Politics
Out of context: Reply #13859
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- ukit0
Once you think about how much of an oligarchy most of our industries are, it's got to change the way you think about policies and also global competitiveness.
Does it matter sense to loosen regulations if all they do is end up helping those huge conglomerates consolidate power? Give them additional tax breaks when most of them barely even pay taxes?
Put aside the issue of fairness and inequality, does it even make sense from a business competitiveness point of view? A libertarian point of view? Take the broadband industry as an example. Bush was incredibly generous and "free market" in his approach, he let Comcast and their buddies literally regulate themselves for ten years.
So what's the result of that? In the early 90s, we were the only country that even had a "world wide web." Now we rank 35th in the world in terms of broadband speed and connectivity according to a study Akamai put out.
http://arstechnica.com/telecom/n…
The amazing thing is, there's been exactly zero improvement over the entire past decade. Every other country is getting faster and faster technology put in, we actually saw a net decrease in terms of broadband delivery speed last year.
"For the third quarter of 2009, the average connection speed for the country was 3.9Mbps...South Korea topped the list with an average of 14.6Mbps, almost twice the average of second-place Japan with 7.9Mbps."
And yet, we pay MORE than those guys do.
"For our average of 3.9Mbps, we pay about $40 per month. In France, by comparison, many users have access to a $45 monthly plan that includes 20-30Mbps connections, VoIP service, and HDTV with a DVR included."
Funny shit huh?