From owner-freebsd-chat Thu Aug 9 15: 9: 3 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from guru.mired.org (okc-27-141-144.mmcable.com [24.27.141.144]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id B06E237B401 for ; Thu, 9 Aug 2001 15:08:59 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from mwm@mired.org) Received: (qmail 82956 invoked by uid 100); 9 Aug 2001 22:08:58 -0000 From: Mike Meyer MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: <15219.2554.597252.164723@guru.mired.org> Date: Thu, 9 Aug 2001 17:08:58 -0500 To: j mckitrick Cc: "Gary W. Swearingen" , Joseph Scott , freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Why anti-trust law? In-Reply-To: <20010809184100.A93453@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org> References: <20010809184100.A93453@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org> X-Mailer: VM 6.90 under 21.1 (patch 14) "Cuyahoga Valley" XEmacs Lucid X-face: "5Mnwy%?j>IIV\)A=):rjWL~NB2aH[}Yq8Z=u~vJ`"(,&SiLvbbz2W`;h9L,Yg`+vb1>RG% *h+%X^n0EZd>TM8_IB;a8F?(Fb"lw'IgCoyM.[Lg#r\ Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.org j mckitrick types: > On Thu, Aug 09, 2001 at 10:24:22AM -0700, Gary W. Swearingen wrote: > One of the claims made was that the government actually helped create the > AT&T monopoly, and that the USPS is also a monopoly. I think the second is > a poor example, but the first would merit some investigation. Why do you think the USPS is a poor example? Because it's provided for by the constitution? As for AT&T - the government set it up as a monopoly because they decided universal, interoperable phone service would be a good idea. The government mandated price structure had long distance and business users subsidizing low-end residential users to achieve that goal. A lot of people complain that the breakup caused a lot of headaches - which it did - and was thus a bad thing. I doubt that we'd be able to buy long distance at 2 cents/minute today if we had to buy it from AT&T, which makes the breakup a good thing. http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/ Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message