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Comment by jaysoo | Hacker News Reader

If this was socialism then either the government or the public would own Bell/Rogers/Telus.

This is also not free-market capitalism. I'm not sure what you would call it.

This is called Oligopoly http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligopoly in half-assed capitalism. Note that this can be worse than monopoly because few competitors can essentially create informal cartels.

If there is an Oligopoly, then how has this occurred? What entity is there providing the conditions for the Oligopoly to exist and persist? If there were not government interference via the CRTC we would have open competition. But we don't because the CRTC is there. And they have the power to make sure that no real competition can take hold. Where does this lead us? Straight back to corporatism (the government and corporations are in bed together) - Let's not use the term capitalism anywhere in this context.

Yup. What frequently happens is that companies in an Oligopoly are able to collude to raise the barriers of entry, keeping out new competitors: sometimes with "help" of government regulations, sometimes because of lack of government regulation. As long as there are only a couple of them (< 4 controlling > 80 percent of the industry), they can keep prices artificially higher than they need to be.

When there's no actual competition and little threat of new competitors entering the market, their incentive to innovate or become more efficient is diminished. Consumers end up paying too much for mediocre goods/services.

"Regulation of natural monopolies." Wikipedia goes into it better than I can: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly#Regulation

Corporatism.

Regulatory capture?

Tyranny? ;)

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