Comment Re:Time to give more politicians free cable tv and (Score 1) 132
That's not "conspiracy". It's just all-too-common, unethical, anti-competitive business practice. If you want to call lobbying and expensive presents "conspiracy", then you're saying that most of Congress are conspirators.
Yes, businesses try to gain monopolies, and they try to gain it by lobbying, and politicians let them succeed. That's obvious. Now what are you going to do about it?
You cannot fix that by railing at the businesses, they are never going to be any more ethical, and they don't give a f*ck what you think. You cannot fix it by voting better politicians into office; we tried that, and even Obama and Warren have succumbed (as have all previous politicians who have tried). And you cannot fix it by passing more regulation to punish businesses or politicians, because the new regulations will fall prey to regulatory capture just like the old ones.
What businesses fear most is competition and deregulation. Of course, even "deregulation" is subject to regulatory capture, in the sense that a lot of "deregulation" simply amounts to giving away public property at bargain basement prices without actually leading to more competition. But true deregulation is the only way we can fix regulatory capture; none of the other approaches work.
Right.... cause deregulation worked soooo well for the banking and mortgage industries and the economy... oh, wait...
Industries need a certain amount of regulation to keep them somewhat honest. I agree that regulations and laws have been passed that benefit specific companies but the the way to fix it is to roll back regulations to the basic stuff and get ride of all of the rules that add barriers to entry. However, the biggest barrier to entry in the ISP/cable space is fair access to the infrastructure.