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To: E. Davies who wrote (3402)	12/16/1998 12:01:00 AM
From: ahhaha	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 29970

Touche. The government created the anti-competitive cable TV monster by their zeal to ensure fairness, and so doing created an environment that has them up a tree. The government did this to ensure a competitive market. There is no one in the world who can claim to the slightest degree that cable tv is competitive. That's exactly what happens when you try to legislate reality. The reality has a way of coming back to bite. The history of regulation in this country has been that the regulators find an even more absurd and ridiculous crazy quilt of judgements to preserve what they think is "fair" and, most importantly, enable them to save face from the effects of the disastrous previous decisions. This charade can go on just so long before some big company's existence is threatened. Then, the big company is forced to challenge the nonsense in court that they and others let slide for co-option and expediency of the short run. TCI is especially guilty of this. They almost went bust. TCI's leadership is heralded as exemplary of a well-managed company, but their management went along with the government imposed fairness regime and ended up discovering they couldn't make a profitable decision. What did the public get? Shabby service and rates that only increased. When companies become so distorted by the treacherous footing of the crazy quilt that they are making self-destructive decisions, how is it that anyone can consider what government does is constructive? The irony is that the people like the protection, but they don't like TCI. The RBOCs are in the same boat. Their attitude has been nothing short of war. They refuse to comply. Well, why doesn't the FCC call out federal troops and have them run the telcos? The answer is that their power is bullshit. They don't have any power. They only have what we the people give them. This isn't a dictatorship yet, so the RBOCs say, "you've got your ruling, now you enforce it". They can't. If they tried, the people would end up with no phone service. That means lots of wrongful death. So the FCC is playing tit-for-tat. If the RBOCs don't do what is commanded, they won't get the boons government bestows to its obedient lackeys. The FCC thinks they've got time on their side, but time is moving in the de facto direction of laissez-faire, with or without the FCC Luddites. New technologies are emerging that trivially bust FCC rulings. In the final analysis time will force the FCC to declare all communications are illegal. Do you see why I say they can do NOTHING!