John Stossel, "Myths, Lies and Downright Stupidity: Get out the Shouvel -- why Everything You Know I
Cato hosted a speach, where Mr. Stossel was introduced by David Boaz. I was at a friends' home, watching it, placing my faith in Cato to present reliable information.
John did the following
a - mention and display his book, leaving it on screen. It's new, so he's supposed to promote it.
b - spout lots of well know information, to make the audience feel smug.
c - present minsinformation, which was when I went from boredom to intolorance and left the room.
I was rude and walked out. I'll apologize to my friend for that, but Johnny simply lied about the results of the Ma Bell breakup. I can't trust him as a source of information, so his book got tossed off my reading list. Admittedly, I've over 10k pages which were already at a higher priority, but they are thing I really want to read. This book was something I really wanted to read.
I remember the Ma Bell breakup. Baby Bells were all smaller monopolies. The breakup eventually created competition in the long distance service market, but local services suddenly cost more and became service degraded across the United States. Then, the baby bells started re-merging into large monopolies, showing the whole breakup to be a farce. Frills and technologies developed by Ma Bell were quickly sent to market by the Baby Bells, but it was all made on the cheaper and performed less reliably than in the Ma Bell technologies.
Then, cell phones and computers came into play.
The World Wide Web inspired certain big companies to heavily over invest in long distance communication lines (national and international), which were pretty much idle for the first few years, no matter how low their pricing went.
Cell phone carriers first made it cheaper to heavily use a cell phone for long distance than to heavily use a home phone, which has only recently changed with semi-stable services involving the internet. Calling cards were out pricing home phones for smaller use. Once many users left the Baby Bells, long distance and international rates finally started dropping.
This lead to Unlimited Long Distance services. Yes, if not for ill concieved overinvestments making these huge data pipes, we never would have seen long distance costs drop to what they are today. Thank the World Wide Web and poor investments for cheap international and domestic long distance.
For most of it's life, Ma Bell seemed to regulate it's profits. Good years kept rates down. Bad years increased rates. Baby Bells were not as cost effective or reliable, but they had huge resources and improved technologies dumped in their laps in their first decade. Doing a "now and then" compairson without examining the path is only good for promoting an agenda as demonstraited by the speaker mentioned above.
Anyone with more information or questions, please hop in. If you've only rhetoric, please label it as such before I do.
John did the following
a - mention and display his book, leaving it on screen. It's new, so he's supposed to promote it.
b - spout lots of well know information, to make the audience feel smug.
c - present minsinformation, which was when I went from boredom to intolorance and left the room.
I was rude and walked out. I'll apologize to my friend for that, but Johnny simply lied about the results of the Ma Bell breakup. I can't trust him as a source of information, so his book got tossed off my reading list. Admittedly, I've over 10k pages which were already at a higher priority, but they are thing I really want to read. This book was something I really wanted to read.
I remember the Ma Bell breakup. Baby Bells were all smaller monopolies. The breakup eventually created competition in the long distance service market, but local services suddenly cost more and became service degraded across the United States. Then, the baby bells started re-merging into large monopolies, showing the whole breakup to be a farce. Frills and technologies developed by Ma Bell were quickly sent to market by the Baby Bells, but it was all made on the cheaper and performed less reliably than in the Ma Bell technologies.
Then, cell phones and computers came into play.
The World Wide Web inspired certain big companies to heavily over invest in long distance communication lines (national and international), which were pretty much idle for the first few years, no matter how low their pricing went.
Cell phone carriers first made it cheaper to heavily use a cell phone for long distance than to heavily use a home phone, which has only recently changed with semi-stable services involving the internet. Calling cards were out pricing home phones for smaller use. Once many users left the Baby Bells, long distance and international rates finally started dropping.
This lead to Unlimited Long Distance services. Yes, if not for ill concieved overinvestments making these huge data pipes, we never would have seen long distance costs drop to what they are today. Thank the World Wide Web and poor investments for cheap international and domestic long distance.
For most of it's life, Ma Bell seemed to regulate it's profits. Good years kept rates down. Bad years increased rates. Baby Bells were not as cost effective or reliable, but they had huge resources and improved technologies dumped in their laps in their first decade. Doing a "now and then" compairson without examining the path is only good for promoting an agenda as demonstraited by the speaker mentioned above.
Anyone with more information or questions, please hop in. If you've only rhetoric, please label it as such before I do.