Canadas Monopoly Problem
Canadas Monopoly Problem
Canada has a monopoly problem. How did we get here? And how do we get out? Let’s bring home competition
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It started good, but then started to fall into typical conservative taking points.
He correctly identified that the problem started when Canada sold off crown corporations, but then attributed the problem to over regulation of these newly private cooperation.
Somehow he also called CBC a monopoly in there, which is a wild jump.
My main take away from this video is the best solution is to deregulate (the other points were "increase competition", but at this point that's like politians saying they will create more nurses or doctors, unless you also state a plan I assume you're just blowing smoke). His argument for how deregulating airlines or banking or ISPs would make things better for us didn't really exist.
Regulations might make it hard to start a new bank, so I'll give him that. But I have a hard time seeing how regulations is what's preventing new ISPs or grocery stores from cropping up.
Overall in my opinion it's a captivating video that lacks any substance, which is typical for politicans, but also disappointing because you don't often get to hear them talk about something for over 10 minutes where they actually do have time to explain a plan properly.
I particularly laughed at the line about an economy without competition no longer being capitalism. Like, no, this is just the natural progression of unfettered capitalism. If it's not capitalism what do they think it is? The line almost seemed like "anything I don't like is socialism/communism" dogwhistle.
If we want to actually drive competition, there are a few ways:
- State run alternatives.
You know what Canadian province had the most competitive telephone market? Saskatchewan. That's because they have a government run telecom (Sasktel) that doesn't operate on a for profit model.
- Antitrust laws with teeth.
Penalties for anti-competitive behaviour need to be big enough that they're not just a cost of doing business. If you get caught price fixing, the fine should be so high that you never, ever consider doing it again. Jail time for CEOs should be on the table for egregious enough situations.
- Abandon the "too big to fail" mentality.
When we prop up companies with shitty business practices, we're just encouraging them to fail even harder, because they know they'll always get bailed out.
Anything too big to fail is also too big to care. If they don't care, why should we? Provide proper supports and retraining for everyone below the c-suite and let 'er rip.
If anything, the regulations that mandate that Rogers/Bell need to wholesale bandwidth on their networks helps startup ISPs. Gimme more of that.
Exactly. And a lot of that infrastructure was paid for by taxpayer money in the first place.
We could even go one step further and take it back. Nationalize the infrastructure layer, contract infrastructure maintenance back to the telcos, and lease the lines to whoever wants to use them to provide service.
We eventually had to switch away from a smaller ISP simply because they simply weren't allowed to offer the same level of service as Bell. The best they could offer was 25/10, whereas Bell was allowed to provide fiber to the home.
On YouTube calling CBC a monopoly. What an ass.