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Technology Stocks : AUTOHOME, Inc

ATHM 23.27

+0.8%

Dec 30 3:59 PM EST

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To: ERM who wrote (2931)	10/23/1998 11:14:00 PM
From: ahhaha	Read Replies (3) of 29970

Most "must-carry" rules are unconstitutional. No one has challenged them because it would cost more than it was worth. This is changing rapidly. It's the old problem: I know what's best for you. The problem is regulation to stimulate innovation vs regulation to constrain the growth of wealth. There isn't a legislator who believes that all that legislation isn't achieving the end of competitive markets, yet that is exactly what isn't happening. The cable tv market is a good example. In a given geographical contiguous area there is a designated cable operator which owns or operates a collection of cable systems within that area. No other operator may enter to compete. You are stuck with one operator and government fixes the rate. This archaic system of protected territories was what the cable companies demanded as a quid pro quo for having government fix prices. The government calls this arrangement, "free market". It is a total disaster as anyone can tell you from the quality of service received and the ever upward ratcheting of price. The people like this arrangement because they feel they are being protected from profiteering cable companies. They don't seem to understand that unfettered free market capitalism invents its own competition. As long as the current regime is in place, the situation has deteriorated and it's why TCI has such a giant debt burden. Such consequences are always the outcome of socialism or of social overriding of economic decisions. It is part of the Populist movement of the turn of the century and it always feeds on ignorance. It is the weak, poor, and ignorant that suffer the most from this mistaken attempt to do good. We are fortunate that foreign countries almost always copy our trends. They imitate and they get the disasters that follow the institutionalization of fairness. For a brief period the Japanese practiced to the greatest extent ever experienced free market capitalism. The world's wealth moved to Japan. Then Japan got protectionist, raised taxes, encouraged misallocation of resources and they have the results of their bowing to socialism. As long as the rest of the world continues to shoot themselves in the foot, we can get away with our bowing to indolence and worship of incompetence. We can feel free to make poor decisions because it's someone else's money. We can have the junk technological society that we have today. Nothing is reliable. What does the world want to steal? Another copy of WINxxx. Someone a year ago told me that the controlled cable tv market was the only fair way. His argument was along the lines of guarantees for capital outlay. The MSOs were entitled to have protection to ensure recapture of that outlay. Sounds like university concepts of free market capitalism and risk taking. You take the risk, I'll take the benefit and have you jailed for profiteering. We have a reincarnation of the cable tv spirit in the cable modem body. It needs to be exorcised. ATT is preparing to do exactly that.

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