Comment by cannonedhamster | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cannonedhamster | Hacker News Reader

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cannonedhamster

Really? What competition is there in the U.S. cellular market? MVNOs are beholden to whomever they buy from. T-Mobile, Sprint, AT&T, Verizon. That's 4 carriers total.

Definition of oligopoly: Oligopoly is a market structure with a small number of firms, none of which can keep the others from having significant influence.

I can literally buy a SIM card in Europe for my phone that gives me 5 times my monthly usage for less than what I pay for a single month.The market is absolutely harmed by the lack of competition and we did it to ourselves by selling off the public spectrum and paying for the privilege to do so. The Republican party is the most anti-American party that exists in the US and they used the willingness of the religious right to follow whatever lip service they get paid to the ballot box.

Democrats are pretty terrible too, but mostly because they are naive, unwilling to get their hands dirty, and try to play by rules that are only used by them. You don't win a war with flowery words and kind gestures. You win it by eliminating your enemy and taking away any ability by them to continue the fight.

> Democrats are pretty terrible too, but mostly because they are naive, unwilling to get their hands dirty, and try to play by rules that are only used by them.

The Senate best represents the "party elders" while presidential administrations come and go. And judicial nominations are a major responsibility of the Senate.

They used to be largely pro-forma: as long as the nominee had a decent judicial record, the party in power was allowed to nominate whoever they wanted. Democrats started scorched Earth tactics back with Justice Bork back in '87; attacking his character and slandering him rather than challenging his competence.

Seeing that Alberto Gonzalez was likely to be a Hispanic Republican SCOTUS nominee, they wanted his career ended, and the hearings were so vicious his wife miscarried.

And this has gone off the rails finally with Kavanaugh. Regardless of the truth of Blasey's accusations, it is irrefutable that Democrats sat on them until the last minute, releasing the accusations to delay the nomination until they could retake the Senate.

This was using a criminal accusation, and the human being who was potentially a victim of rape, as a weapon to further their political ends. This represents the deepest and most inhuman disregard possible for the rule of law and justice.

All the while, Democratic nominations continue to either go through, or they have been denied by procedure, which was always the rule and the entire point of having elections. At no point have Democratic judicial nominees been removed by slander that would itself be a crime in any other context.

Verizon, ATT, TMobile, and Sprint compete pretty heavily to get people to switch. If they didn't you wouldn't see as many advertisements or commercials.

Attacking each other on hidden fees to prevent robot spam would be a major selling point, especially since it's so front of mind for so many people.

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