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Politics : Don't Blame Me, I Voted For Kerry -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Cogito who wrote (78805)	8/2/2006 11:53:45 PM
From: 10K a day	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 81568

u r obviously not in business

To: Cogito who wrote (78805)	8/3/2006 10:30:20 AM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 81568

Some people seem to think that it's always a bad idea for government to regulate businesses. I don't agree Some perhaps, but very few. Anarcho capitalists are probably a fraction of 1% of the population. Perhaps not even a large fraction of 1%. A much bigger group thinks that its often a bad idea for government to heavily regulated business. "Often" isn't "always", and "heavily regulate" isn't the same as having any regulation at all. How about that? The free market solution was less efficient than the "socialist" one. I'm not an expert on cell phones. I don't know enough to really respond to your specific example without spending some time researching it, and I don't want to spend that time now. Although I don't know that your statements are correct, I won't try to argue that they are not. If anyone here really is an expert on cell phone technologies, infrastructure and economics, I'd appreciate your input. Assuming that you are correct that's one example. Yes I'm sure you could come up with others, but I submit that there are far more examples where the market allocates resources more efficiently. Even in the setting of standards, having it decided by government can lead to inferior standards being locked in, or can lead to political battles that last longer than the market would take to sort out a good solution. Also note that it wasn't the government who created GSM or other solutions like CDMA and TDMA. And while GSM might be superior to TDMA, that doesn't mean that it was selected for that reason. Frequently political standards are set to help whoever has the most political influence. If the best standard had the most political influence and won because of that reason than Europe was just lucky. Governments aren't the only groups that can set standards. Frequently de facto standards emerge through market competition. Would we have been better off if the government enforced a standard computer architecture or instruction set? I don't think so. Also frequently more than one standard can be as good as just one. There are exceptions. Rail gages, plug voltages, maybe you would argue cell phone standards. In these cases a standard could be set by agreements with companies, by a standard setting body, or by the government. But even if its government the government doesn't require an extensive set of regulations. It announces the standard, but as long as devices work with the standard they can be implemented in different ways, they can cost whatever the market will bear.