Countries With Zero Rating Have More Expensive Wireless Broadband Than Countries Without It 160
A comprehensive multi-year study by the non-profit Epicenter.works, comparing the 30 member countries of the European Union (EU) on net neutrality enforcement, has found that zero rating business practices by wireless carriers have increased the cost of wireless data compared to countries without zero rating. From a report: This directly contradicts all of the assertions by major wireless carriers that their zero rating practices are "free data" for consumers. Based on the evidence, zero rating not only serves as a means to enhance ISPs' power over the Internet, but it's also how they charge consumers more money for wireless service. Zero rating was originally going to be banned by the FCC under the General Conduct Rule, but when the FCC changed leadership the agency promptly green lighted and encouraged the industry to engage in zero rating practices before it began its repeal of net neutrality.
Shocking (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Shocking (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree but you'd be surprised at the amount of idiots who think that zero-rated content is a good thing.
They say that if we block carriers from doing it, they will offer the same plans without the zero-rated bonus. As if the extra bandwidth used by the zero-rated content was free.
Here (Canada) a carrier (Videotron) was forced (by the CRTC) to stop zero-rating music streaming since it has been ruled a net neutrality violation. I applauded but a lot of people said the government was making plans more expensive.
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I am not sure Videotron offer really fell in what most people considered zero rated.
Then "most people" would be wrong to think so.
They did it in a way that stayed somewhat neutral
No, they didn't. It's not neutral if you discriminate some packets over others. They discriminated against everything which isn't streaming music. And streaming music had a very narrow definition.
as an ISP since they did not target a specific music service.
A lot of ISP zero-rated Spotify, Videotron had over 20 music providers in the list by the end of the offer and they even let you suggest additional providers if your favorite one was not in the list. If it was technically possible to distinguish audio traffic on that providerâ(TM)s domains from other kind of traffic, they would add it to the list.
They didn't include my own server's personal music streaming service. But it doesn't matter. It was technically impossible to include all music services. But even if it was possible, it would still be a net neutrality violation as they discriminate against everything wh
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That's not what net neutrality means. They are not prioritising those packets, they just aren't charging you for them.
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Net neutrality involve different treatment. That includes both charging a difference price or prioritizing.
Re: Shocking (Score:2)
Just because it was not the absolute worst example of net neutrality violation doesn't make it right.
And it's not my problem if they don't have the technical means to whitelist ALL music streaming. The alternative is not to violate net neutrality to begin with.
Re: Shocking (Score:2)
You have to be careful about using this word "we". Some people throughout history have known it. The vast majority do not understand it even today.
Re:Shocking (Score:4, Insightful)
This is my shocked face. :|
The ENTIRE POINT of net neutrality is so that the telecoms can't reach into your data and try to squeeze you for more money based on how valuable the data is to you.
Like listening to your phone calls to decide how much money to charge you based on how much you love talking to your mom.
Simple rule ... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a fairly simple rule .. if a telco claims to do something which benefits their consumers, it's a fucking lie.
By the time you are in management at one of those, you are an undeniable sociopath who only cares about doing whatever it takes to maximize profits, and your own bonus.
Nobody in management at such a company isn't a complete and utter sack of monkey crap.
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Add in politicians, too, and you have yourselves a deal. Especially the politicians (you think) you like.
Re:Simple rule ... (Score:4, Insightful)
there is a difference between giving out free internet and cheating paying customers.
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And an even bigger difference when cheating paying customers after having been given billions in subsidies by those same customers.
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having been given billions in subsidies by those same customers.
Oh no, you're wrong. That's money is from the government -- it's COMPLETELY different. (Sigh.....)
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sarcasm tag?
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Yeah, really. Government interference is bad! (unless it's government cash coming our way...)
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*Capitalists practice capitalism, use gimmicks to exploit paying customers
Almost threw in "loyal" but if I'm being entirely truthful that's probably not a common feature.
Interesting that you'd look to associate capitalism with gouged numbers and not the market value for goods/services. I thought that was The Point.
