Ma Bell phone rentals were a result of government regulation, NOT the free market. Ma Bell did not get their monopoly in a free market. The federal government decided in the early 1900s that a single phone company was easier to control than a lot of smaller ones. So they worked with AT&T to make it the dominant phone company.

That would be a good example, except for the fact that Ole Ma Bell had a monopoly because the Federal government decided back in the day that it was easier to regulate one large company than many small ones. So, yes, Internet service is following the model laid down by phone service. First, the Federal government encourages a monopoly to come into existence (Ole Ma Bell, back in the day, the big ISPs today). Then it uses that monopoly to justify regulations over that service. Several decades down the road, the monopoly starts to obstruct advances which everyone wants, so the government breaks up the monopoly (only to allow it to reconstruct itself in another form). I will never see that happen to the ISPs.

Payola was not illegal at the beginning. It was only after the initial scandal that a law was passed to make it illegal. For that matter, they still do it. Except now the record companies do not pay the radio stations directly. They pay a "promotion" company, which pays the radio station.

The problem with that theory is that I was actually alive and paying attention when the local monopolies were created...and your argument is EXACTLY the argument made by the various cable companies to get the government to GRANT them a monopoly in the various local areas. What nobody in government thought about (and if you tried to say it, you were called a crackpot) was, if cable was a natural monopoly, why did they need the government to grant them a monopoly? Wouldn't the company that did the best just end up with a monopoly?

Except that isn't what happened. What happened was that local municipalities were allowed to grant local monopolies for cable service. Then once every area where it was profitable to offer cable service had cable service, the big players began buying up everyone else. It didn't matter that they had lousy service, they had a monopoly, and the local municipalities discovered that they no longer had any leverage because they could no longer take the franchise for the local area back and give it to someone else because there was no one else.

In the U.S., the police have always needed guns (at least to some degree). I am not sure how the influence of the NRA can be held responsible for the police "needing" military gear, considering that police began using military gear as laws restricting gun ownership increased. It is worth noting that when it was legal for the common citizen to own automatic firearms, the police were perfectly satisfied to be armed with civilian weaponry.

No, this is not ineptness. They found an excuse to justify shutting off cellphones in case of mass protests which the government does not approve of.

Except of course the person you are replying to told you that it is NOT made by mixing 1:1 ethanol to maltodextrin by mass. They claim that the ratio is 1:5. If they are correct it would be six times as heavy as 200 proof ethanol. That being said, considering that the reason the person behind Palcohol wanted to develop it was to carry it when he went backpacking, it seems likely that is a good use case for it.

Having read the comments here, I tend to agree that there are probably better ways to package alcohol for hiking, That being said, I believe that there are probably some good use cases for this product. I don't know what they are, because I am not willing to spend the time thinking it through. I will say that I, also, believe those use cases would make powdered alcohol a niche product in the long run

And what do these Democratic Party policies have to do with the Republican Party?

Actually, most Republicans have a clear definition of "conservative". Those definitions vary, but they are usually pretty clear. For some, "conservative" is about social issues. However, for an ever growing number the definition of conservative is limiting the federal government to the powers defined in the Constitution as understood by the men who wrote it.

Except of course that Big Oil is paying scientists for studies which say that we need to stop using their products. Even the site which opposes skeptical thinking about AGW says so: http://www.skepticalscience.co... [skepticalscience.com]

I have seen the reports. I do not know if they are accurate or reliable. I am asked to present citations for this. Yet, I have repeatedly seen people claim that Big Oil supports AGW deniers but no one ever gives any citations to support that stance. It is just accepted as true.

Well here are some citations for what I said. I will repeat that I do not know if they are true, so don't respond by telling me they are biased sources:

http://www.climatedepot.com/20...
http://www.forbes.com/sites/la...

Even that promoter of non-skeptical acceptance of global alarmism "Skeptical Science" admits that Big Oil now supports AGW alarmism:
http://www.skepticalscience.co...

There are more. How about some citations supporting the allegation that Big Oil supports AGW skeptics?

Actually, I have seen several reports which indicate that Big Oil gives more money to scientists supporting AGW than they do to scientists opposing it. I do not know if those reports are accurate, but I have not seen ANY which actually quantify the money Big Oil gives to each side which disagree.

Do you have any citations which support your claim?

Springer reveals that they are not interested in fixing the problem revealed by SCIgen, they just want to prevent that software from demonstrating that they have not fixed it. They aren't going to change the review process to ensure that they no longer publish papers which are nonsense. No, they developed software to eliminate those papers which were generated by other software.

While you are correct, the question I have is how many pedophiles do they still have on staff that they are covering up for? If you are unaware, Jimmy Savile was a pedophile who hosted a popular children's TV show for the BBC for 40 years. Most of the major figures at BBC were aware that he was a pedophile who used his show to acquire victims.

I take it you have never heard of google?