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Technology Stocks : Compaq
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To: Maxer who wrote (25867)5/8/1998 12:08:00 PM
From: rudedog  Read Replies (1) of 97611
 
Good example on tel-com, but I think that is really the government getting out of the way. There are lots of people who think that market forces would have driven the telephone standards the way they drove electrical standards. There was no regulation of standards for electrical generation, distribution or even what the electric plugs looked like. Small enclaves of different standards existed successfully (the diamond district in NYC had 48V DC power as a standard as recently as 1990, and 50 cycle 208V AC still exists here and there). What drove the standards was the need to generate volume in the appliance and tool business. Those people defined the plug standards, proposed 110 VAC as the 'preferred' power source, etc. There was never a need to create or manage a monopoly in that industry, and I would argue that the Telephone company was the same way. The protection of the telephone monopoly is in my mind a good example of how government actually suppressed competition (and I know that a number of government folks benefited handsomely out of the deal). When I was a child it cost me $7 a minute to call my aunt in Hawaii, the equivalent of about $100 a minute today. I can make that call now for 5 cents a minute. Does anyone really think that kind of price gouging was justified to pay for the infrastructure? Uncle Sam's record of protecting the common man is not good.
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