[jgalt212]

I remember the day in US when the consumer was king, and its interests were second to all others (govt, big business, etc). Sadly that day has passed. Without getting too political, the root cause is unrestrained campaign giving.

[baddox]

It's interesting that most people (at least around here) point to unrestrained campaign giving, rather than the fact that government even has the regulatory authority to do what it does. Of course, we have both, and stopping either one would in theory stop the other, but it's interesting that people always seem to point exclusively at one or the other. I wonder if there's some correlation between what angle people take and what their broader political leanings are.

[jgalt212]

Well I don't think it's a left/right thing as campaign finance reform has been proposed by both major parties.

[oldmanjay]

When was this glorious time? Certainly doesn't seem like that would have been anytime since the 19th century, at the latest.

[tim333]

I remember 30 years ago in the UK being envious of US telecom regulation. The US had free local calls - unheard of in the UK then and you could connect modems to the phone line. In the UK that was banned as the lines were all owned by the government monopoly and could not be touched so you had to put an acoustic coupler on the phone handset, believe it or not. Now the UK surprisingly seems to have better telecom regs than the US.

[jessaustin]

Are you sure the handset-suction-cup thing wasn't just the average technology 30 years ago? Because while I was too young to know about that, I distinctly remember seeing it in use here in USA at that time.

[pyre]

> its interests were second to all others

I think that you mean:

> all other interests were second to it

If 'it' was second to something else, that would mean that said something else was first.

[ulfw]

How many decades ago was that?