<story><title>Everything that is wrong with American capitalism, in one headline</title><url>http://blog.rongarret.info/2014/04/everything-that-is-wrong-with-american.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jpadkins</author><text>and the reason you don&amp;#x27;t have the option to switch to another service provider is your state and local governments granting comcast, et al local monopolies.&lt;p&gt;Please direct criticism to the proper source: government interference.</text></item><item><author>lisper</author><text>&amp;gt; If I sell someone else my paper delivery route, is that an indictment of American capitalism?&lt;p&gt;It is if your customers don&amp;#x27;t have the option to switch to another paper.</text></item><item><author>rayiner</author><text>Service businesses spin off and absorb blocks of customers all the time. If I sell someone else my paper delivery route, is that an indictment of American capitalism?&lt;p&gt;Really, the title should be &amp;quot;everything that&amp;#x27;s wrong with state and local politics in one headline.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;If you want to blame someone for the situation in &amp;quot;such cities as Long Beach, Malibu&amp;quot; (that often, there&amp;#x27;s only one guy delivering papers), start here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cpuc.ca.gov/PUC/Telco/Information+for+providing+service/videofranchising.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.cpuc.ca.gov&amp;#x2F;PUC&amp;#x2F;Telco&amp;#x2F;Information+for+providing+s...&lt;/a&gt;. The state of California grants cable franchises,[1] and not with just an eye towards creating competition. Read the four bullet points on that page. Only the first has to do with competition. The other three are priorities that necessitate policies that discourage investment and competition.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mullingitover</author><text>&amp;gt; and the reason you don&amp;#x27;t have the option to switch to another service provider is your state and local governments granting comcast, et al local monopolies.&lt;p&gt;The real reason is the FCC doesn&amp;#x27;t require the infrastructure businesses to sell wholesale access to competitors. Once upon a time, Comcast et al would&amp;#x27;ve leased you the line, but you would&amp;#x27;ve had choice in your ISP service. A stroke of the pen eliminated all serious competition in the ISP game, and made it so Comcast owns the entertainment pipeline all the way from movie studio lot to your internet connection.&lt;p&gt;Odd that the studios aren&amp;#x27;t allowed to own movie theaters [1], but they&amp;#x27;re heading straight for the same end result by controlling your internet access.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pictures,_Inc&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;United_States_v._Paramount_Pict...&lt;/a&gt;.</text></comment>
<story><title>Everything that is wrong with American capitalism, in one headline</title><url>http://blog.rongarret.info/2014/04/everything-that-is-wrong-with-american.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jpadkins</author><text>and the reason you don&amp;#x27;t have the option to switch to another service provider is your state and local governments granting comcast, et al local monopolies.&lt;p&gt;Please direct criticism to the proper source: government interference.</text></item><item><author>lisper</author><text>&amp;gt; If I sell someone else my paper delivery route, is that an indictment of American capitalism?&lt;p&gt;It is if your customers don&amp;#x27;t have the option to switch to another paper.</text></item><item><author>rayiner</author><text>Service businesses spin off and absorb blocks of customers all the time. If I sell someone else my paper delivery route, is that an indictment of American capitalism?&lt;p&gt;Really, the title should be &amp;quot;everything that&amp;#x27;s wrong with state and local politics in one headline.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;If you want to blame someone for the situation in &amp;quot;such cities as Long Beach, Malibu&amp;quot; (that often, there&amp;#x27;s only one guy delivering papers), start here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cpuc.ca.gov/PUC/Telco/Information+for+providing+service/videofranchising.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.cpuc.ca.gov&amp;#x2F;PUC&amp;#x2F;Telco&amp;#x2F;Information+for+providing+s...&lt;/a&gt;. The state of California grants cable franchises,[1] and not with just an eye towards creating competition. Read the four bullet points on that page. Only the first has to do with competition. The other three are priorities that necessitate policies that discourage investment and competition.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>exelius</author><text>No, the reason you don&amp;#x27;t have an option to switch to another service provider is that running a wireline provider is really expensive. Building one is even more expensive: you literally have to run cables to every household in a city thanks to the FCC&amp;#x27;s equal access laws (i.e. you can&amp;#x27;t ignore the poor parts of town when providing service). Each household probably has a fully-loaded cost of around $1000 (this includes switches, routers, a few thousand miles of cable, teams of guys in trucks to run the cable across the poles, etc), so for a small city of 500k households (~1 million people), you&amp;#x27;re looking at a ballpark of $500 million.&lt;p&gt;Even if the regulation allowed you to start your own cable company, what investor in their right mind would put up the money to do so? Trying to VC pitch a startup ISP would be the worst pitch ever. &amp;quot;Why am I going to give you a billion dollars for a 10% margin business that you&amp;#x27;re not even guaranteed to be successful in?&amp;quot;</text></comment>