I'm pretty sure you believe in checks and balances for government, but you clearly do not for business.
You're lying about me. Please don't. It's unbecoming. I said absolutely nothing that you could infer that from.
I'm making an assumption. You haven't corrected it. I haven't put any words in your mouth, I'm just responding to what you've said. If you don't believe in checks and balances, then say so. Temper your ideals, because you've put them out there very boldly and directly in a topic about a country you do not reside in. There's been no moderation in your conversation at all.
Is corporate rule that appealing to you?
I do not accept the way you would dictate my liberty.
Except, I wouldn't. You cannot identify a single liberty you would lose from my views as stated or implied. You're dishonestly just making things up so you can try to weirdly score points against me.
The entire subject is a liberty I wish for. I would like to purchase a phone that carriers will guarantee unlocked. They place these locks and I don't want them, so I'd prefer that my government (which is not yours I should note!) take this action to require that they do.
This is a situation where I feel my liberty is more valuable than theirs. I feel justified in doing so, because I'm a citizen and they are (in most part American-owned I should also note) not citizens. They don't even pay the same taxes as I do, in fact as telephone companies, they've been mostly tax exempt. Nevermind the slash of corporate taxes of late (again, a Canadian and provincial issue). This is not fair representation and your insistence that they should have freedoms at the expense of my own are exactly what I'm taking issue with.
I don't know why I should even bother explaining something so obvious that you're just likely to reply with more religious zeal latitudes that have little bearing on the reality of the situation at hand.
It's a minor, relatively unimportant liberty for sure, but it's one nonetheless.
We have checks and balances: it's called a Constitution. The problem is that "ObamaCare" violates the Constitution, in many ways. The rule of law is ignored by the left controlling the U.S.
I'm wondering if you've bothered at all to pay attention to whom you're addressing or just arguing with everyone as a whole here. I haven't once mentioned health care and it's off-topic as far as I'm concerned. That's part of my point I guess, since this is about a specific anti-competitive practice by Canadian cellular carriers. It's not about you, the U.S., health care, or any of the other things which you'd like to bundle into your over-encompassing idealistic arguments. I haven't even considered your constitution on the topic, because well, it's your constitution, so how the hell does it apply?
Sure, there's a big picture here, but it's clear it's all just formula for you. You're missing all the math of this particular equation and you're unwilling to factor any of that into your one-size-fits-all free market fantasy solution.
Let's be clear here. This thing you purchased is "a locked phone." That is what you sought, purchased, and now own.
In Canada at least, we do have consumer laws that allow for a moderate amount of assumption on the part of the purchaser and the seller. I think it's reasonable that I'm actually purchasing a "cellular phone" and that it's also reasonable to expect that phone to work equally with compatible networks. If under some strange case that it went to court, adding an artificial lock would certainly be treated as a barrier, not a product description. Incidentally, that's pretty clear within Bill C-560, as a requirement that locks be better identified.
If you think it's clear as an assumption, then maybe that's the situation in the U.S., but here there are some phones that are carrier locked and some that are not. It's been consumer's best guess as to which.
I don't mean to insult you by this, but you clearly haven't factored in the differences between our countries at all. Not in the specifics of this market and not in the assumptions of liberties either.
You'd make a hell of a dictator.
You're an ignorant jackass.
Allow me to explain the nuance of that insult. You've spend this entire debate dictating to others your unwavering insistence of how you feel liberty should be. To citizens of another country! And then you claim your interpretation is based on fact and history. I don't disagree with your flag, I disagree with YOU.
Insult my intelligence, call me names, but can't take it in return. Tell everyone else they resort to ad hominem, but when you do it, it's all correct, right? You're not currently a dictator, clearly, but from your comments here, you appear to desire to the lives and laws of people who are not your countrymen.