Monopolies are dangerous
I agree. Monopolies are also ONLY possible if the government creates them. They can't exist in a free market. The reason we have near-monopoly situations in ISPs is because the government decreed it to be so.
This is a great article. I particularly like how it draws attention to the immense inefficiency (both in terms of money and life) of covering people for emergencies but not for treatment of conditions that, ignored, will lead to emergencies; I think that often isn't understood.
Well, you don't have to "cover" people for routine services. It is far more practical for those to be paid in cash. Like car insurance. I feel like this case has been made so many times that I feel kind of silly for repeating it, but your car insurance doesn't cover gas and oil changes, even though going without them will lead to much larger problems. When it covers everyday, routine care, it is no longer "insurance" but rather it is a subscription health plan.
I'll admit I'm a bit surprised to see you link it, though, as it mostly reads like an argument for some level of socialised medicine (although, granted, socialised medicine that comes at a lower cost than the current US system, which even a staunch libertarian might see as an improvement). But maybe you have a different take? I'm curious, if so.
The main reason I linked it was for the first part. The leftist media constantly tries to persuade the public that America under Republicans is some completely free and unregulated market, when nothing could be further from the truth. We're already a lot less free than many countries whom we view as "socialist" in comparison to us. Also, I just wanted to give Morgan some credit. He's not a liberty-movement guy by any stretch of the imagination, but he does an excellent job collecting the facts and presenting them in a clear way.
I'm not sure how, in principle, the government censoring the Internet is worse than corporations doing the same. You can argue "corporations don't force you to use the Internet so they aren't infringing your liberties there" (of course in quite a few jobs you are forced to use the Internet but bear with me), but... the government doesn't force you to use the Internet either.
IF we had a free market in internet services (see above), and many companies started censoring the internet, and "uncensored internet" was a product in high demand, new companies would emerge to offer said product. New governments cannot emerge to offer alternative products. They shoot you if you try and do that. Let me just ask you one thing. Who ordered the construction of The Great Firewall? Was that Comcast? Or was it a government?
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SmartMuffin - Because anything less would be uncivilized - http://img.imgcake.com/smartmuffin/barkleyjpgde.jpg
http://dudewheresmyfreedom.com/