News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Want to rescue rural America? Bust monopolies by enraged_camel on Sunday April 23, 2017 @03:13PM (#14179855)
Don't let perfect be the enemy of good.

Yes, regulations aren't perfect. Yes, regulatory capture is a problem. Neither of those things is a reason to not have regulations.

>>that corrupting it with noise will have negligable effect on efficiency and technological development

What really hurts efficiency and technological development is monopolies. A company that is a monopoly has very little reason to innovate. We see this all over America with Internet Service Providers. They only improve their service levels if they fear competition (like what happened with Google Fiber).

Re:Want to rescue rural America? Bust monopolies by nebabyte on Monday April 24, 2017 @12:15AM (#14181954)
He's not arguing for perfect, he's arguing for sustainable.

No system of regulations you build won't eventually be corrupted because (exactly as he says) there exists no neutral desireless arbiters in our world to enforce them.

No system of regulations you build WON'T get you back here eventually. [0]

[0] https://youtube.com/watch?v=2It2HRGGtCk

Re:Want to rescue rural America? Bust monopolies by enraged_camel on Monday April 24, 2017 @12:35AM (#14182015)
>>No system of regulations you build won't eventually be corrupted because (exactly as he says) there exists no neutral desireless arbiters in our world to enforce them.

I don't believe that. Al Capone was notorious for bribing the police and the judges, or intimidating them and their families if bribery failed, to the point where many people thought he was invincible. That turned out to be incorrect:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Untouchables_(law_enforcement)

There exist people in the world with strong moral standards and fearless attitudes. We just need to identify them and put them in the right positions.

Re:Want to rescue rural America? Bust monopolies by flyingfences on Monday April 24, 2017 @08:50AM (#14183864)
> We just need to identify them and put them in the right positions.

Such an approach hinges on the presumption that the people doing the identifying and appointing are also virtuous and non-corruptible. Any attempt at a guarantee of the neutrality of the arbiters and enforcers will quickly descend into a Seussian "who's watching the watch watchers?" scenario.

Re:Want to rescue rural America? Bust monopolies by enraged_camel on Monday April 24, 2017 @01:18PM (#14186083)
I'm not saying it would be easy. I'm just saying Eliot Ness's example proved that it's possible, even in an environment rife with corruption (Prohibition-era Chicago).
Re:Want to rescue rural America? Bust monopolies by flyingfences on Monday April 24, 2017 @02:02PM (#14186466)
Frankly, I don't see Ness & Friends as paragons of virtue. Sure, they were effective at upholding the law, but I don't see the law as at all just. I just can't look at people who relentlessly upheld prohibition and say "I want more of those in my government". Sure, Capone was a crooked crook, but the government was not any better in that case.
Re:Want to rescue rural America? Bust monopolies by TeMPOraL on Monday April 24, 2017 @03:05AM (#14182424)
The same applies to markets too. In general, no static human-made system won't eventually be corrupted if some humans stand to gain from that corruption. Corruption needs to be fought actively and continuously.

--

On a tangent, I don't believe regulation-free markets are even possible; power and money are inherently connected (money itself being a form of power), so you'll always have "money in politics", and if governments were to suddenly disappear, then private actors with money would start performing their functions.

Re:Want to rescue rural America? Bust monopolies by CuriouslyC on Monday April 24, 2017 @08:53PM (#14189895)
This isn't true, if you make regulation a democratic process then the only way to influence the arbiter (assuming laws against propaganda) is via the public good, which was the whole point all along.
Re:Want to rescue rural America? Bust monopolies by valuearb on Sunday April 23, 2017 @03:35PM (#14179987)
ISPs is an anecdote, economies of scale in most business means products are much cheaper if provided by large companies, so where is the cutoff between "monopolies" and simple economies of scale?

The author claims 6 seed companies are worse than hundreds of seed companies, but doesn't give a single fact to support that claim.

Re:Want to rescue rural America? Bust monopolies by shkkmo on Sunday April 23, 2017 @07:14PM (#14180962)
> so where is the cutoff between "monopolies" and simple economies of scale?

If a market is closed to new entrants purely because the economies of scale make the established players products cheaper, then that is one thing.

That is rarely the case. Usually, as described here, there are also deliberate attempts by the established players to exclude new entrants via other means.

"The primary supplier of syringes, which controlled 80 percent of the market, structured an arrangement with a vast network of hospitals that essentially closed our industry to new firms for good."

> The author claims 6 seed companies are worse than hundreds of seed companies, but doesn't give a single fact to support that claim.

Yes, he does:

"The result is that the farmer’s share of each retail dollar of food has been collapsing, while consumers pay either the same or higher prices. Mega-corporations in the middle exploit their dominant market positions to reap all the profits."

Re:Want to rescue rural America? Bust monopolies by eberkund on Sunday April 23, 2017 @04:16PM (#14180231)
You bring up an important point. I have thought about this issue a lot.

For ISPs the problem is that companies tend to expand. So where 20 years ago an ISP might have been a small regional provider. Things have consolidated and expanded so now that same company owns almost the entire infrastructure and many other services that depend on it. They can also bundle services together to make it harder for a new competitor to enter.

Re:Want to rescue rural America? Bust monopolies by nebabyte on Monday April 24, 2017 @12:22AM (#14181978)
> For ISPs the problem is that companies tend to expand.

Not cooperatives. Co-ops tend to focus on their region, and have neither a reason to push into other territories, nor usually the foothold to do so as easily as in their own region.

"Farming out" your lines to outsiders then deciding that you don't want further construction efforts because 'the cables are already there' - effectively giving them a monopoly over your region - is what got us into this mess in the first place.

Re:Want to rescue rural America? Bust monopolies by CuriouslyC on Monday April 24, 2017 @08:57PM (#14189911)
Extremely strong economies of scale are probably the single biggest argument for government monopolies in my opinion. That being said, governments are horrible at providing end-user level service, so it would make sense for them to lease out capacity to private firms who service end users.