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But it is not free, we pay for it... The problem is their claim that is "free" internet ... "free" only for some services and under certain conditions.
Basically it is false advertising to make look they service "not bad" when you can get better deals elsewhere. It is also filtering other services, blocking then from growing. Both things are forbidden in most places, but as they are powerful, they try to get away with it
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Differences like "unlimited* (*see small print) and "data caps". Any company which uses unlimited can fuck right off.
We're beyond that now. Verizon now has 3 different levels of Unlimited. "Unlimited" means about as much as the "free" in Amazon Prime's "Free" 2-Day shipping.
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"Differences like "unlimited* (*see small print) and "data caps". Any company which uses unlimited can fuck right off. Not a single one of them are clean from abusing that "small print" clause.
I rather a company straight up says, "hey, you know what, you have a data cap, here's our plans, pick the best for you:"."
There is a grey area here. There are a lot of people who otherwise wouldn't have used the service up to the cap who will now that you've highlighted it. There are some providers with a fixed secret
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I think you meant that for guy above me. But honestly if you don't make six figures and still have issues finding the money for the hard drives it takes to store a few thousand blu-ray remuxes you probably aren't who is really being discussed.
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That depends entirely on the telecom.
If Telia or Tele2 says something is beneficial for me, I'll be skeptical. If Bahnhof says something is good for me as a consumer, odds are about 99.99% that I'll agree with them, since they have a history of going to court to try and protect consumers, and protest against other corps and government etc.
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Another simple Rule Fines do not change corporate behaviour, fines are just a cost of doing business, and the cost is simply put back onto consumers.
So STOP fining corporations.
INSTEAD, put senior management in prison for 5-10 years, perhaps more, bankrupt them, remove their right to run a business ever again. If some poor person getting caught with a joint 3 times can get 20 years, why should an executive who rips of millions of people not get the same. They claim they get paid so much because of the risk, well lets make that risk real.
WHEN and only WHEN this happens , will businesses change and become good citizens. Currently they scam their customers, scam the tax payers and get away scot free.
Bingo. It's called skin in the game. Currently most executives have little to none.
Yes I understand the point of an LLC or a corporation is limited liability. However that should be limited business liability - i.e. if you make bad business decisions, and the company goes bankrupt, you don't lose all of your property, i.e. beyond what you have invested in the company. If you break the law, you should pay for it...it's not abstract "corporations" that break the law, it's people that break the law - and peopl
Epicenter.works is an advocacy organization (Score:5, Insightful)
Epicenter.works is an advocacy organization, not a research organization. So this "study" may be a bit biased. They have an agenda to push.
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Epicenter.works is an advocacy organization, not a research organization. So this "study" may be a bit biased. They have an agenda to push.
"Our network consists of many people who volunteer for basic rights and freedoms in the digital age." - epicenter.works website
Given this bias, do you think they are interested in presenting information that would benefit the majority of people (which this study does) or a minority of people (which this study does not)?
Re:Epicenter.works is an advocacy organization (Score:5, Insightful)
Given this bias, do you think they are interested in presenting information that would benefit the majority of people
Absolutely not, they are interesting in presenting information that gets them the most funding, even if that is targeting a minority of people (which it is).
many people who volunteer for basic rights and freedoms in the digital age
Does not say majority to me.
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Why do you think their goal is to maximize funding? Isn't this a non-profit designed to change society?
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Why do you think their goal is to maximize funding? Isn't this a non-profit designed to change society?
Ha Ha ha, very funny.
See: Greenpeace.
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Given this bias, do you think they are interested in presenting information that would benefit the majority of people?
Given this bias, do you think they are open minded about what benefits the majority, or do think their minds are made up?
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Their study is public. You can read it and point out any problems you find.
An obvious problem is blaming the disparity on "zero-rating", instead of something more obvious like the wide difference in per capita GDP and infrastructure between the "haves" and the "have nots". The difference between Luxembourg and Montenegro (with a twelfth the median income) likely has other explanations.
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I said you can READ the study and point out problems you find, not make shit up. They explain their methodology. Hint: They didn't simply look for a correlation between zero rating and prices.
