Jurisdiction? Local franchises must delimit their business activities to their designated jurisdictions? Who determines the boundaries of a jurisdiction? "A franchising authority...may not unreasonably refuse to award an additional competitive franchise." Who determines what is unreasonable? Who determines what is competitive?
The answer to all of the above is either far-removed government or local government, never the companies. So it is not even remotely connected to the concept of free market. It is a government determined, controlled, delimited, fixed, non-competitive, pseudo business arena. It is not possible to conduct business when the conditions of operation are set by parties only vaguely knowledgeable about the critical elements of running a profitable business. I would call this arrangement the quintessence of anti-competitive rule making. This isn't the purpose of regulation. This defeats constructive regulation, since no one need comply. That is the circumstance with the local cable operator here. I will be investigating why they preclude the possibility of other market entrants, but as I said earlier, they can easily hide within the provisions of this sub-chapter.
This is exactly the point I've been making. When you write a body of rules whose secret effect is to misallocate resources in the market by selecting arbitrary criteria to determine price, supply, and demand, you enable an environment to evolve that specifically allows navigating around the intent of the rule. It provides an incentive to evade the law and to use the written word as a pretext to avoid competition. It is like locking your car doors in Mexico City. Thieves won't bother to case your car if you don't, but if you do, on returning you will be lucky to find the engine still there. |
