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- Mar 11, 2006
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You need a legal reason to break up a company?
Unless they engage in collusion, price fixing etc, illegal activity; government cant just stick its nose into a company.
Of course they can. Government can do anything it wants. Point is they wont because the companies have government in their pockets. The US congress makes legislation and regulations on behalf of industries not on behalf of the consumer and competition... and in most cases it is the conservatives that are pushing for big business...
If they suck, they will get competition.
That is the point.. they wont if the market is skewed towards the big players..which the telecommunications market is. The cost of entry into the telecommunications market in the US is huge, which is why the big mobile telecommunications companies in the world would rather buy one of the big companies (Verizon is owned by Vodafone) than set up their own networks. This cost of entry is due to regulations and rules often put in place to protect the status quo instead of promoting competition. Some where in this thread someone stated that there was 180 mobile phone operators in the US.. considering the size of the US, that is very low... that is like 3ish per state. I have at least 10 providers here in Spain, that not only are regional but many cover the whole country.
Government shouldnt force market actions, the market will do that by itself.
While this is a good and pretty thing in a text book and theories and are based on the idea that there are many small competitors in a market and no big mega corporation. Now reality is a whole different ball of twine.. since most markets have one or two big companies and a bunch of small ones and that creates very little competition, especially if the big companies defacto work together on pricing and keeping new competition out of the markets. Like it or not, if the market is left on its own, there is trend towards becoming a monopoly and any method (including buying politicians to set the rules for you) will be used to gain this power base...
Im not against competition, I dont think its the government's place to dictate company and market actions.
Sorry to burst you bubble, but the "government" has been doing that for many decades when it comes to the US telecommunications market (and other markets). Regional monopolies, regulation that prevents competition and so on and so on. There is a reason most American's have so little choice when it comes to getting internet and it is industry friendly regulations and rules put in place by your politicians on behalf of the industry. If your politicians were the patriots and "men/women of the people" they claim they are, then they would force whole industries into more competition... telecommunications, news media, air lines, steel, medical and big pharma and so on.
Regulation that promotes competition is good regulation.