This is why we need regulations...

[Zinegata]

So no, asking the goverment to cover up for these irresponsible idiots isn't their job. It's a personal responsibility.

Nobody is asking the government to do that.

If one guy is just an idiot and gets confused, that's one thing. But it's another if a lot of people are getting confused because the business deliberately tries to obfuscate things.

You cannot prove intent.

My company certainly never intended to say that we would provide free computers. But we can't prove that it wasn't deliberately obsfucating on our part. The customer can always claim that we had an off-the-record instruction to our ad agency to deliberately mislead our customers.

So the two cases are in fact indistinguishable. An idiot who is confused is, for all intents and purposes, also the victim of "deliberate obfucating".

Which is why I'm saying that the latter is a stupid yardstick for regulations. It is not the company's responsibility to cater to fucking idiots who did not read the full product brief.

[Zinegata]

Actually, at one time, there was a regulation that required telecommunications companies to provide basic tools to access their service.

...Of course, that was because they were a monopoly and banning people from buying their own phones, requiring them to actually rent them.

-Crissa

Crissa is a moron talking out of her ass again with her mindless "ZOMG Corporations Are Evil!" mantra. Please ignore her.

[CatharzGodfoot]

Actually, at one time, there was a regulation that required telecommunications companies to provide basic tools to access their service.

...Of course, that was because they were a monopoly and banning people from buying their own phones, requiring them to actually rent them.

-Crissa

Crissa is a moron talking out of her ass again with her mindless "ZOMG Corporations Are Evil!" mantra. Please ignore her.

I hope you're not saying she's wrong, because that would make you an idiot.

[Zinegata]

Actually, at one time, there was a regulation that required telecommunications companies to provide basic tools to access their service.

...Of course, that was because they were a monopoly and banning people from buying their own phones, requiring them to actually rent them.

-Crissa

Crissa is a moron talking out of her ass again with her mindless "ZOMG Corporations Are Evil!" mantra. Please ignore her.

I hope you're not saying she's wrong, because that would make you an idiot.

I am saying she is only presenting the spurious facts known to her in another attempt to cheap shot big companies. Because she thinks all of them are evil.

The truth about telcos is much more complicated, and involves uncomfortable truths like monopolies being a necessity as opposed to some evil conspiracy to bleed money out of consumers.

[CatharzGodfoot]

Crissa is a moron talking out of her ass again with her mindless "ZOMG Corporations Are Evil!" mantra. Please ignore her.

I hope you're not saying she's wrong, because that would make you an idiot.

I am saying she is only presenting the spurious facts known to her in another attempt to cheap shot big companies. Because she thinks all of them are evil.

The truth about telcos is much more complicated, and involves uncomfortable truths like monopolies being a necessity as opposed to some evil conspiracy to bleed money out of consumers.

In 1934, the government set AT&T up as a regulated monopoly under the jurisdiction of the Federal Communications Commission, in the Communications Act of 1934.

As a result, by 1940 the Bell System effectively owned most telephone service in the United States, from local and long-distance service to the telephones themselves. This allowed Bell to prohibit their customers from connecting phones not made or sold by Bell to the system without paying fees. For example, if a customer desired a type of phone not leased by the local Bell monopoly, he or she had to purchase the phone at cost, give it to the phone company, then pay a 're-wiring' charge and a monthly lease fee in order to use it.

[Psychic Robot]

monopolies being a necessity

You're going to have to elaborate on this, as I'm pretty sure you just went full retard.

In 1934, the government set AT&T up as a regulated monopoly under the jurisdiction of the Federal Communications Commission, in the Communications Act of 1934.

Government-regulated monopolies are a staple of the free market.

[Crissa]

Anyhow, that went on into the 1980s in some sections of the country. (At least it did in mine. My home town didn't have a solid-state switch until the end of the decade.)

Sure, when you want to make sure everyone's phones work together, or that everyone at least has an option to be on the network... A monopoly makes sense at first. But it needs to be heavily regulated.

Hence...

-Crissa

[RandomCasualty2]

You cannot prove intent.

You're right, but you can simply issue them a warning to clarify things, and fine them if they don't.

You can reduce obfuscation with some basic rules. Like a vehicle warranty has to be written such that it says what it doesn't include as opposed to what it does. This makes it immediately easier for a layman to understand, as opposed to having people have to know and look up parts of a car they probably don't know even exist.

Now you're not going to eliminate all the problems, but seriously you can make things easier for the consumer.

[Zinegata]

First of all, let's get a few things out of the way: Telcos exist to make money. They also make a lot of money. They are a very profitable sort of business.

However, there is one major problem with the telco industry:

The cost to set up a telco is enormous. It'd take several billion dollars (in today's dollars) and at least a decade to setup the phone infrastructure for just one city. And with a country as vast as the United States, this cost skyrockets because you need to lay out cables that span an entire continent (as opposed to Japan or Korea, which cover relatively compact landmasses and can thus afford full fiber connectivity).

