP's accountable if they are not classified as Title II common carriers. However, the current administration has made it a point to handcuff various agencies by assigning people to them who would not carry out their duties. It seems the single-minded approach to virtue signalling any government regulation as inherently bad has crept farther than I had imagined
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2017-12-04, 15:01
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Link #56 |
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Carbon
Join Date: Nov 2003
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"Comcast deleted net neutrality pledge the same day FCC announced repeal
Three-year-old "no paid prioritization" pledge was suddenly removed." https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...ounced-repeal/ |
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