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Emphasis mine. They also start with an "intuitive assumption" of what they want to prove, trying to later call it "the hypothesis".
Combined with the use of stupid graphs (where the abscissa has NO logical basis) instead of tables, the claim in the summary that the rep
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Not questioning your conclusion, just how you got there. stupid graphs, calling something "the hypothesis" does not lead to a conclusion of false,
One proves nothing by using graphics that have no logical relation between how the points appear on them. An abscissa of "country" is meaningless. It is obvious for most of the graphs they sorted the x axis by the value on the y axis. Yes, the graph shows a nice smooth decline in some value on Y, but only because it was jiggered to show it that way. (I can prove global cooling if you allow me to use a graph where I sort the x axis by inverse average temperatures. A steady decline in average global temperatu
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The graphs where the countries are sorted by some value are of an informative nature. They show, for example, how many different offers with differential pricing ("zero rating") are available in the different countries.
I know what the "graphs" were showing. What you're describing, however, is properly conveyed by a "table", not a graph. A graph shows relationship between the Y value and the X value. "As X changes in a certain way, Y does this..." How is X changing in that graph? It's going from "biggest Y" to "smallest Y". That's useless. Did you really need to see a graph of that concept? You don't understand as a basic concept that when Y decreases, Y decreases? You need a graph to show that?
It's just a visual representation of a sorted list.
A visual representation of
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The point is not of causation or correlation. The point is that ISPs claim cheaper prices, when that isn't true.
That is not true. They don't claim cheaper prices. They claim that certain data does not count against any limits that apply to the plan you have. The PRICE stays the SAME no matter how much zero-rated data you use. That's the claim. That is a fact.
And yes, causation is required of you want to prove that zero-rating is costing people money.
They also claim that cheaper prices are due to zero rating,
No, they do not. The COSTS to a user can be lower if someone who has a limited data plan uses zero-rated sources instead of non-zero-rated ones, and the wireless compani
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The point is that ISPs claim cheaper prices, when that isn't true.
Actually no, the point is whether there's any causation.
The ISPs may actually be entirely correct, and zero rating may indeed reduce to average cost of service in those countries.
The higher cost when compared to other countries may be caused by other factors such as deployment costs, regulatory environment, global interconnects and the need to bribe the government.
So understanding the underlying cause is necessary for any honest assessment of the ISPs claims regarding the impact of zero rating on price.
Oh damn (Score:1)
Didn't even know that kind of shit existed. What a load of crap zero rating is.
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Zero rating can apply to any plan that has a set data limit which is not all that unique. It has nothing to do with paying a per/gb rate as most plans it applied to have a have set monthly allowance.
It's merely a system in which certain services will not be counted against your monthly data allowance so even if you have a 5 or 10gb plan you can still listen to Spotify 24hrs a day without having to worry.
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It's merely a system in which certain services will not be counted against your monthly data allowance
What's more important to know is that it does NOT restrict the rights of anyone to use whatever data source they wish, despite the oft-repeated claim in the paper. You are free to stream non-zero-rated data all you want. You get the same amount of non-zero-rated data for the same price whether you use any zero-rated data or none.
Everything is more expensive than free (Score:1)
This makes sense; carriers have an incentive to raise the costs of exploring alternatives in order to make their preferred, zero-rated choice of content more attractive.
However, once that incentive is removed, the wireless carrier no longer has a reason to raise the cost of alternatives because nothing is given special treatment. In short, zero rating practices cost you more money.
In short, data rates are approved by gov't agencies (at least in US), and this study appears to hold every other development, both political and technological, entirely equal across all EU countries examined. Is that really true? Is everyone of the 30 countries considered exactly equal except fo
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The quote tags were mis-placed, the first two lines are both quoted from the article:
This makes sense; carriers have an incentive to raise the costs of exploring alternatives in order to make their preferred, zero-rated choice of content more attractive. However, once that incentive is removed, the wireless carrier no longer has a reason to raise the cost of alternatives because nothing is given special treatment. In short, zero rating practices cost you more money.