Moreover, because of the way phone systems were setup, it's not possible for two companies to share one copper line network. Let's say AT&T sets up a copper cable for your home. A competitor can't use that same line to provide you with an alternate phone service. They have to set up an entirely different copper cable line for you. In fact, a good portion of your phone bill goes to paying the amortized cost of your copper line (and all of the associated hardware)!

What this means (from the top level) is that when two telcos compete over one city, they are in effect doubling the total cost without increasing coverage area. Say a company needs to spend 1 billion dollars to cover "Gotham City". If another company wants to setup a similar network in Gotham, they have to spend another billion. Meaning that the companies spent twice the amount needed to cover the same city. This is hugely inefficient, especially when the money could have been spent to build infrastructure for a different city that doesn't have a good phone network yet.

Also, you simply cannot price a phone line above a certain threshold (which is a percentage of the average household income). If it becomes too expensive, people will simply live without a phone. Most telcos price their products around this threshold. So your competiting telcos will end up having the same billion dollar cost, but they will only get half of the revenue because they're sharing the same market.

And the more telcos you have in one market, then the smaller their revenue will become, until it simply becomes unprofitable to operate in that region at all and the owners would have wasted huge amounts of money.

That's why monopolies are thus often necessity for this business. Unless you can assure a telco of exclusivity, it's unlikely that they can get a return for their enormous investments. So what a lot of governents do is to either have one big telco rapidly roll out telephones all over the country (i.e. The US, The Philippines), or they set up one controlled by the government and which is financed heavily by subsidies (Japan, Vietnam).

Even the phone rental thing by AT&T I can understand under this model - simply because at tht time the cost of an individual phone was still expensive, and the company needed to recover these costs via rentals.

Fortunately, deployment costs are now MUCH lower thanks to wireless technologies like cellphones, which do make monopolies much less of a necessity.

[Zinegata]

You can reduce obfuscation with some basic rules. Like a vehicle warranty has to be written such that it says what it doesn't include as opposed to what it does. This makes it immediately easier for a layman to understand, as opposed to having people have to know and look up parts of a car they probably don't know even exist.

I fail to see how it is practical to list every possible exception, including such accidents as "My little sister got behind the wheel and smashed the car into a tree", or "A tyhoon swept my car away".

[Zinegata]

A monopoly makes sense at first. But it needs to be heavily regulated.

What you are failing to see is that the government has two competing interests here:

1) The need to protect consumers from excessive profit-taking.

2) The need to make sure consumers have access to telephone and Internet services.

To achieve #2, sacrifices have to be made. Including setting up monopolies and charging rentals for the phone units. Because the windfalls earned ultimately go to setting up more phones and Internet lines in other areas. And it's the sort of stuff that's actually ok'd by the regulators because they are aiming to achieve objective #2.

Unless you go the Japanese route, which is to provide impressive subsidies to their telcos to encourage expansion and widespread use of technologies like fiber optics. However, given the geographic realities of the US, you'd be looking at a subsidy that may make the Obama Stimulus plans look cheap.

[Neeeek]

You cannot prove intent.

Utterly false. Intent is something that has to be proven in court on a regular basis for a whole host of crimes and civil actions. Fraud, for example.

[RandomCasualty2]

I fail to see how it is practical to list every possible exception, including such accidents as "My little sister got behind the wheel and smashed the car into a tree", or "A tyhoon swept my car away".

How is it not practical to know what your policies don't work against?

Being that the experts are the guys writing the policy, the burden to think up what possible scenarios you don't get paid should be on them, as opposed to on the consumer trying to imagine what kind of scenarios a warranty or insurance policy wouldn't cover against.

And asking them to write in stuff like "An uninsured person is driving your car and crashes it" as a reason to not pay you is pretty fucking important, and they totally should list it. Same with the damage from a natural disaster.

That's not asking too much for the consumer to know what he's buying. Seriously I can't understand why you'd be against this. It's nothing but good for the consumer and the business isn't hurt at all.

[Zinegata]

You cannot prove intent.

Utterly false. Intent is something that has to be proven in court on a regular basis for a whole host of crimes and civil actions. Fraud, for example.

Did you even look at the example? Because clearly you're being an ass sniping an a snippet that was taken entirely out of context.

We aren't talking about fraud cases here. We are talking about putting up a set of regulations to "protect the consumer for intentional obsfucation". And you cannot prove intent in such matters like the example I explained and you casually ignored.

If you can prove intent, then it's not merely obsfucation. It's fraud like the cigarette companies claiming that their product isn't addictive (an outright lie based on scientific evidece).

And guess what? It is extremely hard to make fraud cases stick. It took the better part of a decade and a lot of emotional pain and anguish to win the case against the cigarette companies... because fraud often ultimately boils down to "He said she said".

However, calling a product "Fruit Loops" when the product is in fact merely fruit-flavored is not fraud. And you cannot prove that the intent of this was to maliciously deceive consumers short of recording every conversation made within the halls of the company. Neither is putting a computer in an Internet ad an attempt to make consumers think we're gonna give them a fucking computer.

