trader_4 posted for all of us...



On Saturday, February 9, 2019 at 11:14:53 AM UTC-5, wrote:
On Sat, 9 Feb 2019 05:24:45 -0800 (PST), trader_4
wrote:

On Friday, February 8, 2019 at 9:41:18 PM UTC-5, wrote:
On Sat, 9 Feb 2019 07:33:23 +1100, "Rod Speed"
wrote:



wrote in message
.. .
On Fri, 8 Feb 2019 06:23:47 -0800 (PST), trader_4
wrote:

On Thursday, February 7, 2019 at 7:09:47 PM UTC-5, wrote:
On Thu, 7 Feb 2019 15:09:46 -0800 (PST), trader_4
wrote:

On Thursday, February 7, 2019 at 5:20:53 PM UTC-5, Oren wrote:
On Thu, 07 Feb 2019 16:45:58 -0500, wrote:

On Thu, 7 Feb 2019 16:15:36 -0500, Ed Pawlowski
wrote:

On 2/7/2019 2:35 PM, George wrote:
Socialist Ocasio-Kotex makes Al Gore proud!

https://www.marke****ch.com/story/pe...eam-2019-02-07



I like this comment. Should be simple if you want to live in the
dark

Ocasio-Cortez and Massachusetts Sen. Markey are aiming to eliminate
the
U.S. carbon footprint by 2030.

This is how dumb AOC is.
The Green New Deal would be paid for ?the same way we paid for the
original New Deal, World War II, the bank bailouts, tax cuts for the
rich and decades of war ? with public money appropriated by
Congress,?
Ocasio-Cortez said.

We can't even raise the taxes to pay the government's bills now. We
are borrowing close to a trillion a year. Let's see how it works for
the democrats if they want to raise taxes enough to pay for the
"Green
Deal".

We are all going to drown in debt long before sea level rise gets
anyone

Her mother should have taught her: "money doesn't grow on trees".

She doesn't think it grows on trees. She says it's in the hands of the
rich and she wants to redistribute it.

The problem is that people overestimate how much money the rich have
compared to a $20 trillion dollar debt or even the trillion dollar
annual deficit. A huge part of the problem is people think unrealized
capital gains are wealth.

And another problem is that people like her claim that it's unfair that
the founder of a company is worth a billion, while the lowest employees
are only making $30K. It would be nice if those making $30K were making
$40K or $50K instead. The problem is that the govt taking the rich guy's
billion, running it into the govt coffers, then ****ing it away on moon
beams or people who just don't want to work, doesn't get those workers
a $50K salary either. A good, thriving economy with low unemployment is
a better way of raising their salaries. I'd be willing to at least look
at other ideas to try to raise earnings overall, but taking all the money
of the rich, stuffing it into govt and silly socialist ideas, just
produces another Venezuela.


The money some CEOs make is the symptom of a much larger problem.
There are far fewer companies controlling far larger portions of the
marketplace. Perhaps a better measure of CEO pay would be the company
gross and market share.
People who control monopolies tend to make a lot of money. We haven't
really tried to do anything about monopolies since the Nixon
administration.

There are no current monopolys, just some very successful operations.

Bull****. I would start with the drug companies

Drug companies are most definitely not monopolies. They are competing
against each other. Sure, company A may be the only one with a certain
new drug for at a any given point in time, but they have competitors
working on their own competing drugs for to treat the same thing.
There are some exceptions, for drugs for rare conditions, where only
one company happens to have a drug and no other company is interested.
But that doesn't make for the definition of a monopoly.

There is certainly competition for mass market drugs that treat things
like baldness or ED but if you have a specialized drug that only
treats a few thousand patients, there is typically only one source and
those people get ****ed.

There is a whole range of drugs between non-essential drugs for baldness
and orphan drugs that only treat a few thousand patients. And I don't
see those people as ****ed. Would you rather they die than the drug
companies offer an expensive drug that it cost them $2 bil to develop?
In many cases, if the govt or insurance won't pay for it, the drug company
reduces the price significantly or gives it away free.




