Cable Companies Duped Community Groups Into Fighting Net Neutrality 170
walterbyrd (182728) writes Last week, it transpired that the big cable companies were bankrolling fake consumer groups like Broadband for America and The American Consumer Institute. These 'independent consumer advocacy groups' are, in truth, nothing of the sort, and instead represent the interests of its benefactors, in the fight against net neutrality. If that wasn't bad enough, VICE is now reporting that several of the real community groups (and an Ohio bed-and-breakfast) that were signed up as supporters of Broadband for America were either duped into joining, or were signed up to the cause without their consent or knowledge.
LOL @ gullible fools (Score:1, Funny)
I guess these were the same people who signed petitions against DHMO
Re:LOL @ gullible fools (Score:4, Informative)
So it's pretty easy to see how they could be manipulated into supporting something that was not in their best interest.
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Because voting for Dubya was a sign of high intelligence?
Re:Idiots (Score:5, Insightful)
You mean no wonder they elected GWB four times right? OK, he has had more of a tan these last two terms, big difference!
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^^^^ Now they have. Every level meta you go pushes the rock bottom that much lower...
Re: Idiots (Score:5, Funny)
Dick meeting kettle is not as fun as it sounds.
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It's debatable whether he was even elected once.
while we're bitching about cable companies.. (Score:5, Interesting)
where the fuck is the alacarte programming options? you bribed the fcc into allowing you to encrypt all video signals and go all-digital.. so now that every customer must have a company-provided receiver, recorder, or cable card... you no longer have ANY EXCUSE for not offering what customers demand -- the ability to pick-and-choose each individual channel or network they want and to only pay for those and not the hundreds of others which are pure junk and would never stand on their own if their existence depended upon viewer choice.
(satellite companies have nothing standing in THEIR way, either, for offering alacarte programming)
Re:while we're bitching about cable companies.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Take whatever you can get from them, my friend. They'll certainly take all they can from you.
Re:while we're bitching about cable companies.. (Score:5, Insightful)
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I don't want any of my money going to Faux News or any other Murdoch property. Without a la carte pricing, a portion of my cable bill funds those bastards. Today I can't change that unless I drop cable entirely, which means giving up Game of Thrones, so screw that.
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Sky channels without the cruft.
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Oh, the horror! I guess not supporting Fox News isn't really that important after all.
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You forgot 5.) Read the books. :D
I don't have cable. No TV for me. And yes, I am quite smug about it.... But I love GoT. I watch it on google play. No, they don't have the latest season. That's ok, since I read the books, I know what happens, and I can wait. I'm patient. Most people just torrent it, and I wish HBO would stop being assholes and put season 4 on google play... right now it's easier to pirate than to watch legally for me. Grumble...
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Whoosh.
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Actually, stations HAVE been moving to a la carte offerings. If you pay attention, a lot of stations which used to put their popular shows on one network and have speciality channels have been shoving their popular shows onto the lesser channels.
This means that the consumer no
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Also, a la carte wouldn't help your bill; the pricing for a la carte would ensure that you are still paying as much or more than you are for bundled tv.
You are looking at it the wrong way. A la carte pricing wouldn't cut the "average" bill, but would give me the power to control my own bill. So *MY* bill would be cut, even if the average one wouldn't be.
Re: while we're bitching about cable companies.. (Score:2, Insightful)
A la carte would mean individual channels will be priced much higher. It's very likely your bill will remain the same or increase.
Broadcasters, like the one i'm employed at, send their signals to cable and satellite companies. A la carte would lower are viewers by a fair bit, equating to less ad revenue. That will force us to toss niche channels, and cause the remaining channels to be priced much higher.
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That's doubtful... it would be likely to drive niche viewers away to cheaper streaming services.
Non-reality reality shows, fake sports, 3 point shots, and I'm already completely disillusioned.
Re: while we're bitching about cable companies.. (Score:4, Informative)
The "500 channel universe" of niche channels didn't pan out. The History Channel is now about pawn shops. There's simply not enough actual original content to supply the number of channels out there by genre, and certainly not enough money to start making those shows.
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A la carte would mean individual channels will be priced much higher. It's very likely your bill will remain the same or increase.
