Free Republic

Internet service providers want to end the all-you-can-eat plans and get their customers paying à la carte. But they are having a hard time closing the buffet line. Faced with rising consumer protest and calls from members of Congress for new regulations, Time Warner Cable backed down last week from a plan to impose new fees on heavy users of its Road Runner Internet service. The debate over the price of Internet use is far from over. Critics say cable and phone companies are already charging far more than Internet providers in other countries. Some also wonder whether the new...

I am going to keep this short and to the point. I do a fair bit of air travel and have for the last decade or more pondered why CNN is the only station ever available in every airport in the US. Does anyone else ever question this media monopoly which is able to capture the attention of every air traveler in the country? I don't get it. Why does CNN have this exclusive monopoly in public airports? They have the lock on the attention of the millions of air travelers that move throughout the country. Why is CNN allowed...

Americans discouraged by higher gas prices and airline fares may decide to spend more vacation time at home, perhaps watching television. But that, too, will cost them more than ever. Cable prices have risen 77 percent since 1996, roughly double the rate of inflation, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported this month. Cable customers, who typically pay at least $60 a month, watch only a fraction of what they pay for — on average, a mere 13 percent of the 118 channels available to them. And the number of subscribers keeps growing. The resiliency of cable is all the more...

June 20, 2007 We in America have some of the most magnificent national parks in the world -- Yosemite, Grand Canyon, Yellowstone and many others. Sadly, however, our government has turned over to private monopolies the operation of many of the services and accommodations available to visitors in our national parks. For example, the same monopoly controls not only the lodgings but even tourist buses and taxi services on both the north rim and the south rim of the Grand Canyon. A different monopoly controls lodgings and other services at Yosemite. Monopoly is bad news, whether in the private marketplace...

Tomorrow (17th of September) Sweden will hopefully elect a conservative-center government. Whatever the choice of the swedish electorate, the traditional Swedish (nanny state) Model, represented and defended by the Social Democratic Party of Sweden presently ruling the country, is under attack from many sides. Not at least the EU. The article: "Sweden's monopolies in the firing line Sweden's state monopolies on alcohol, pharmacies and gaming were created decades ago to promote social justice and public health, but now they are under threat from the European Union and a possible change of government after Sunday's general election. Since 1955, Swedes wanting...

In a recent op-ed column ("Do You Really Need a Hedge Fund?") for the Wall Street Journal, former hedge fund manager Michael Steinhardt lamented the current state of the hedge fund industry. With hedge funds now being marketed to the masses and run by amateurs, it's a recipe for trouble, writes Steinhardt: "If hedge funds are so mainstream that people discuss them casually, as if they were looking for stock tips, then hedge funds have evolved into something they were not intended to be." Of course, the upshot of that argument is that only an elite group of wealthy, sophisticated...

Okay, I have seen a LOT of threads claiming that oil companies aren't really making that much on each gallon of gasoline. Oh, really? (blink, blink) Then explain the record profits by the oil companies. Why sure. First, US oil companies don't import all of their oil. In fact several companies actually import very little. Where do they get it? Why, from wells on private and federal land that they drilled on years and years ago. What is the extraction cost to get it out of these wells? You can be darned sure that it is nowhere near $75 a...

The original American system promised a society in which the benefits of civilization including liberty, property, privacy, security and justice would be available to all of its citizens who were willing to work for them. However, such a society can only be sustained when the majority of the citizens are mature adults who accept the basic principles of self-government, self-reliance, and mutual respect. Those principles require the individual to assume reponsibility for his own actions, to be a producer rather than a parasite, to exercise his liberty with consideration for others, and to support and defend the system. It doesn't...

Last spring the press was all aflutter with news that big media companies were actually getting smaller. ''The media moguls built them up, and now they are breaking them apart,''...(snip) But never mind that. Connoisseurs of monopoly need to shift their attention to the Internet, where we're on the brink of a concentration of media control that a few years ago would have been unimaginable.

Global Manipulators Move Beyond Petroleum The Saudis have a saying “My father rode a camel, I drive a car, my son rides in a jet airplane – his son will ride a camel.” In July this year BP Amoco, the world’s second largest oil company, announced it had chosen a flower as its new emblem in a dramatic upheaval of the oil multinational’s global brand. Unveiling the new emblem, Sir John Browne, BP chief executive, suggested that “BP” be read not as British Petroleum, but as “Beyond Petroleum”. The new green and yellow floral sunburst design distances BP from its...

