The Myth of Capitalism

Think you know what "capitalism" is about? Psssst. It's not about "competition". It's about "crushing the competition".

So why am I bringing this up? Well, it occurs to me that as you look around trying to find an ISP or a phone these days, you'll find that they're mostly the same price (or within a few dollars of each other). That's not really competition is it? What about "market price"? Maybe, but they're still all about the same price. With phone companies, they're granted "monopoly" status so they have limited competition in the marketplace (all big names of course, when's the last time you remember seeing a smaller local / regional business competing with them). When you start to see that they're all about the same price, then you have a right to question if the big names are practising "collusion" (aka known as "price fixing").


Another reason I bring this up, is take a look at a comapny like Apple. They focus on designing new products, and then they can charge top-drawer prices in the marketplace to an audience that actually wants to buy their stuff (ummm, like the iPhone for instance). But, they spend a lot of time and money on Research & Development (R&D) to design, build, and bring those products to market.

But when you look at ISPs these days (either telco or satellite), these services have been around a fairly long time and are now fairly mature products / services. Which is why in Asia, it's fairly easy to find a reasonably priced all-you-eat high-speed internet service. Yet, in the US, it's basically the same product / service they were offering ten years ago and they're still charging premium prices (compared to the rest of the world) for an internet service. And these ISPs in the US aren't spending any money on R&D to build something better and faster and more desirable.

Think of it, they have a "commodity" where they're still trying to squeeze out the last dollar without anything new on the horizon. In other words, "same old wine, new bottle" for the customer, and which is why they keep adding all kind of headaches like FAP / traffic limits and degrading their basic service so they can try to keep driving people to their higher-priced packages.

Yeah, that's a grand idea. And they wonder why people don't like them or their service.

It's called being "lazy".