That seems unlikely to me. Any sane proposal would require a-la-carte costs to add up to the same as bundle costs. They can charge $200/mo for a basic cable bundle if they want to, but they'll just go out of business if they do. If you don't make them add up to the same then companies that don't want to do a la carte would just sell channels for $1M/month each and claim to be in compliance with the law.
Cable packages are priced at what the market will bear - they can't make the average package cost more
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Sure they are, Cable companies like Communists are all about controling acess to desired resources; one just pretends to be ethical.
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They have plenty of excuse:
1) We don't want to. Fuck you.
2) We don't want to. Fuck you.
3) We don't want to. Fuck you.
And lastly: We don't want to. Fuck you.
What benefit does alacarte give the cable companies that they would provide it?
Vote with your wallet (Score:3)
it's the only thing the cable & satellite companies will understand - basically cut the cord and buy your content à la cart on DVD, blu-ray, or a streaming service.
I set up a Mac mini DVR at the end of 2012 for off-the-air content - based on my last scan there's 115 channels [atariage.com] available via antenna here in Houston. Once I got everything working (my HDTV predates HDMI so I had to get a solution to convert HDMI to Component Video [atariage.com]) I then cancelled DirecTV in January of 2013. I buy cable series on
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Actually none of that happened.
People weren't duped. What happened was that paid shills posed as communities fighting those things.
There isn't a community thinking that Snowden is a traitor and that we don't need more insight into what NSA does. There are however a couple of shills that wants to create that appearance.
No-one is duped by it, but politicians who wants it that way will point at the shills and say "Look what the community wants."
It works the same way like staging a riot just to motivate using f
Re:ooh ive played this game before. (Score:5, Informative)
A large number of these assorted 'community' interest groups; are both relatively impecunious and relatively minimally informed, or interested, in the details of issues outside their mission area. It would be relatively trivial to, say, tell the group representing rural hospitals in Texas (one of the ones mentioned in TFA) that what's good for Comcast is good for rural internet access (this might even be true, since a time-honored technique for bargaining with the FCC is to promise to provide coverage to some totally uneconomic rural areas in exchange for the right to squeeze the much more numerous customers in some more profitable and denser markets. Going all the way back to the Communications Act of 1934, telling the FCC that you'll wire Podunkistan is approximately the equivalent of telling them that you love them for who they are, and generally about as honest.)
It is also the case that telcos and cable outfits, as with most large corporations, have 'philanthropic' arms, and here the 'bought and paid for' aspect takes on a greater role than the 'duped'. Some outfit that does gang-prevention for at-risk youth or some similar more-or-less-unrelated-to-broadband mission really has no business signing up pro or con; but if their operating budget is peanuts, and Comcast is kicking in part of it, it would be only polite to return the favor, no?
The one other aspect to keep in mind, specifically with telcos and cable companies, is the role of their employee structure: If you want to build infrastructure, nationwide, you need a lot of workers, including a lot of blue collar, tradesmen, and the like. Even if, in the long run, those workers might be better off in a more competitive climate(more laying cable and new service rollouts, which benefit the linesmen and splicers and bucket trucks, less buying fancy appliances from Cisco and Sandvine to wring more revenue out of legacy infrastructure), those workers can still answer "What has Comcast done for me?" a lot more easily than "What has Netflix done for me?", or any of the other internet-using companies, who tend to have relatively small, largely high-skill white collar, employee bases concentrated in a few specific locations.
This 'roots in the community' aspect is a nontrivial advantage: Somebody like Google or Netflix has customers in the community; but customers tend to be disorganized, and to perceive only small benefits, per company(though public backlash on net neutrality has been fairly strong, by the standards of policy wonkery, so they aren't totally ignorant of the value of the internet); but they only have employees, presence, relationships with local charities and Little League teams and such, in a few specific areas, if at all. A cable company or telco, though, has (although the name on the HQ may have changed a few times) been employing linesmen, trenchers, and service, maintenance, and field-tech people of all levels from 'guy with shovel' up through 'skilled tradesman' and 'local guru on freak issues with cable head-ends' for decades, and a fair few of them: Cable started rolling out ~1950, POTS predates 1900. Unless you are an utter failure at PR, or just a real, real, asshole, turning that into relatively broad-based influence over local 'good causes' should be an easy and natural process, however counterproductive you are to the long term interests of your customers.