But hey, again, if you're dumb and spoiled enough to think a computer comes with the package even though it doesn't say so anywhere in the ad, said person can easily make othe wilder assumptions like the company being evil and deceptive.

[Zinegata]

I fail to see how it is practical to list every possible exception, including such accidents as "My little sister got behind the wheel and smashed the car into a tree", or "A tyhoon swept my car away".

How is it not practical to know what your policies don't work against?

Being that the experts are the guys writing the policy, the burden to think up what possible scenarios you don't get paid should be on them, as opposed to on the consumer trying to imagine what kind of scenarios a warranty or insurance policy wouldn't cover against.

I strongly doubt that you yourself even apply these kinds of standards to your own line of work, so I will have to call this statement grossly hypocrtical.

And asking them to write in stuff like "An uninsured person is driving your car and crashes it" as a reason to not pay you is pretty fucking important, and they totally should list it. Same with the damage from a natural disaster.

Congratulations. You have just added a completely ambiguous statement to your insurance plan.

When you say "uninsured person", does it mean "Everybody except you (the insurance plan holder)", or literally "Everyone without any form of insurace"? That is a HUGE distinction.

Which is why insurance companies have these very long and complicated contracts. Which people invariably never fucking read.

And then blame the insurace company

Again, what you're asking for is pandering to stupidity. If you can't be bothered to read the terms of your insurance and comprehend it, don't fucking get insurance. Seriously, legalese is not that bad if you just sat down and take the time to READ.

[cthulhu]

I'm pretty sure that this is why a government owned, managed or regulated consortium should own the infrastructure web and sell access and wholesale rates.

[Zinegata]

The problem with government regulation is that it's not always about protecting the consumer.

For instance, a regulatory board may mandate that Internet services cannot be made cheaper. Why? Because only big companies have the economies of scale that would allow them to operate low-cost Internet plans, which would put small companies at a disadvantage. Thus, to ensure that there is more competition, a government regulatory board may choose to have the consumer pay a higher price for an Internet connecton for the sake of keeping competition alive.

A regulatory board's job therefore depends on the political climate. It is not necessarily guided by hard and fast principles like "The consumer is always right".

[Crissa]

A regulatory board's job therefore depends on the political climate. It is not necessarily guided by hard and fast principles like "The consumer is always right".

This is very true.

But at least with a regulatory model as opposed to a bare monopoly, who works for who is pretty plain.

It is a problem when corporations push through legislation which blocks municipalities from forming their own broadband services. That's certainly a regulatory problem. Now some cities are left with networks they cannot use. It would be like if there were a bunch of roads built in town, but the law said the city wasn't able to use them.

But then again, that's why I don't vote for Republicans.

-Crissa

[Zinegata]

... And yet AT&T gained its monopoly while the country was under the control of Democrats.

The fact is, it doesn't matter what your politics are. Money is always a factor that drives political decisions. In fact, it is often the only factor.

[Crissa]

Tell me, find me a Republican from that era that would be elected as a republican of today's era.

You can't. Because things have changed. The Democrats shed the racist south, and the Republicans shed everything but the know-nothings.

Just like you can't find any elected Republican or Conservative economist to tell you that yes, tax cuts do lower total revenue. They just won't comment on the issue when it's actually news.

-Crissa

[Psychic Robot]

Tell me, find me a Republican from that era that would be elected as a republican of today's era.

You wouldn't because Reagan fucked up the Republican party.

You can't. Because things have changed. The Democrats shed the racist south, and the Republicans shed everything but the know-nothings.

Implying the Democratic party isn't composed of retards such as yourself. Please tell me how you can't be racist against white men again.

Just like you can't find any elected Republican or Conservative economist to tell you that yes, tax cuts do lower total revenue. They just won't comment on the issue when it's actually news.

-Crissa

Open link, see ThinkProgress, close link.

[Crissa]

Please tell me how you can't be racist against white men again.

Do you always bring your pet lie to detract from every thread everywhere else?

Open link, see ThinkProgress, close link.

Closed mind, eh?

-Crissa

[Adalon]

Open link, see ThinkProgress, close link.

Are you saying that Tax cuts don't reduce revenue?

[Psychic Robot]

I don't read things from the Heritage Foundation, so there's no way in hell I'm going to bother reading any of the tripe you pull from Huffington Post/Think Progress.

Are you saying that Tax cuts don't reduce revenue?

Are you saying that I'm saying something other than "I closed the link when I saw it was for Think Progress"? Because implying implications is stupid.

[Adalon]

Are you saying that I'm saying something other than "I closed the link when I saw it was for Think Progress"? Because implying implications is stupid.

Implications have to be implied, that's what makes them implications in the first place.

What you are doing is implying implications. You are implying the implication that her statement is wrong because of the source.

So how about a clear answer? Psychic Robot, do tax cuts reduce total tax revenue?