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Comment by OtterCoder | Hacker News Reader

This is brilliant. I recently wrote in to my senator about net neutrality. His reply was a breathtakingly convoluted justification of not regulating companies like Comcast because antitrust laws would take care of it. I've never felt so insulted.

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That’s an oxymoron... not regulating a company because anti trust..

Which senator was this?

Senator Lee, who happens to be on the Antitrust Subcommittee.

That is highly disappointing to hear.

You felt insulted because he has a different opinion to you? Or did he write something insulting in his reply?

You can count the number of companies that own all American media on one hand. How is it that anti-trust is "taking care of it" again?

Maybe he thinks more than one company is sufficient then? But that’s still just a civil difference of opinion! It’s not insulting to be disagreed with I’m afraid.

Except in the context he is speaking of, extremely few Americans have more than one company supplying them with Internet access. It is definitionally a monopoly, and to say existing anti-trust legislation is sufficient is saying the monopolies as they exist now are acceptable and nothing needs to be done.

It is a dismissive comment from the senator, he should feel insulted. It is like saying "help I'm bleeding" and the guy next to you saying "its not that bad, get over yourself".

or him saying “it’s ok, wait a little longer and a hearse will come help.”

I'm not so sure monopoly captures the root of the internet access problem. Yes, in many markets there is a single provider (e.g., Comcast). There are other providers (e.g., Verizon). But neither enters the other's markets.

I'm not suggesting their is a spoken conspiracy. But when neither side benefits from direct competition, what's the word for that?

Trust, in the business sense of the word.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trust_(business)

In the days of Rockefeller, these things were a little more formal. Nowadays companies know better than to put such silent agreements in writing.

It is when the "disagreement" is not only flat out wrong, but condescendingly so.

It's insulting when people say something you both know is stupid but they act like they're just making a civil good-faith argument. Kind of like what you're doing.

"breathtakingly" convoluted. Click bait alert level 100.

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