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Comment by exelius | Hacker News Reader

To put it another way: if there weren’t government-granted monopolies, the wealthiest 10% would have 5 ISPs to choose from, the next 40% would have maybe 1 or 2, and the remaining 50% just wouldn’t have broadband service available at any price.

The goal with these rules is to make sure being wealthy isn’t a prerequisite to having access to communication services. If we didn’t have these rules, forget about broadband in poor neighborhoods (much less rural areas).

Edit: capitalism overall isn’t broken; but it is broken in some industries with unique market features (health care, telecom, etc). I don’t think it’s a contradiction at all to have some industries more or less socialized while maintaining a capitalist economy overall...

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That's certainly the justification that a lot of people use for these sorts of rules, monopoly grants, etc. etc.

As for me, I find it interesting that the most regulated industries always tend to be the ones that are the most dysfunctional. Your example of health care is a perfect poster child.

Because these markets are naturally rife for abuse; which is usually how they got regulated in the first place.

Health care needs to be more or less socialized — the sales pitch for any non-emergency medical procedure is effectively “pay me or stay sick / die”. There is no way to price discriminate that maximizes profits without introducing moral hazard by withholding treatment from people who can’t afford it.

I'm sensing a pattern here. Earlier, you basically said, "Guys, the free market can't be trusted to provide solutions for internet access, so we have to regulate them and grant monopolies. Oh crap, monopolies cause abuse of power. Also, please ignore the solution that the market came up with to all these problems (wireless Internet)."

Now you say, "Hey guys, allowing people to not be medically treated is immoral, so let's force people to provide a service because that is totally moral."

In both scenarios, you're trying to argue for something but you're not being consistent with your logic. You're picking and choosing data points and circumstances without being consistent across the board.

Why is that interesting? It's explained by the theories of both regulation proponents (industries that are dysfunctional get regulated) and opponents (industries that are regulated become dysfunctional). Therefore it wouldn't seem to have much informational value.

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