Re:ooh ive played this game before. (Score:5, Informative)
Hello, there. I'm part of that community you deny exists.
I think Snowden did something damned near treason. It's obvious that he broke the law and jeopardized aspects of national security, but the issue of mens rea is still in question. No evidence has been presented (other than his word and the government's assertions) that he was or was not acting for the benefit of society. Resolving that question is one of the primary functions of a trial, which is why I think a trial should be held. As it stands now, the victim of a crime has been denied due process, and the Slashdot hivemind is happy about it.
I also think smoking is a right, in the more general case that I believe people should be permitted to mutilate their bodies however they wish, at whatever personal expense they wish. That might mean using alcohol or other drugs, or engaging in risky behaviors like skydiving, automobile racing, or bacon eating. However, I also believe their costs to society should be suitably offset so that their choices do not cause harm to society as a whole, and their damaging activities should be isolated appropriately so that uninvolved bystanders cannot be harmed.
I'm not a paid shill. I just think a little bit before jumping on board with everything the dear hivemind thinks.
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I also think smoking is a right, in the more general case that I believe people should be permitted to mutilate their bodies however they wish, at whatever personal expense they wish.
You do NOT have a "right" to smoke.
You have the right to CHOOSE to engage in risky behaviour.
Do not conflate the two, as they are not the same thing.
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Then you are naive, at best. Even if he came back to the states today, there is no possible way for him to get a fair trial. It would be a huge miracle for such a trial to even be public, given our government.
Consider that it took one person eight years to get taken off the no-fly list [pbs.org] after being put on for what is reportedly a government mistake. Part of the reason (if not the entire reason) for that was the continued insistence by the Justice Department that they couldn't reveal why
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So people keep telling me...
He loves the country, not the government, no[t] the administration
How are you so sure of that? He could have just been bought off by Russia, and been paid enough to become a martyr. Are you privy to his inner thoughts?
He sacrificed for you, and for me.
So he claims... but what actual evidence do we have of this? What was the state of his financial affairs before and after his leak? What about romance? Family politics? There are many reasons why someone will choose to reveal secrets. Of course, they always claim it's for the greater good.
He should get a FAIR trial, by a jury of his peers, and all the evidence should be exposed to public scrutiny.
Well, sort of. A fair trial, certainly. Ho
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rE SMOKING IS A RIGHT. In a single payer system, the medical costs of curing smoker related diseases is way out of proportion to the world of non-smokers. I wouñd like to see a law that stipulates "if you have smoked in the last 5 years, you are denied medical coverage for consequential illnesses. Got cancer because of smoking? Got money for treatment? No! Too bad. You as a smoker abused the system. Don't come begging.
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Or in short, your damaging activities should be isolated appropriately so that uninvolved bystanders cannot be harmed.
Okay. It should be pretty clear from my sig that I don't think any rights are absolute. Rather, I believe each right can be trumped by others, depending on the situation. Determining the hierarchy of rights for a given situation is a job for judges.
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as as a cable tech (being paid by the hour) i reserve the right to
1 spend extra time doing the job because i had to stop every 10 minutes to catch my breath
2 accidentally miss wire your setup to give my fellow (nonallergic) tech a swing at a service call
3 tick that Job Required Uncovered Labor [X] box and add $40.00 to your bill
4 not complete the job at all and tick the Customer Denied Needed Access[X] box
5 just about anything else i can do to F4 with you (and get away with it)
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And, we have emissions regulations (well, some states, at least) for a reason; I get just as annoyed at the drivers of vehicles which clearly did/will not pass smog testing.
The point I was making, which you so clearly missed, is the same one you were maki
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Well, you're missing an important dynamic here, which is groupthink.
When people decide whether something is true or false, right or wrong, the first thing they do is look around to see what other people think. And this is actually not a bad heuristic. Sometimes when you're in jail for civil disobedience it's because you are, in Thoreau's words, "a man more right than his neighbnors". But most of the time it's because you're a mule-headed crackpot. You should at least consider the possibility that if ever
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No more than paid shills elected Shrub twice.
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I said shills, not dangling chads.