The government makes it too easy for drug companies to extend patents.
There are drugs that have been out there for decades and they make
some insignificant change that allows a whole new patent to be issued
without giving up the right to the old one.



but in the US most
cable TV companies are monopolies in their areas and Comcast is a
monster owning entertainment from the studio to the set top box and
everything in between.

That's true and those monopolies are granted by govt and then they are
regulated, just like other utilities.

No they aren't. The government has no control over pricing nor the
level of service like you would with a water company or a PoCo

Do you speak for all states in the union, or just FL? Given that FL
has laws that allow a known nut that has had 21 police calls to his
house to walk into Dick's and buy all the guns and ammo he wants,
maybe you don't regulate the cable services there, including the rates
they can charge, but most states, including NJ, do.

https://www.nj.gov/bpu/about/faq/


Q. What is regulated by the BPU?

A. The BPU regulates over electric, gas, water, telecommunication, and cable in the state of New Jersey. The BPU has a statutory mandate to ensure safe, adequate and proper utility services at reasonable rates for customers in New Jersey.
Q. What utility aspects does the BPU regulate?

A. The BPU monitors the rates, charges, rules and regulations of most electric, natural gas, water, cable and telecommunication utilities operating within the state of New Jersey.

And ultimately, any community here can kick out a cable operator,
refuse to renew their franchise or allow another cable company in to
compete. In some areas of NJ that is happening, with Verizon and Cablevision beating each other's brains out. Are they as heavily regulated as the
electric company? I'd say no, for example I don't think they regulate
the prices for premium channels, but they do regulate the prices for
basic cable service and the fees for equipment rental.






Microsoft is also a monopoly by the definition used when the broke up
the phone company and IBM in the 70s.

Not even close to the AT&T monopoly. AT&T had control of the phone
system from one end of the call in NY to the other in CA and everywhere
in between. It was all over their system, their eqpt, their rates.

There was no breakup of IBM, the govt dropped that case. But I would
agree that MSFT has been in a position of greater market dominance than
IBM was in the 70s when the DOJ was trying to break it up.

IBM was broken up tho and it was along the guidelines of the terms
sought in the federal suit in anticipation of losing or having to sign
a consent decree like they did in 1956.

Maybe in your dreams. Show us the link to this big breakup. What were
the new companies called and how many shares of stock did each IBM
investor get? It never happened. A couple decades later, IBM chose
to sell off it's PC business, but that sure isn't a break up of IBM
and coming two decades after the end of the dropping of the antitrust
case, it sure isn't attributable to that. Sure, IBM has done some
restructuring, it had it's own crisis, driven by the markets, but it
was not a breakup of the compaany.


separate operating units that were actively competing with each other

Nonsense. That's like saying the operating units at any large company
"compete" with each other.


and they had totally separate structures from engineering to
manufacturing to sales to service. They were not even using common
parts or software and the people lived in separate worlds.
It was easier to integrate Rohm people into the core IBM business than
people from the General Services Division when they finally merged in
the early 90s. .
.


Innovation exploded when that happened.

It did in both the case of AT&T and IBM. One was busted up, the other
was not. It was innovation and market forces that reduced IBM's
dominance. It would have been much harder for innovation to have
busted AT&T, because they controlled everything, including the wires
into your house and it was all wrapped up in govt regulation too.

AT&T had no interest in innovation other than things that improved
it's bottom line

That's pure BS. AT&T spent a fortune on pure research. You don't win
Nobel prizes in physics focusing on the bottom line. Are you trying to
tell us that right after WWII, AT&T knew that the transistor was going
to improve their bottom line? That would be some very remarkable clairvoyance. AT&T stands out way above most companies in that respect.
The transistor, proving the big bang theory correct, is way beyond what
99% of companies do in the way of research.

Who are the regulators at BPU? Political hacks, somebodies BIL, former
executives from the regulated utility, lawyers for the latter and so on.

--
Tekkie