Quote:
Originally Posted by constitutionalist
Actually, I went out of my way to specifically say I was not conjuring up hypotheticals. My examples of government abuses of power were specific and applicable and in fact directly responded to the specific examples you cited and further.
Indeed, you prove my point about DirectTV. The market cured itself.
With respect to your 20% response: exactly - you just reiterated my point, which is that more than likely considerably fewer than 20% felt harmed by this and it certainly didn't rise to the level of a serious breach, but simply an annoyance. However, if a customer felt Comcast violated its own terms, there is certainly civil relief as well as state and federal laws already in place to police contractual violations by businesses. However, an ISP is a private business and has a right to decide within the law what traffic flows through its network. The customer has a right to vote with his or her feet. The customer also has a duty to him- or herself to know the agreement they are consenting to when they choose to use an ISP, as well as options for relief if those terms are violated by the ISP. Sure, a free market calls for something other than mindless sheep, but as history shows us, it turns out a lot better than the alternative. ;D
Yes, my argument is that in this sense, government cannot be trusted. I think that history has demonstrably revealed to us that abusive government is far more rampant and egregious in nature than anything Comcast has ever done. Further, when government commits abuse your recourse is often very difficult or non-existent; when Comcast commits abuse, you fire the company and find another. When that abuse is more than an insignificant blip on the radar, sufficient numbers of people will do likewise and Comcast will have to choose whether to continue its practice and suffer starvation or reform. As I stated earlier, however, I am not arguing against all regulation, but I do believe that the laws currently in place are sufficiant; I am also aware of the present political Zeitgeist and know that until this changes, laws and regulations will not be enacted to promote healthy business but to restrict our liberties.
And we can't let government run the country simply because we do not trust some corporations. At least Comcast cannot kick down your door or sentence you to death. Every law and regulation, good or bad, that the government enacts is backed up by force of arms. Comcast can only mourn that you fired them.
But you are so right about term limits, there I completely agree with you. I do disagree with the current campaign finance laws as they now exist because they were created to limit free speech (Bob the auto mechanic cannot pay for his own ad exposing a crooked politician 60 days before an election because that is now illegal), plus the insiders with connections have already found ways to skirt laws governing contributions. So we have some work to do there. I am already working on the campaign of one US Senate hopeful who supports all of the above, as well as being involved in a number of other worthwhile endeavors and I challenge you to do similar work to see things change. There, after all, is a direct correlation between government corruption and overstep and public apathy. In fact, the same is true for the corporate world, too. We hold the key to both.
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#1: You appear to not know what you are talking about here. The market did NOT cure itself in the Comcast incident. The FCC intervened and slapped Comcast down. See here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...080101205.html
So it actually proves MY point, that the goverment is needed for things like this. The market was not able to resolve this without government intervention.
#2: You are wrong about people feeling harmed by this. Do a google search on the matter- there were tons of people feeling harmed by it. The problem was Comcast lied about it so most people didn't know the problem was with Comcast. People thought they had computer issues, or Directv sucked, or whatever service they were trying to use had problems. This is what Comcast reps were telling their customers. They repeatedly denied blocking or slowing anything. Now, what is to stop Comcast from blocking the web sites that carry such information next time? Say Comcast blocks that traffic and the governemt doesn't intervene- it's not out of the realm of possibility that Comcast starts filtering any web page that paints Comcast in a negatove light. They already openly lied about it so it's not at all a stretch.
#3: Comcast may be a private business, but their lines are going across all kinds of private and public property. They are dependant on the government to allow this- even when a homeowner does not want a Comcast line buried in his backyard. As such, they are subject to government regulation.
#4: In this instance, the government did the correct thing. You arguing that government can't be trusted is hillarious. Maybe government can or can't be trusted, but we KNOW Comcast can't be trusted. They have already been caught lying while doing the wrong thing. They don;t even pretend to be looking out for the public's best interests- they make it clear they are a business looking out for their own self interests. So while you keep saying we can't trust the government, I'll keep saying we can certainloy trust them a heck of a lot more than a corporation like comcast.
#5: It is not a ssimple as firing Comcast and finding another. This is the largest cable company in the nation. Even in areas that have another choice, there is likely only 1 other choice. And on top of that, Comcast lies about what they do so the consumer doesn't even know Comcast is the root of the problem (as recent history has shown us).
#6: Your stance is just laughable. You seem to be saying something alone the lines of "Comcast already has the government paid off anyway so we might as well cut out the middle man and let Comcast make their own rules." That is just ridiculous. If you think the government is corrupt, then we need to clean the government up. But we can't just abandon the government and let the largest corporations run the country.
#7: Comcast has a lot more power than you think. They might not be able to kick down your door but like I said, they can send their techs to your backyard whenever they want (if you have a comcast line buried). In addition to that, they were setting a precedent that they could control the information you have access to. Even the government doesn't have that kind of power. We're talking abotu the largest tv service provider, and the largest internet provider- filtering information, and lying about it. And you think this is a good thing? Not hardly. Clearly, the government intervening was a good thing. And we absolutely need the government to intervene if something like that ever happens again.
#8: Don't worry about challenging me to work towards change- I am the one who started this thread so clearly I am doing something...
If you feel we can't trust our government to do basic things, then we need to revamp the government. We simply can't let the country be run by the largest corporations. While you THINK the government might not really be about the public's best interest, we KNOW the largest corporations certainly don't care about the public's best interests.
Public utilities have been regulated forever. There has been no problem with such regulation in the past. Throw all of that government regulation is bad nonsense out the window here because public utilities have been just fine- while regulated by the government. In fact, the only reason Comcast is so biog is because the government regulated the landline telco industry but cable companies weren't included in such regulation (they did not offer the same services at the time). Once cable companies started offering the same service as phone companies, they should have been under the same rules and regulations as the landline telcos.
And for the record, I am sure there are many, many more instances of corporations breaking the rules than there are of government officials breaking the rules. Corporations get fined every single day for various violations. Hundreds, or even thousands of fines are handed out every single day. Government officials get caught breaking the rules every once in a while, but not to the tune of hundreds or even thousands of times every single day.