Dangerous Intersection: The purported “free market”

Terms like 'free market,' 'capitalism and 'free enterprise' are abstract terms that all have the same vague meaning. . In the US the financial industry, banks, telecommunications, energy and even agriculture are subsidized by the federal government.

Sometimes this arrangement that private enterprise has with the government is called 'crony capitalism.'

Probably the closest thing left to a free market would be the weekend 'farmer markets" that pop up in communities.

Tom Tomorow produced many entertaining cartoons about the 'invisible hand of free enterprise." A term “Invisible Hand of Free Enterprise' was coined by economist Adam Smith in his 1776 book "An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations".

As Rightardia has written:

. . .(S)ometimes the “Invisible Hand” plays with itself as it did on Wall Street. Sometimes the “Invisible Hand” puts its fingers in the wrong place at the wrong time add get mangled as it did during the sub prime mortgage crises.


Net neutrality is the latest IT buzz. The backward facing step of net neutrality, which is the long-standing issue, is that of “throttling”. An unregulated company can limit the capacity of the Internet connection if it decides that you are using more than your share, making the connection slow, jittery and inconsistent.

The cable companies are already throttling mobile broadband data networks like Wi-MAX , 3G and 4G. Some would like to do the same to home broadband. Essentially, users would be in the same boat they were with old dial-up networks.

In the bad old days days, both voice and data ran on the same voice lines. Today, the cable compaines have their own fiber optic lines and Sonet rings that can run at OC-768 speed: 39,813.12 Mbit/s,

Throttling is simply a broadband provider's gambit to increase corporate profits. If a home user was abusing the Internet, the cable company could offer to upgrade the user's service or to terminate the customer. Cable companies have other alternatives to throttling.

see http://dangerousintersection.org/2011/11/12/the-purported-free-market/


Source: http://thenews.choate.edu/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1111:the-case-for-net-neutrality&catid=3:opinion&Itemid=2


see http://rightardia.blogspot.com/2009/06/invisible-hand-of-free-enterprise-has.html

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