Sucks to be you. Oh, and your rate has gone up $80 per month.

Meanwhile, I'm ditching cameras and insurance companies altogether and going full Mafia. "You hit me, we hit you!"

True. If you don't break something then you're not getting your money's worth. Time to put some big tires on that Hummer and run down a brick mailbox. You only live once!

Then if you ARE in an accident, they will deny your claim and if you fight it in court they will charge you with insurance fraud to encourage you to settle for little or nothing. If you're going to take on the insurance company you might as well tape a throw-away phone to the under-carriage of an insurance executive's sports car. When they try to jack up your rates for bad driving, ask them if VP Joe is paying the same rate - because if he's not he ought to be.

It's a free market; consumers can lobby Congress just as much as any corporation can. Of course, if the consumers of the world start organizing and taking collective action, that will only show that they are just a bunch of unpatriotic Communists trying to destroy the free market.

Most of Wisconsin doesn't even have cellular coverage. Where are all these bars at?

Off-topic, but I shop at Hispanic and Asian grocery stores. No loyalty cards and prices are much better. No quality issues either, though there are a few stores I wouldn't shop at.

So a school requires attendance by force of law, requires parents to use a specific make and model of product, and you think that constitutes a free market for setting the price?

From Wikipedia:

"A monopoly exists when a specific person or enterprise is the only supplier of a particular commodity. Monopolies are thus characterized by a lack of economic competition to produce the good or service and a lack of viable substitute goods."

Also from Wikipedia:

"Monopolies derive their market power from barriers to entry -- circumstances that prevent or greatly impede a potential competitor's ability to compete in a market."

Please enlighten us with your definition of a monopoly and why it isn't applicable to this situation.

The alternative is to set up a certification process, but no one seems to be stepping up to the plate to do that, especially if there is just one player in the market. And no, I'm not going to buy my kids a cheaper $10 knock-off that keeps shutting down during a standardized test or takes 60 seconds to plot a function during a 30 second pop quiz. Unfortunately the poor end up suffering competitive setbacks in their education because their technology is not up to par.

Sure, that could save some money for parents, but could result in the TI sales rep no longer taking the purchasing manager out for free lunches.

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If you were to visit a prison you would find that over 90% of the prisoners shouldn't be there and don't belong there. They were innocent. Every prison I visited was the same. When I spoke to prisoners they all had sound alibis, witnesses, and other evidence that either wasn't allowed to be presented to the jury or the prosecution twisted the facts just to convict them. Many others chose to take plea deals because they knew that prosecutors were like that and would just manipulate the jury to convict them of harsher crimes. Random prisoners from separate prisons had the same story, which proves that they were telling the truth since they had no way to know each other or collaborate.

Of all the prisons that I have visited I never met one prisoner who claimed to be innocent but was actually guilty of the crime they were wrongfully convicted of.

I've found that if a business only has three or four reviews, and the three good reviews sound like a paid testimonial and one review is very negative, I sometimes veer from doing business with that company unless there is another way to gauge their service and business practices. I've seen too many cases where positive reviews are very polished and seem to echo the company's mission and values statements instead of giving an honest assessment of the quality of their services or trustworthiness. Now if there are many more reviews I expect that possibly one in four will be less than satisfied with even a very good company. But if 10% to 25% of reviews indicate the lowest possible rating with specific warnings of things the business is doing wrong, then I may choose to look for a better company, especially if there are many posts from "satisfied" customers posting reviews that specifically try to argue against the negative reviewers. When the negative reviewers are called liars or accused of having a personal vendetta against the business, I tend to take that company off the list. Most rational satisfied customers aren't going to waste time arguing on behalf of a company even if they like doing business with them. If anything, most such customers may begin to question their own experience with the company. After all, just because they ate there twice and never got food poisoning doesn't mean that several others couldn't have been sickened on a separate occasion.

Rights are negotiated. Sometimes settled by force on the battlefield. Sometimes through pressure such as protests or boycotts. Sometimes lobbied for by corporate trade associations. Often they are set in place in order to win support for another cause. But fact remains unless somebody fought for it, it is not a right. You can claim any right you choose, but be prepared to fight for it if the powers that be don't recognize your claim.

Personally, I hope that large a-hole companies persist and continue, as long as their abuses are constantly made public and discussed on forums such as this. It reminds people that just because a company is massive, well establish, has a good credit rating, has a reputation to defend, is financially sound, has a satisfactory rating with the BBB and similar rating agencies, needs to attract new customers, has professional and polished marketing, files taxes on time, relies on repeat or continuing business, is not under investigation, pays good dividends, is popular with investors, and sponsor charity events - does not mean that you can trust them to do the right thing.