Hi Mike,
Yeah, the Internet and Industrial Revolution piece. It is interesting to see that the telecom stock crash we are seeing today was completely paralleled by the canal company crash of 1810. Too many competitors in a new sector, all chasing too few customers, with large amounts of speculative capital burned up in ventures that never even turned a spade.
I suppose it's unfair to comment on the purpose of that post, it was to sort of gain a sense of how much humbling Mr. M. Winn felt about his GSTRF comeuppance. Apparently none, judging by his vociferous cheerleading for the Internet in a reply. If only I could be such a blind optimist. Hehe.
As far as the government's attempts to create competition, we will agree to disagree. The RBOCs are monopolists, intransigent welfare queens, obstructionists and adamantly opposed to innovation. They are in short, the sort of status quo dinosaurs that cannot be dislodged except by extraordinary measures. Every scrap of evidence I have suggests that they are loathe to install DSL services except where it serves to kill off competition. The rest is lip service, just like in my region. So, the conundrum is this, we know that the ILECs want no change at all, and yet we consumers want dramatic change. I can't see how you can reconcile yourself to allowing for a market solution, as opposed to the government's noble experiment in the '96 Telecom Act, when you can see (I hope) as plainly as I can, that the RBOCs, left to their own devices would simply put off the future as long as possible and stifle all competition for the sake of monopoly control and a bureaucratic intransigence to innovation. I'm rather surprised that you think "markets", left to their own devices, can solve anything. Markets, left to their own devices, are far more prone to run amok (as most spectacularly and recently exposed in the California energy situation) than they ever are to achieving stable, evolutionary change for the better, let alone a revolutionary break from the past.
Best, Ray |
