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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Alighieri who wrote (550817)	2/18/2010 9:40:14 AM
From: RetiredNow	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1586653

For costs to be contained, the industry has to be regulated, almost like a utility company... I definitely don't agree with this. When the FCC de-regulated the Telecommunications industry, we created an explosion of wealth in this country. That allowed the Internet to fully blossom into the ongoing wealth and technology juggernaut that it is today. Hell, most anyone can get unlimited, landline quality, phone service nationwide for $20 per month. That was unheard of just 15 years ago. Imagine if they did something similar for utility companies. What if we had a smart grid patterned on the Internet, with cheap distributed energy sources at the home level and 2-way transfers of electricity. That could unleash similar wealth generating forces as the Internet did. In fact, VCs in Silicon Valley believe that if this country went that route, the amount of wealth that could be generated would dwarf the Internet, because if there's one thing bigger than the Internet, it is the energy industry. Also, it would be a bonanza for networking companies, because they are already set up to create networks for the utilities. Anyway, 90% of the time, private industry simply does it better. The challenge for our government is to find innovative ways to set up the framework for competition that ensures a level playing field, and to resist the temptation to just do it themselves.