Edit - Meta Stack Exchange

You are not logged in. Your edit will be placed in a queue until it is peer reviewed.

We welcome edits that make the post easier to understand and more valuable for readers. Because community members review edits, please try to make the post substantially better than how you found it, for example, by fixing grammar or adding additional resources and hyperlinks.

Rev

5

Be careful about anthropomorphizing "government"; leads to some really bizarre analogies. The actual history here, as you know, is bizarre enough. That said, real competition would be infinitely better than a handful of weakly-enforced rules... The danger right now is that we can quite easily end up with neither!
– Shog9
Commented Jul 2, 2017 at 16:42
2

@Shog9 I don't know. As a whole, if you averaged all of our government and distilled it down, I think you'd end up with a pretty solid picture of an incompetent person gathering power around himself, while thinking he's doing the rest of humanity a big favor by doing so.
– Jerbot
Commented Jul 2, 2017 at 16:49
3

Whether or not that's the case, that isn't what we have in practice. We don't drink a homogeneous "Gov't milkshake"; we get different people doing different things at different times. Hence the massively inconsistent approach to telecom over the past 40 years, wherein TPTB encourage competition for a while, then crush it; encourage consumer protection for a while, then call open season; encourage growth, then encourage decay.
– Shog9
Commented Jul 2, 2017 at 16:59
3

My approach to most any nation-wide issue is to decentralize the solution. The problem with the FCC is that when the fix fixes it for everyone, there's no test/control comparison to see whether it even worked. There's also a suspicious correlation between the growth of our federal government, its unelected regulatory bodies, and the size of company monopolies. Put the control back closer to where the individual has effective say, and a lot of these problems get solved. Have the big government debate, but have it in smaller batches with more accountability. FCC+Net Neutrality isn't this.
– Jerbot
Commented Jul 2, 2017 at 17:08
4

There's something to that, but I kinda doubt we'll be seeing a Bell-sized break-up any time soon. In the meantime, I've watched local governments try to negotiate with national corporations, and it has generally ended with the locals getting a raw deal. All but the largest cities have vastly inferior resources to what a company like Comcast can bring to bear.
– Shog9
Commented Jul 2, 2017 at 17:32
2

@Shog9 And I think I might disagree about the milkshake. Until it's brought down a notch, government at the federal level is out of control no matter who is in charge. People seeking power always spells aggravation for those who don't. Hence my insistence that local and state government should actually be higher authority than the federal government. Laboratory of the State and all. I think some smart men back in the day mentioned something about that. I think the Net Neutrality regs debate would be a drop in the bucket of their concerns over the FCC and what it has become.
– Jerbot
Commented Jul 2, 2017 at 17:32
2

@Shog9 RE: local gov vs. big corp: A lot of that is due to the subsidized monopoly backing of the federal government. Though I agree with most who say we'll never know for sure.
– Jerbot
Commented Jul 2, 2017 at 17:34
6

As a philosophical point... The federal government was supposed to mainly be concerned with interstate trade. If we had more local companies working together with national interconnection providers, I'd be happy to see the feds concern themselves with the latter and stay the hell away from the former... But that ain't what we have.
– Shog9
Commented Jul 2, 2017 at 17:36
4

Bingo. Highfive.
– Jerbot
Commented Jul 2, 2017 at 17:38
3

What most troubles me about this line of reasoning is the underlying subtle-yet-toxic contempt for government that has slowly pervaded the US body politic since the Reagan administration. Without some government oversight, a free market cannot be counted on to become or remain a fair market. The Net Neutrality issue is sure to prove to be a case in point.
– Eric Lloyd
Commented Jul 12, 2017 at 5:58
8

@EricLloyd Oh, I'm not subtle about my toxic contempt. But don't confuse contempt for bloated, uncontrollable federal government with contempt for government in general. When a state or local government implements a bad idea, it can be fixed or abandoned. When the federal government implements a bad idea, it's a catastrophe. Bad ideas need to be able to fail, and the federal government offers the least opportunity for this, but the greatest consequences.
– Jerbot
Commented Jul 12, 2017 at 11:46

Add a comment |

Correct minor typos or mistakes
Clarify meaning without changing it
Add related resources or links
Always respect the author’s intent
Don’t use edits to reply to the author

create code fences with backticks ` or tildes ~
```
like so
```
add language identifier to highlight code
```python
def function(foo):
print(foo)
```
put returns between paragraphs
for linebreak add 2 spaces at end
_italic_ or **bold**
indent code by 4 spaces
backtick escapes `like _so_`
quote by placing > at start of line
to make links (use https whenever possible)
<https://example.com>
[example](https://example.com)
<a href="https://example.com">example</a>

formatting help »
answering help »