> Are these monopoly schemes that are "enforced" by the government actually > hatched by the corporation to whom the government has capitulated? In other > words, in the county where I live, Cox has the monopoly. Was the concept of > providing a monopoly to some entity solely the idea of my local government, > or were corporations pushing the concept upon the government through their > lobbyists and political donations, with Cox managing to come out on top?
Who knows which came first, but the scmucks at the local level bought into the flawed idea that only way anyone could get cable is if they gave the cableco a monpoly to recoup the costs of laying the cable. The infrastructure has long been installed and costs long ago recovered, but even now, as in the case in Monkey County MD, you can sell cable services only if the powers that be magnanimously deign to allow you to do so, as was the case with Verizon. And Comcast fought them every step of the way to maintain their stranglehold. (Which led to one corrupt and/or dunderheaded council member in to pronounce that "competition doesn't work" a whole *3 months* (!) after Verizon was granted permission to compete, because Verizon only managed to wire a couple thousand homes in that time.) ************************************************************************* ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *************************************************************************
