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I don't think we can go back to the old days. But I think that what the government needs to do is it needs to make sure that the pricing is fair, that you don't have monopolies out there, so that people don't have a chance to compete fairly.
Old ways of thinking die hard, particularly when they were weaned by legally enforced monopolies.
We must not tolerate oppressive government or industrial oligarchy in the form of monopolies and cartels.
As large publishers turn into monopolies, and the MBAs who are running them - maybe editors used to run them before - are steadily tightening the screws, they feel more and more that they get to call the shots.
That means following a very restrictive fiscal and monetary policy which will squeeze the monopolies and cut their subsidies. On the micro level we will allow other economic agents, both domestic and foreign, to compete with them.
India made a big mistake by signing up to TRIPS. With a population of 1.3 billion, India can't afford a monopoly in healthcare. Monopolies lead to higher prices and we can't allow them in a country like India with so much poverty and misery. It was like signing our own death warrant.
Cable companies aren't bad because they're parts of unwieldy media conglomerates. They're bad because they're monopolies (even where they are no longer legally exclusive) and because the government policies that made them monopolies rewarded lobbying over customer service.
Governments have monopolies on certain things, like eminent domain and deadly force.
The limit is not as narrow as it might be. I do not claim for this action, as it now goes on, an ideal degree of efficiency. What I do claim is that this type of competition already reveals its nature and its ultimate power to hold seeming monopolies in check.
I'm not denying that monopolies are terrible things, but I am denying that it is readily easy to resolve them through legislation of that nature.
