i'm supposed to be mad at teksavvy, but i'm seeing through it and am
pissed at cogeco - double for trying to get me pissed at teksavvy.
basically,
cogeco just didn't respond to the request for a hookup. so i got stuck
at the end of the queue. this has been happening to other people. it's a
conscious attempt by the companies that own the lines to coerce
customers back into their arms.
the telecommunications
situation in canada is pretty awful and i think just about everybody
realizes it. the predictable response is for greater markets. more
competition. well, if it wasn't for these other companies, i wouldn't be
getting a better deal, right? i'd be stuck overpaying cogeco for shitty
access, right? hooray for markets, right? let's open it up further.
more competition will bring the price down...
ugh. idiots.
i
think we can all agree that the problem is the oligopoly that exists,
but what seems to fly over people's heads is that the problem is rooted
in private ownership of the lines. you can open up the market forever,
create infinitely many service providers, but if the lines remain under
the ownership of a single company then there's nothing that can be done
to resolve the price gouging. the infrastructure is inherently
monopolistic.
i don't need to go very far left to get a
reasonable answer. none other than that paragon of liberal free market
theory, adam smith, was well aware that some services cannot operate
under a market. forget about whether or not markets work (of course,
they don't). markets in certain things are impossible. roads, for
example. liberals once included power generation and phone lines in this
list. you can add cable lines in. there's going to be a monopoly,
whether market fundamentalists like it or not. the choice is between a
public and a private monopoly.
we should really be
thinking of cable lines the same way we think of roads. they should be
publicly owned and administered through taxation. this would actually
succeed in bringing the price down by cutting out the profit motive.
so, i'm hereby calling for the nationalization of the cable system.
