Comment Re:So.... reboot? (Score 4, Funny) 283
Dude, uptime blog cred!
Yup, valid points and I agree, the situation is paralyzing; I'm a heavy user myself. The point I'm trying to make is that by involving government intervention, you will more often than not make the situation worse and not better.
The historic economic data, in almost all cases states explicitly that if you want more production then you need more competition, and not less. More government regulation has a tendency, as you have pointed out, to decrease competitive pressures.
Here's an absurd example to illustrate my point. Lets say that all across the US, people like to knit. Naturally, the prices of yarn start to go up and the hardcore knitters get mad. The get the government to pass a law saying that the providers of yarn can't charge more than $X.
It no longer becomes profitable for the small yarn produces to stay in business because losses to profit affect them more and the larger companies are all that remain. Of the companies that remain, none of them have any incentive to change what they're doing because the price is fixed; the result isn't more yarn being produced.
Lets say that the hardcore yarn makers instead get the government to subsidize yarn production. Now you have a situation where everyone in the United States is paying for a hobby that few people have. The cost of that subsidy would in turn would be the loss of productive effort elsewhere.
A valid point can be made for legal intervention however. If Verizon submits a contract to provide a certain amount of bandwidth and subsequently forfeits that contract, it is in the interest of all citizens to see Verizon held accountable. That recourse is a desirable function of the marketplace.
Suggest you just sit there and wait till life gets easier.