A lone milkman is delivering misery to the doorstep of the giant dairy industry. Hein Hettinga was once a simple dairy farmer who sold raw milk from his farm in Chino, Calif. Today the Dutch immigrant has expanded his operation so much, so fast, that some of the biggest dairy companies and cooperatives in the U.S. have banded together against him. They are lobbying for federal laws to close loopholes they claim he exploits. Mr. Hettinga counters that the only purpose of the proposed legislation is to kill competition -- and keep milk prices high. "That's not right," says the...

HONG KONG National league tables make good journalistic copy, which is devoured especially avidly in nations that happen to score near the top of this or that list. But they can equally tell some very tall tales that reflect better the biases of their assessment criteria than facts on the ground. One of the more widely disseminated is the Index of Economic Freedom, published by the Washington-based Heritage Foundation for the past 12 years. This year, as in numerous past years, it has declared Hong Kong the world's freest economy, closely followed by Singapore, with Iceland, Ireland and Luxembourg close...

Chapter I THE ACTORS ON THE REVOLUTIONARY STAGE Dear Mr. President: I am in sympathy with the Soviet form of government as that best suited for the Russian people... Letter to President Woodrow Wilson (October 17, 1918) from William Lawrence Saunders, chairman, Ingersoll-Rand Corp.; director, American International Corp.; and deputy chairman, Federal Reserve Bank of New York The frontispiece in this book was drawn by cartoonist Robert Minor in 1911 for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Minor was a talented artist and writer who doubled as a Bolshevik revolutionary, got himself arrested in Russia in 1915 for alleged subversion, and was...

SBC Communications, the second-largest regional phone company in the nation, is in talks to buy AT&T for more than $16 billion, according to executives close to the negotiations. A deal, if reached, would be the final chapter in the 120-year history of AT&T, the first technological giant of the modern age and the original model for telecommunications companies worldwide. A deal would be a reunion of sorts, putting back together some of the largest pieces of the Ma Bell telephone monopoly, which was broken up in 1984. The talks, which the executives described as "fluid" and "very, very sensitive"...

<p>How many companies sell computer software? How many companies sell telecommunications services?</p> <p>The answer to the first question is tens of thousands, and the answer to the second question is thousands. Both industries are clearly highly competitive. Competitive markets are a goal of economic policy. Hence the government ought not to be concerned about software and telecommunications, yet it is engaged in destructive meddling.</p>

September 19 saw the inauguration of the "China-Europe Global Navigation Satellite System Technical Training and Cooperation Center" (CENC) in Beijing to train staff and organize bilateral exchange for the Galileo project, an independent European satellite constellation that will rival the US military's domination of the Global Positioning System (GPS). This marks the beginning of China-Europe cooperation in the project, and the news was immediately relayed by foreign media and drew world attention. Only Americans know precisely the position of any object on the earth, other countries only know "roughly" What is the Galileo project? Let's start from the Global Positioning...

Most good universities have at least one conservative professor on campus. When, for example, some group at Harvard wants to hold a panel discussion on some political matter, it can bring out the political theorist Harvey Mansfield to hold up the rightward end. At Princeton it's Robert George. At Yale it's Donald Kagan. These dissenters lead interesting lives. But there's one circumstance that causes true anguish: when a bright conservative student comes to them and says he or she is thinking about pursuing an academic career in the humanities or social sciences. "This is one of the most difficult things,"...

Monopolies are generally thought of as "bad." Most of the time, they don't serve the public interest and they are incredibly inefficient. And yet, there is one monopoly in America that affects every college student -- the liberal monopoly on professorships. Recently, the Center for the Study of Popular Culture conducted a survey on professors' political views at universities nationwide, including Penn. The results were astounding. Among those Ivy League professors surveyed, 64 percent considered themselves either liberal or somewhat liberal. A mere 6 percent considered themselves conservative or somewhat conservative. In addition to this, 84 percent voted for Al...

Iraq wasn't the only one recently facing a countdown from a man named Powell. Competition in the vital telecommunications sector faces one, too. Just as Secretary of State Colin Powell has said time is running out on Iraq, his son, Federal Communications Chairman Michael Powell, has promised to meet a largely self-imposed Feb. 20 deadline for issuing new rules governing wireline telephone services. But will it be a case of like father, like son? Most press reports say not. Secretary of State Colin Powell wisely has refused to accept the false promises of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein that he...

Voluntary Alternatives to Taxation Stuart K. Hayashi Most Americans believe paying taxes is a patriotic duty. Yet this very nation was founded upon people evading taxes in 1776. When individuals don’t pay taxes, the government goes after them with guns, even though they haven’t used force on anyone else. Thus, taxation is an initiation of physical force against the individual’s right to life, liberty and property. Because taxation is forcible extortion, it violates your right to property. If you don’t pay taxes, you can be jailed, hence depriving you the right to liberty. And if tax “evaders” fight tax...