I am shocked to find gambling in this casino.
It led to slow connectivity for you. My speeds are still faster than Verizon’s top speeds. (Huffs fingernails, polishes them on shirt.)
/Oh yeah, and our socialized medicare still rocks!
//Mind you, shoveling snow sux.
so much for “free markets” being the best thing for you the consumer.
Free markets work, except when they don’t. It doesn’t make sense to be for or against them as a point of principle; it makes sense to see if they’re working in any particular domain, and act accordingly.
I owned and operated an ISP though most of the 90’s, at a time when the markets were much more free than they are today (largely because few were on broadband, so the infrastructure couldn’t be monopolized by corporations with deep pockets), and for the most part it worked. ISPs were very cooperative (anyone remember inet-access@earth.com?), and would help each other out – I remember one of our main “competitors” lending us a router one night when one of ours went belly up – mostly because they felt that it was good for the industry for everyone (even competitor’s customers) to have a good experience, so that the Internet would continue to grow.
What we have today is the total opposite. Internet access = broadband = companies with legacy monopolies on infrastructure. Big, greedy players as opposed to small local companies building banks of modems.
I would actually point out that what we have today is anything but a free market; when only a few rich companies can play by building on the networks they built under sanctioned monopolies, there is no supply choice.
Could a free market work in today’s environment? I don’t see how it could; the few large players have shown themselves unable to do anything but maximize their profits, and the government has a valid regulatory role to play. Even so, I think your comment is a bit of a red herring (I imagine being against free markets is in part how you define yourself so you see a lot though that lens, but I could be wrong). We didn’t get here through free markets at all.
Based on results, it seems like Roosevelt struck the right balance between capitalism and socialism. For several decades, the US was the richest nation on earth. The problem with this is that mere high-school dropouts started to think they could talk back to their betters. Making everybody rich isn’t as much fun as oppressing the poor.
Why are the ISPs wrong here? From everything I’ve read, Cogent was at fault.
The direct-connect deal that Netflix gets from Comcast saves Neflix money, it makes Comcast more money, and delivers better service to end users. The loser is Cogent.
What’s wrong with cutting out the middle-man?
I always thought that was because the top bracket tax rates went up every year he was in office. It was 63% when he went in office and 94% when he left. Today it’s only 39.6%. During his tenure we also lowed the top bracket from $84.45M to $2.75M (adjusted for todays dollar value) meaning even more of the top earners had to pay the higher tax.
Seems to me, the secret to a strong US economy is to tax the hell out of earnings above $2.5M.
I’m a customer of both Crapcast and Netflix. Service has only improved marginally since February. So marginally that the change is barely noticeable.
The free market as you define it - the one that is fair - requires regulation in order to remain viable in the long term.
The libertarian/uber-capitalist free market is a regulation-free greedfest which quickly leads to monopolies. This is what the U.S. has now, for all extents and purposes. Those U.S. regulatory agencies which haven’t been captured by industry have been neutered by captured politicians.
Well… one of the secrets.
Yeah, but no one will tell me the other ones.
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