Embarassed to call myself a Republican-leaning Independent

[Photoman]

Welcome to politics Sir, it "reeks" on both sides.

Indeed! I gave up on the Democrats when I was 19 and the Republicans when I was 44.

[jimlongley]

It's important to note that any monopoly status Ma Bell ever had, was one that was dictated by the government. Jim Langley posted about the variety of phone services available when be began working as a phone guy. People found free market solutions: they had two or more phone lines from different companies, because that was cheaper than calling between services. Voila, the free market works!

...

The government response was to "simplify" things by requiring a single carrier. Which wound up costing consumers more, but no one was "forced" to subscribe to multiple services.

"Overwhelming market dominance" is not the same as "monopoly". The threat of competition is as real as actual competition, and keeps market prices low. Actual monopoly can only exist where force exists.

....

That's not freedom.

Kevin

All one has to do is look back at some of the historical pictures of cities from the turn of the (19th to 20th) century to see part of why the government decided to establish the franchised monopolies the way they did. Of course, as in all cases of well meaning federal legislation, it was a one size fits all solution, and it didn't fit all.

The pictures I refer to are those that feature multiple sets of utility poles on both sides of streets (and don't show the ones behind the buildings) usually from competing companies. Look closely at the pics and you will see that the spider web of wires running back and forth across the street created a great deal of potential for damage and danger. In many cases to add infrastructure involved splicing a second pole atop an existing one, which also shows in some of those pics. Cutting down on the mess and danger was part, but not all, of the reason, for the law.

The law arbitrarily established boundries and regions of service depending on who had the greater share and many of the various companies were not prepared for the monopoly that they acheived. They were all in favor of striving for market dominance, but that was a compettition thing, and when there was no compettition some lost their impetus to strive for excellence, and eventually they failed and were taken over by other companies.

It's kind of funny actually, the law actually established a method for one company to become dominant in one region. If a "small" company was failing, the law stated (under the concept of "universal service") that another company, as part of their franchise, had to step in and take over if no successor was found for the one that failed. One little catch was that the company that took over had to bring the plant and facilities of the failed company up to the state of the art, an expensive proposition at times.

Where I worked, too many years ago now, we had a little company called Schoharie Valley Telephone Company. Seventy six customers and only a couple of private lines, even the one pay phone was on a party line. Mom and Pop had decided to finally give it up, none of the kids was interested in taking over and they were getting older (myself and some of the guys that i worked with used to go over the boundry and help out during our lunches and on weekends, just for fun, really!)

The franchise rules made New York Telephone Company have to "purchase" SVTC, and upgrade it. SVTC had a little cord board in the bedroom of Mom and Pop's house, and hand crank phones, and wire facilities. State of the art was cable facilities, dial telephones (including Touch Tone) and such. All NYT eventually did was extend a cable from the nearest central office into the village and wire everyone up, but it was an engineering nightmare because the facilities had never been planned for such an eventuality, and it was way more expensive than any profit made ever made up for.

I was lucky enough to be part of the "crew" that did the installation of the new phones, and helped teach some people who had never used a dial phone before, and take out the old ones. Even today it brings tears to my eyes to recall those trucks stacked with old hand crank phones being tossed into the back to be taken to the dump and burned. How were we to know that not too many years later those phones would be considered priceless antiques?

/reminisce off/

[pfgrone]

This forum is titled "General Texas CHL Discussion"
What is this thread doing here?
Paul

[TxFire]

Many telephone customers are CHL holders. There now it is not of topic.

[Rugrash]

I thought towards the end of the Senator's speech that he was going to claim that HE invented the Internet instead of Al Gore!! BTW...how does a person with obviously bad grammar make it as a U.S. Senator???

[flintknapper]

BTW...how does a person with obviously bad grammar make it as a U.S. Senator???

It does make you wonder, but...such is politics.

Lesson for the day: Gettin to be a US Senator...don't mean it was cause ya gots good "grammar". It jus....means ya was able to gets the most peoples to votes for ya.

Now do you understand?



And by the way, there is nothing more common in this world than "educated idiots" IMO.

[longtooth]

Yes sir, there are a lot of people running things that are degreed way beyond their real intellagence.

[one eyed fatman]

I thought towards the end of the Senator's speech that he was going to claim that HE invented the Internet instead of Al Gore!! BTW...how does a person with obviously bad grammar make it as a U.S. Senator???

The same way one with bad grammer gets to be President of the United States.

[KBCraig]