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That's just stupid - is the claim that zero-rating doubles the cost of the data service?
That would be a moronic claim to make.
Report: "Poor people can't pay 2X for wireless and home Internet service, so they pay X and only get wireless."
You: "Does that mean wireless Internet costs 2X?!?!"
No, because they can't afford 2X. If it actually cost 2X, they wouldn't be able to buy it. So it costs X+(some amount).
What is the impact o zero-rating services, as discovered by this report? It doesn't say.
Golly, it's almost like Internet service costs different amounts in different countries within the EU, making any statement like "It costs 12.87 euros more" meaningless because nobody would
WTF is Zero Rating? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not all of us are communication nerds. Please define terms. Who is rating what at zero using what units?
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I think it means things like being able to access Facebook over 4G and it doesn't consume your dataplan.
Re:WTF is Zero Rating? (Score:5, Informative)
Zero rating is when a network provider generally meters data traffic, but exempts some traffic sources (applies a "zero rate" to that traffic). It's a net neutrality violation that some providers pinky swear is not a net neutrality violation.
Re: WTF is Zero Rating? (Score:1)
Why even use a connectoon with data limits?
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To do the math on how many people will be using social media 24/7 and how much data that sends.
Then to pice up a low data cap to extract the max profit over every generation of smartphone network tech.
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It means not charging customers for data to specific websites.
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When certain services don't count against your data limit.
Basically, running the network is a fixed cost. If they are giving away some services for free in order to poach customers from their competitors, it is logical that they are going to have to make that money back by charging more somewhere else.
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We have zero rating (Score:2)
If you're a Spark customer, you get zero rated Facebook access. Some other social media platforms too, I think.
With less than 5 million people and over 5000 cell towers though, considering the infrastructure per capita, I think we pay reasonable mobile data rates.
I pay $20 a month for 2.5GB of "rollover" data, unlimited txt messages and 300 minutes outbound calling (inbound is always free for everyone on every carrier. We live in a caller-pays country, which has made spam calls to cellphones almost non-exis
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The plan is cheap, but you're still being raked over the coals on data and voice rates. Though, "rollover data" isn't common and might make up the difference a little if they let you bank it indefinitely and not just for one extra month. Unless you plan to do most of your communication through Facebook though, as is obviously their intent, this is still a bad deal, just at a lower minimum buy-in than equivalent ripoff plans in the US.
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"rollover data" is common in NZ, and lasts for 12 months. I have 8GB stacked up right now. My phone is on wifi at home and work.
zero-rated data is relatively new and data prices are substantially cheaper than they used to be.
zero-rated data is also only offered by a few providers. Most don't. Mine doesn't.
My 300 minutes are outbound only, I have unlimited inbound minutes and unlimited outbound minutes to toll-free numbers.
We have a healthier competition here, where wholesale access to communications network
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The point is, without the zero-rated Facebook, they could offer maybe 3GB, 4GB or who knows, 10 GB for the same price, and most people would be better off.
Zero-rating should be banned.
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The other providers don't offer it. It's a differentiator for them.
The prices across all providers are similar. There are literally dozens of providers. They all try to offer something different to compete.
The one I chose is run by my ISP, they offer slightly cheaper monthly rates.
USA should put on their big boy undies and split up the monopolistic telcos. Forcing competitively priced wholesale access is not a bad thing.
You've got massive areas of your country where there is a single company that owns the i
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The other providers don't offer it. It's a differentiator for them.
That's the whole point. There shouldn't be any differentiation in carriers. They should be dumb pipes. Just like there is no differentiation when you buy stocks or a Brent oil barrel.
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That's how healthy competition develops. You have many companies all competing on a relatively level playing field for the same customer base.
There's no artificial geographic boundaries. There's no huge cost of entry to the market. There's no excessive wholesale charges to limit competition - the mobile network isn't regulated, but the 3 network operators know the Government will separate them like they did with the incumbent copper network provider if the Commerce Commission sees anti-competitive behaviour
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That's how healthy competition develops.