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The irony here is that I think Obama has been tremendously disappointing, and yet he's light years better than the idiot that came before him...
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Yes, there is an obstructionist Congress, but there are many areas where the president could've acted freely and unilaterally, (to keep the campaign promises that got him elected in the first place), but didn't. He could've been light-years better than his predecessor, but in fact, his record is worse in many instances. I hope the examples are glaring enough for even the most ardent supporter not to need them listed here. The sad truth is that, even our team lies about campaign promises.
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Unfortunately, he isn't. And it wouldn't have been that hard. For the first couple of months it looked as if he would be an improvement.
OTOH, he hasn't made things as much worse as he easily could have.
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Unfortunately, he isn't.
He isn't what? He isn't better than W? Are you crazy? My f*cking dog would be a better president than George Bush Jr. I've had navel lint smarter than that dipsh*t.
If Rove hadn't sabotaged McCain in 2000 we'd very likely be in a much better place.
Sadly, since that bitter back stabbing McCain has become "new and improved McCain - now with more crazy!"
Let's hope somebody sane can make it through the Republican primary to give non crazy people someone to vote for besides whatever Democrat comes out on top.
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I'll second that. We can all acknowledge that O's peace price was a "Not Bush" prize. As much as I am pissed at Obama for being weak and not actually fighting for any of the changes to the system that he spoke of on the campaign trail...... He at least didn't enter a war in Afghanistan because a group in that country pissed us off (Think about that for a second. A radical Canadian group blows up a pipeline. We do NOT invade Canada!) or invade Iraq based on shitty intelligence AND for no good reason at all (
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Seriously?
Have we invaded a new country while lying to the entire world about why?
Obama is a disappointment, Bush was a shameful embarassment. Too bad too, because McCain in 2000 (not the bitter f*cked over by Karl Rove McCain of 2008) would have likely have been a decent president.
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He tried to invade Syria?
He invaded Libya and won a quick victory?
<InigoMontoya>I do not think that word means what you think it means...</InigoMontoya> ;)
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We violated their airspace and blew shit up. That is invasion.
No, it isn't - unless you're using the trivialized definition of the word where if you are standing a foot from me then you've 'invaded' my personal space. No rational person could compare our actions in Libya with the invasion of Iraq.
No rational person could compare asking congress for permission to retaliate against Syria if they used chemical weapons with "attempting to invade Syria."
Party affiliation? I'm an independent. I'd love for a non-retard conservative to somehow magically make it through the
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I did not have a problem with us invading Afghanistan because the Afghani government hid and protected Al Qaeda after 9/11.
How about Act of War against a nation that posed no threat?
Don't get me started ;). Yeah, we've gone from the policeman of the world (understandable in many cases) to the 'overzealous swat douchebag' of the world.
I am against sending troops or drones or air strikes of any kind inside of countries that have not explicitly given us permission that we are not at war with. Every president has probably flirted with this, but Bush really made it po
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I was fine with pounding on the Taliban, but I don't think the goal should have been to do any 'nation building' there. Beat the crap out of the Taliban, kill all the Al Qaeda we can find, then get immediately out - a la the 1991 gulf war.
I don't think we should been in Afghanistan for longer than it took to decapitate the current Taliban leadership. None of this 'force democracy down your throat' crap. We didn't care that they weren't democratic before 9/11.
Re:ooh ive played this game before. (Score:5, Insightful)
Why can't it be both?
Re:ooh ive played this game before. (Score:5, Insightful)
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other things that are known to happen in american democracy with seemingly little if any recourse: Oil company dupes community groups into fighting EPA regulations Major food company dupes citizens into fighting a tax on soda Cigarette company dupes consumers into thinking smoking is a right, not a crippling addiction President dupes country into fighting country with no WMD's
No kidding......it looks like there would be some kind of FRAUD statute being violated with this nonsense (i.e. astroturfing)...
Re:ooh ive played this game before. (Score:4, Insightful)
Or at least some consumer protection law which prevents companies from engaging in blatantly deceptive marketing campaigns.
However, fake 'grassroots' foundations seems to have become the norm.
