SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
posted by
Fnord666
on Friday July 27 2018, @06:41AM
from the revoke-every-politician-in-office dept.
from the revoke-every-politician-in-office dept.
Submitted via IRC for AndyTheAbsurd
New York State and the nation's second biggest cable provider (Charter Spectrum) aren't getting along particularly well. Early last year, Charter Spectrum was sued by New York State for selling broadband speeds the company knew it couldn't deliver. According to the original complaint (pdf), Charter routinely misled consumers, refused to seriously upgrade its networks, and manipulated a system the FCC used to determine whether the company was delivering advertised broadband speeds to the company's subscribers (it wasn't). Charter has tried to use the FCC's net neutrality repeal to claim that states can't hold it accountable for terrible service, but that hasn't been going particularly well.
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
New York State Threatens To Revoke Charter's Cable Franchise For Bullshitting
|
Log In/Create an Account
| Top
| 19 comments
| Search Discussion
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
F.S. Fitzgerald to Hemingway:
"Ernest, the rich are different from us."
Hemingway:
"Yes. They have more money."
(Score: 4, Informative) by Immerman on Friday July 27 2018, @02:07PM (2 children)
You have an idealistic view of how natural monopolies work. What actually happens when somebody builds a competing plant is that the monopoly lowers their prices, even selling at a substantial loss (subsidized by all those excess profits from years past), until the competitors are driven out of business, and their investors lose their shirts. After that happens once or twice, people stop investing in building competition. Happens all the time - that's how China has cornered the market on a lot of rare earth mining for example.
Resellers refuse to buy the ultra-cheap bulbs? Firstly, you need unanimous market collusion to pull that off - all it takes is one reseller breaking ranks and they can get a huge advantage over their fellows. And even if you can manage complete collusion - you've just opened the door for the monopolist to get a strong foothold in the reseller business, and now they have a vertical monopoly as well, and your reselling business is facing an existential threat.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 27 2018, @02:26PM (1 child)
> You have an idealistic view of how natural monopolies work.
I think this would be more correct if it read:
"You have an idealistic view of how normal monopolies work."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly [wikipedia.org] [example is utilities]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly [wikipedia.org]
For example, even with their first mover advantage, General Electric (USA) was never the only maker of light bulbs, I seem to remember Sylvania bulbs being widely available when I was a young kid (early 60s).
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday July 27 2018, @02:56PM
Fair enough. I'd actually drop the "normal" as well.