No. What you are describing is monopolistic competition.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Monopolistic competition is a type of imperfect competition such that many producers sell products that are differentiated from one another
the goal is to achieve perfect competition, where various competitors offers the same goods at the market price.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Add in a boost in fake news (Score:1)
Here in Brazil most data plans offer zero-rated Facebook and Whatsapp access. So, you can send/receive fake news all day long for free, but to check if they are true in some fact-checking site, you have to pay.
So simple math... (Score:2)
What if I only use zero rated services? (Score:2)
That internet becomes more expensive for generic use is a safe bet, but there will be people satisfied with the big business subsidised subset of the internet. In the words of EFF, you get an "inferior Internet" ... but you can get it cheaper.
By making the superior internet the only one you can buy, poor people lose something too. There are good arguments to make that decision on behalf of society, but lets not pretend there aren't any poor people becoming losers in this scenario.
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At the point that they have to basically pay you to use Facebook, and it is still only cost-effective if you literally do nothing else other than use Facebook for the rest of your life, you really have to re-evaluate whether using Facebook was actually supposed to be your penultimate goal.
It's common sense (Score:2)
It seems like common sense -- carriers are selling bandwidth at wholesale rates to large companies that provide "free" service, so they jack up the retail rates paid by consumers to compensate.
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Are you suggesting there's a moral equivalence between Facebook's marketing team and the business plan of hospitals to provide health care? Seriously, go fuck off.
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And the assertion that this is "bad" has some very interesting implications for those advocating free healthcare, free college, and enhanced welfare programs. Medicare, for example, increases the cost of non-medicare treatment. This is even true when paid for by a third party. For example, increased availability and size of student loans also increases tuition for all. If you're going to declare something as bad, you should at least attempt to be consistent about it, instead of arguing both for and against it, depending on what your party's platform tells you to embrace or reject.
Medicare is bad because it's not universal -- the USA should have single-payer healthcare, so everyone pays the same, we shouldn't end up in a situation where some people overpay because others underpay. Just let it all be paid by a single entity. Healthcare is not a good analogy since that market is so skewed by insurance companies. It's like having:
1. One class of cell phone users getting government paid call phones (well, they've paid for it all their life though paycheck deductions) They get only basic
Shitty title (Score:2)
The title implies a correlation between zero rating and high mobile costs. That could mean that higher costs encourage zero rating, or no causation exists. However, the title is a crappy summary that omits the key takeawy of the study. What the study shows is that making zero rating legal leads to higher prices than they otherwise would be. The actual study measures the change in cost when zero rating is made legal vs. the change in cost of neighboring EU countries where zero rating is not. While there
30 member countries EU (Score:2)
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Their best interests...as your best interests see it. Which inevitably means government largess to the masses.
There are other things, though.
Re:Not surprised by any of this (Score:5, Insightful)
I thought you guys were in favor of the free market? That's the entire point of NN - to allow a free market on the internet, rather than allowing the ISP oligopoly to decide winners and losers.
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I thought you guys were in favor of the free market? That's the entire point of NN - to allow a free market on the internet, rather than allowing the ISP oligopoly to decide winners and losers.
"Free Market" usually means a minimum amount (some people want zero) of government regulation. The purpose of Network Neutrality is to enforce a Fair Market, in which content providers compete with each other based on the value of their service instead of based on the abuse of ISPs' monopoly position.
Proponents of free-market capitalism either make no distinction between a Free Market and a Fair Market, or they assume, as an article of faith, that a Fair Market is an inevitable consequence of having a Fr
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Lets look at the dictionary definition, shall we?
free market /fr märkt/
Dictionary result for free market
noun: free market; plural noun: free markets; modifier noun: free-market
an economic system in which prices are determined by unrestricted competition between privately owned businesses.
Unrestricted competition requires competition - which requires the government to do something to prevent the formation of monopolies and oligopolies.
