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Re:Cato Institute: The Case Against Net Neutrality by zdw on Thursday December 23, 2010 @01:15AM (#2033696)
Exactly - everywhere there's a natural monopoly, it should be regulated into being a common carrier, when possible.

This allows innovation to flourish on top of a commodity service - fundamentally, the only thing that this kind of provider offers is the last mile, just like the water or electric company.

Re:Cato Institute: The Case Against Net Neutrality by jpadkins on Thursday December 23, 2010 @07:33AM (#2034238)
Can you give examples of natural monopolies?

The only ones I can think of government granted (including US broadband, because of the local city/muni exclusive contracts purchased).

Re:Cato Institute: The Case Against Net Neutrality by zdw on Thursday December 23, 2010 @10:15AM (#2034580)
See here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly

Personally, I think their definition is a bit broad - I tend to think of natural monopolies are where the universe's physical limitations cause obvious problems either physical or practical for competition.

For example, in a totally libertarian society where you would pay a toll to drive on any road, you wouldn't want hundreds of companies trying to making their own roads between points A and B - it wouldn't be an efficient use of space, and just imagine that turnpike.

Still, someone needs to manage the road to your house, power/cable/telephone/etc. thus the government manages the companies that manage that service.

The reason that these monopolies are "natural" is that there's a physical limitation involved - it just also happens to be codified with a contractual agreement.