Re:ooh ive played this game before. (Score:5, Informative)
Along with corporate "astroturfing" in the blogs and message boards of various sorts, I'm afraid. We've never been completely free from concealed or fraudulent advertising, but the fake "grassroots" campaigns have gotten out of hand. Even the "Tea Party" was apparently founded as an astroturf campain, with the concealed funding by Rupert Murdoch and the Koch Brothers. The Guardian did an excellent article about it at http://www.theguardian.com/com... [theguardian.com]: it might have been very, very difficult to print that in any of the Rupert Murdoch owned American newspapers.
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Meh, in this case who cares. Comcast et al are wildly outnumbered. Every company that benefits by the internet and those costs savings and profits best served by net neutrality are in a position to lobby politicians to ensure they get net neutrality. We are talking less than ten corporations attempting to take on tens of thousands of corporations.
It is all rather easy. All those CIOs and tech support types need to do is remind management what comes under risk with loss of net neutrality. Now broadband bu
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I am less optimistic about the outcome of that than you are.
Because these ten corporations are huge.
And, let's face it, when the head of the FCC is a former lobbyist for them, the deck is already stacked in their favor.
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I don't think you realise the severity of the risk. Major ISP will monitor all communications, which means buried in the back office, they will monitor insider information of other corporations to gain investor advantage. They will monitor all communications to enable the theft of patentable ideas that companies are working on. The will monitor all communications to gain business intelligence and competitive advantage. They will be able to selective slow and delete communications at critical junctures like
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This is a common tactic used by companies more than what you think.
An retired oil exec told me once.
There was a guy in Texas who had a monopoly on selling propane gas to consumers for heating etc. A natural gas company wanted to run pipes to the consumers. However, the local monopoly guy didn't want this competition. Solution. Create your own environmental group in which he was the president. Sue the natural gas company on envionmental and EPA grounds. Force them to do environmental studies, hold neighborho
New Normal (Score:1)
1. Get paid to lobby
2. Invent supporters
3. Profit!
Hey, I'd be for it! (Score:5, Funny)
I'm just confused about why Comcast, of all people, would be in charge of operating such an initiative, given their apparent opposition to good internet connections...
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The economics of pervasive broadband get quite strange. Doing cable based connections _as well as_ fiber _as well as_ DSL means a great deal of expensive, replicated infrastructure, and the installers arguing over space and time to run or repair their connections in very limited physical conduit strung between locations. Every time one of them needs to open up a conduit to upgrade or replace the physical layer they're putting every one else's connections at risk. It's an inevitable source of conflict among
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Do you suffer from aspergers? There post is what those of us with functioning senses of humor call a joke.
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Their, of course.
Maybe (Score:3, Interesting)
More investigative journalism is the shot in the arm that America needs right now and maybe Snowden did a good thing.
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Sue them!! (Score:1)
Well, it must be good... (Score:1)
How is this legal? (Score:3)
Oh, right, of course ... corporations are people with free speech, and entitled to actively lie to us.
Right, that totally makes sense.
According to the courts, that's sadly true (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't forget, fox news sued for their right-to-knowingly-lie and won in court.....
Re:How is this legal? (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, right, of course ... corporations are people with free speech, and entitled to actively lie to us.
What? That is utter nonsense. Corporations are not people!
Corporations are "Very Rich People". A class with little or no relation to "people".
VRPs have the inalienable right to do whatever they very much please and it is legal by Axiom*.
*: The axiom being: "Legal is what very rich people decide it is at any given point."
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I hope you signed the Move To Amend [movetoamend.org] petition..
And Other Billionaires Are Doing the Same Thing (Score:1)
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So which, specifically, of those NGOs funded by Google and Netflix list as their members organizations that have not actually ever heard of the NGO in question?
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That's a pretty broad brush you're painting with. Careful not to get any on you, nerd.
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When the sleigh is heavy
And the timber wolves are getting bold
You look at you companions
And test the water of their friendship
With your toe
They significantly edge
Closer to the gold
Each man has his price Bob
And yours was pretty low
I really have no choice... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I really have no choice... (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, then let me disabuse you of that notion.
There is no 'free' market, and there never has been. The 'free' market is predicated on the belief that all players will act honestly, and make informed choices based on available information. This is a completely false assumption, and has been proven so time after time.