Now, I'd be willing to settle for the government just coming in and breaking up any company that took more than a tiny slice of any given market, but there's obviously no interest in doing that on either side of the aisle. So the question becomes, should we allow monopolies to leverage their power into additiona
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Having said that, I do agree with your conclusion. The best result from a market-based economy is when we have competition in a Fair Market, which is what you're saying you want, and I don't see h
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Where's this "fair market" term coming from? I can't even find any reference to it on Google.
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I think you may be redefining terms - what you describe as the distinction between a free market and a fair market sounds an awful lot like the distinction between an unregulated market and a free market.
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Re: Not surprised by any of this (Score:2)
Unrestricted competition requires competition - which requires the government to do something to prevent the formation of monopolies and oligopolies.
The problem is that in the USA (and in some other countries as well) government regulation has tended to encourage monopolies rather than discouraging them. They're not true monopolies in the sense that no one company has complete control of the entire market, but the barrier to entry has been raised to such absurd heights that the existing companies have no real fear of competition.
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That's where the term oligopoly comes in - a small handful of companies that control a market and conspire to reap the benefits of a monopoly.
As for the problem - I agree. Most regulations are required, in principle, as they are enacted as a direct response to abuses that already existed at the time. Sadly, when the companies being regulated can legally buy off the regulators (it's not a bribery if you call it lobbying and campaign contributions, right?) the regulations do tend to be sculpted to be as lax
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Man, I didn't even realize Hillary was running in the 90s!
Network neutrality has a much older pedigree than any one particular bill. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re:Not surprised by any of this (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm also thoroughly convinced it's an exercise in futility attempting to convince Trump supporters to stop voting against their own best interests.
If you want to change their votes, perhaps you could start by listening to their concerns, instead of telling them they are too stupid to vote properly. That is about the same as telling them they are deplorable, which, if you recall, wasn't a successful strategy.
The myth that Republicans vote against their own interests is based on two fallacies:
1. That they share your views about what their "best interests" are. They don't.
2. That poor states like Mississippi voted 100% Republican. Guess what? They didn't. Poor people in red states vote blue. It is the middle class where the Democrats lost.
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Non-white Poor people in red states vote blue
FTFY. And it's sill a minority of the poor people.
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Non-white Poor people in red states vote blue
FTFY. And it's sill a minority of the poor people.
There is a trick to getting one issue voters to vote for your party.
The best example I can think of is the evangelical anti-abortion people. For years you could rally them to your cause by proclaiming that you were anti-abortion and didn't believe in evolution. And while in recent years, the candidate wishing to offer succor to this group had to temper their anti evolution screeds to "Well, I'm not a scientist", because anti evolution is on the same plane as flat earth , chemtrails and moon landing fake
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Now seriously evangelicals, do you think that a man with the curriculum vitae of the present occupant is really anti-abortion?
It doesn't matter what his personal view are. All that matters is who he appoints to the Supreme Court.
So far, he has delivered to the evangelicals exactly what they want: Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh.
The couldn't be happier. Neil and Brett will be on the court for many decades.
The Senate is still Republican, and they may get another seat. RBG is 85. Stephen Breyer is 80.
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And for some reason you think this is suprising and outrageous?
I said no such thing, anger person!
For pro-lifers abortion is murder, and consequently, legal abortion is an ongoing Holocaust-scale genocide.
Well, anger person - I'm anti abortion as well. I'm not pro life because there are a whole lot of things that pro lifers are involved in that are just anti-sex.
Abstinence based sex education, which has introduced a lot of teens to anal sex. Opposition to a lifesaving HPV vaccine because it will somehow promote promiscuity. Yer idea is screwed.
I'm in favor of teenagers knowing about contraception, and being encouraged to use it if they plan on engaging in sexual activit
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I'm also thoroughly convinced it's an exercise in futility attempting to convince Trump supporters to stop voting against their own best interests.
If you want to change their votes, perhaps you could start by listening to their concerns, instead of telling them they are too stupid to vote properly.
Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn. I need to take you on a trip through my area. First off, we drive by a lot of 1960's era mobile homes in the country. with a washing machine, a refrigerator, and every car or truck the person ever bought, all structures and vehicles in an impressive state of decay. But they have a very nice 4 by 8 foot Trump Make America Great Again poster in the yard. Yet their earthly posessions remain more dilapidated, seems to be an employment problem as well. And they look worse o
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If you want to change their votes, perhaps you could start by listening to their concerns, instead of telling them they are too stupid to vote properly.
I get the feeling that most politicians of both are just listening to themselves these days.
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The myth that Republicans vote against their own interests is based on two fallacies:
Actually, I don't think they vote against their own interests for either of those reasons. I think they have and are being deliberately disinformed and propagandized via Fox News and living in social media bubbles. Many others are simply uninformed and vote like they have always voted. I don't think people who vote for Republicans are dumb at all, just mislead by opportunistic billionaires.
Re: Not surprised by any of this (Score:2)
I feel the same way about Hillary voters. I don't think they vote against their own interests for either of those reasons. I think they have and are being deliberately disinformed and propagandized via CNN, MSNBC, Huffpo, etc, and are living in social media bubbles. Many others are simply uninformed and vote like they have always voted. I don't think people who vote for Democrat are dumb at all, just mislead by opportunistic billionaires.
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I think they have and are being deliberately disinformed and propagandized via Fox News and living in social media bubbles.
This was very evident when a whole lot voted in politicians promising to end Obamacare, and turned out to be horrified when bits of it got the axe because they rather liked the Affordable Care Act and the insurance it got them.
I don't think people who vote for Republicans are dumb at all, just mislead by opportunistic billionaires.
There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again.
I don't know another word for when you constantly get bamboozled and either don't understand that it happened or believe that it won't happen again despite all the evidence to the contrary.
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If you want to change their votes, perhaps you could start by listening to their concerns, instead of telling them they are too stupid to vote properly.
The problem is, if the Democrats came out and said (for example) "Hey, we've been doing some soul searching and it turns out coal really isn't so bad", it would just appear to be disingenuous pandering to the Trump supporters, but would seriously piss off the environmentalists. The whole reason politics has become so polarized as of late is both sides are afraid of appearing "weak" to their base supporters, even if it costs them the ability to swing a few votes from the other side.
The myth that Republicans vote against their own interests is based on two fallacies:
1. That they share your views about what their "best interests" are. They don't.
If you support political
Re:Not surprised by any of this (Score:5, Insightful)
if their vote directly hurts them, which it often does, then it is voting against their best interests.
for example republicans vote to cut the 3 large saftey nets, which that group largely depend on.
Re: (Score:1)
Maybe those voters have a different idea of "their best interests" than you do.
Remember, "best" is always qualitative, there is no objective right or wrong answer to it. If their perception of what's "best" for them differs from yours, you have no real grounds to claim that your answer is "better" than theirs.
Re: (Score:2)
Remember, "best" is always qualitative,
That is not true. Comparing identical services from two different companies and deciding which to pick based on price is a quantitative "better". (Make it three companies and you can say "best".)
The word you are possibly looking for is "subjective", which is also not really true. The "best" in the example I just used is still objective.
"Best" becomes subjective when different weights are applied to different criteria, and the things being compared are not essentially identical in all ways.
If their perception of what's "best" for them differs from yours, you have no real grounds to claim that your answer is "better" than theirs.
That is the s
Re: (Score:2)
It really doesn't matter who you vote for at this point the lesser of two evils is still evil.
When faced with voting you cross your fingers and pick who ever you think will do the least amount of damage or you vote for some independent that has no chance and still isn't guaranteed not to mess everything up if by some miracle they did win.
No one has your best interests in mind all the time except you so if you always want to vote in your best interest you can just write yourself in.
Re: (Score:2)
in part, out of a need for agency and control over their own body. Perhaps I am being unfair, but every time I hear a parent complain about 'my kids learned cutting from XYZ and then kill themselves', I wonder just how abusive the parent was
That still doesn't justify voting FOR a Democrat.
Which is an implication considering the words that were used.
(I am not democrat or republican, so don't waste your time going down the route of me being a republican and bringing this up as an excuse to vote republican.)