[pachydermic]

>Wake up, People! The government is not here to fix your problems.

And private firms with monopoly power aren't either.

[jeremyt]

Private firms with monopoly power never last, unless that monopoly power is augmented by the government.

The Comcast "monopoly" is in the process of falling apart, on one side from Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu and on the other side from Google fiber, 5G wireless, mesh networking, and perhaps even the Elon musk LEO satellite Internet plan.

[masklinn]

> Private firms with monopoly power never last, unless that monopoly power is augmented by the government.

Ma Bell was a monopoly long before the government tried to reign it in.

[starnixgod]

The government birthed the Ma Bell monopoly with the Willis Graham Act.

[masklinn]

You're completely off your rocker.

The Willis Graham Act nullified the Kingsbury Commitment by which the government had tried to stop the unfettered expansion of Ma Bell, since it hadn't actually worked the government shifted to trying to regulate Ma Bell itself through the ICC (and the FCC a few years later).

[st3v3r]

"The Comcast "monopoly" is in the process of falling apart, on one side from Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu"

And what happens to that threat when Comcast "accidentally" blocks them for an extended period of time?

"and on the other side from Google fiber, 5G wireless, mesh networking, and perhaps even the Elon musk LEO satellite Internet plan."

Which are taking their sweet ass time to find their way to consumers.

[jeremyt]

Which are taking their sweet ass time to find their way to consumers.

...because of government red tape.

[anon987]

Oh, so your suggestion is to just wait it out and good things will come?

[jMyles]

Well, to use the current example, the monopoly can be broken with buildouts of wireless mesh networking.

By contrast, government intervention might well make wireless mesh networking, as a methodology for reconstructing the internet, far less plausible.

[rrmm]

Either can exert good and bad influences. Neither business nor government is your friend. Both can be large and unwieldy, and large entities often step on smaller ones even if inadvertently.

Unfortunately, we just have to be vigilant and exert our own influence to push things in a favorable direction. No one else will.

[jMyles]

One of them claims the authority to use violence to coerce you. I tend to be more skeptical of that one.

[guelo]

No, wireless mesh networking is never going to displace fiber providers.

[jMyles]

For final mile applications, I assert that it will. For longer transit, I agree.