It completely ignores human nature whereby someone will always lie, cheat, and steal to achieve their own ends -- this is what we see here.
Industry players will always form cartels and collude in anti-consumer behavior -- price fixing being the prime example.
Without someone to keep corporations in line, the market would steadily skew to all of the power being in the hands of a few.
There is no such thing as a 'free' market, and there simply never has been. It's a utopian myth which can never be true.
People who go around spouting about the 'free' market are either naive, self deluded, or actively lying.
What proponents want is a situation in which corporations are free to do as they choose, under the premise that, in the long run, consumers will have perfect information and be able to make informed choices.
A 'free' market is incapable of addressing things like pollution, product safety, and ethical behavior. In fact, it's almost designed to encourage it.
When Adam Smith wrote "Wealth of Nations", he wasn't writing a rule book, he was making a series of observations. The problem is things have become so skewed, that what we see is an ever-increasing trend where corporations hold all the cards.
Governments who actively support de-regulation have been putting more and more power into the hands of corporations. By allowing industries to 'police' themselves (which isn't what actually happens) they can do as they see fit, for their gain, and to our detriment.
Economics isn't a science, and it isn't based in fact. It is an ideology of how things should work assuming impossible conditions and premises. And, like all ideologies, it is inherently blind to its own flaws, and taken as a matter of dogma to be true.
Taking steps towards a 'free' market has the net effect of removing restrictions on corporations -- which are typically there because we've already seen examples of grossly bad behavior.
The US has been steadily creating (and forcing other countries to adopt) a global oligarchy whereby the corporations call all of the shots. For instance, the TTIP [opendemocracy.net]:
Basically, governments are no longer free to set evidence based policy if it would impact the bottom line of corporations which are the ones causing harm in the first place. They can be over-ridden by these private tribunals which exist to protect the interests of investors and corporations, to the detriment of the rest of us.
This is an oligarchy, and definitely NOT a free market. You could not transition from an oligarchy to a 'free' market by simply removing the laws and regulations governing corporations -- this would not magically create a free market, it simply removes their obligations to society, and frees them to do as they please.
The free market is a complete and utter myth. It has never existed. And the reason society has had to develop laws and regulations around their behavio
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I need mod points!!!
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The 'free' market is predicated on the belief that all players will act honestly, and make informed choices based on available information.
A fairly significant nit-pick: the free market, as described by Adam Smith and associated with the invisible hand of the free market, is predicated on two things:
1) Zero cost of entry into a market
2) Perfect information about each entrant into the market is available to all consumers at all time.
The closest thing to a market with zero cost of entry we have is lemonade stands and websites, and perfect information does not, will not, and cannot exist. Comcast is working very hard to significantly raise the co
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It would be nice if there was a free market. If there was, there would be no need for net neutrality.
But instead of a free market, we have a heavily regulated, crony-capitalism controlled market, where cable companies work deals with metro areas to be the only providers in town, then they use their government-approved monopoly to screw over the average person.... and to promote the re-election of those whose efforts promoted their control.
Hmm What was the FCC Chair's previous job....
If we had a free market
It's Downright Un-American! (Score:4, Informative)
My HOA is run by semi-literate morons, so... (Score:2)
I had to check if my HOA had been duped too, because this is just the type of thing they would do. They're not on the list, but if anyone else is interested they should check the list [broadbandforamerica.com] themselves to see if any groups they're members of are on it.
And this is why I never sign petitions (Score:2)
When someone on the street asks me to sign a petition, the answer is always no. It doesn't matter how worthy the stated cause is:
- Free, nutritious school lunches for whales
- Not grinding minorities into paste at the border
- Municipal high-speed internet
You don't know what you are really signing until you read the fine print, and the fine print under the fine print.
Um (Score:2)
Is there more to this story that doesn't make it fraud?
Similar story (Score:2)
This reminds me of something one of my friends told me about signing up for facebook in the early days.
He had created an account, and started following a few famous actors and such, then lost interest in it for a while because nobody really used it yet.
Later, when it became popular, he decided to log in again. In his news feed was the strangest stuff being posted by one of the actors he was following.
The profile was called "The Tony Danza". He had thought he was following the profile of the actor at the tim
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Replace "real community group" with "US Congress" and you have our present system of government.