Everyone asks for citations. I’m not being hypocritical for asking for them. And you are giving me grief for supplying “linkbait.”
Why did I say people can have the same opinion as telcos without being in their pocket? Because you said “everyone else who is arguing that this must be the reason prices are lower, because that what our telecos are claiming,” which suggests people have those positions because telecoms tell them to.
So what? All regulation affects the market. But this isn’t going to change the fact that economic theory would dictate that government subsidies that lower input costs will result in lower prices being offered to consumers in a market with any competition. Whether the price reduction fully reflects the subsidy is another question, but there’s no oversimplification in saying that prices will decrease to reflect the reduction in cost to the provider.
[quote=“Dave_Baxter, post:45, topic:17112”]
Also, bandwidth itself does not effect price unless infrastructure (including machinery outside the cables/fiber) is in need of an upgrade to process faster speeds.
[/quote]I’m pretty sure I couldn’t stream HD porn 20 years ago, and I’m pretty sure that actual infrastructure investments were needed to get me to the point where I can today. My monthly internet bills since then have gone up almost as much as the price of a Big Mac, but so has the speed of my connection and the amount of bandwidth I consume. The relationship of bandwidth/speed to cost is obviously not linear, but that’s not my claim.
A specific damning example written in an adversarial context by an openly biased party about unscrupulous practices by the only player in a non-competetive market. That might be a great example if we didn’t have a wealth of telecoms operating today and pretty clear 10-K reporting requirements for public companies, which are regularly pored over by analysts.
So I make arguments and support them with links which you can follow or not. And it’s OK when you claim to follow the links and claim that they don’t provide information, when in fact they do. On the other hand, when you make an argument, you don’t need to include links or citations or anything else. Because linkbait.
Where did I claim that only specific acts create artificiality? Public roads (and free parking) are hugely subsidized by the government. And why do you think that just because lots of things are subsidized by the government that we can’t call out anything specific as being subsidized?
[quote=“Dave_Baxter, post:45, topic:17112”]
Because consumers. More specifically consumer ability based on consumer income, which is something gravely under-acknowledged by many.
[/quote]I guess that explains why the price of gold fell, and fell especially during the recessions: consumers couldn’t afford to buy much gold so it fell towards its natural price. And iPhones. And why the profit margin at grocery stores is the same as at Apple stores. Because consumer ability and consumer income, especially since consumers should be more price sensitive to high-ticket luxury purchases than they are to necessities.
