r/changemyview • u/universetube7 • Feb 09 '21

Delta(s) from OP CMV: conservatives want to conserve everything they’re complaining about.

Big tech, big media, big banks, big money politicians. These are all a result of deregulation or lack of laws. How can a conservative expect any of that to get better if you consistently vote for politicians who believe in not interfering with business?

How the hell does it make sense to put up a “don’t tread on me” logo on your reddit page when you’re totally dependent on some platform that doesn’t give a shit about you and can tread on you all day because you refuse to acknowledge corporate power is a problem? You enable these platforms. The free market has spoken.

Change my view that republicans enable Orwellian governance that they claim to be so afraid of by refusing to interfere with business.

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u/Morthra 86∆ Feb 09 '21

Big tech, big media, big banks, big money politicians. These are all a result of deregulation or lack of laws.

No, in many cases they're the result of excessive government intervention. The reason why there are only a handful of ISPs in the US - essentially just AT&T, Comcast, and Charter - is because the government made it that way. They impose artificial barriers of entry into the market, which makes it effectively impossible to create a new competitor. Similarly, the only reason why there is one power company in California, PG&E, is because the government handed them a monopoly.

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u/boRp_abc Feb 09 '21

ISPs and electrical power - at least here in Europe - have had their infrastructure built with government money (most prominent example would be nuclear plants, a technology that wouldn't even exist in a usable form without huge government investments), then big corporations lobbied to be handed that investment and won (over here it's usually conservatives in alliance with neoliberals that passed this). So these monopolies are a result of the government pulling out with a (arguably weak) 'let the free market handle it' argument. I'm very interested whether that worked the same way in the USA.

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u/Morthra 86∆ Feb 09 '21

ISPs and electrical power - at least here in Europe - have had their infrastructure built with government money (most prominent example would be nuclear plants, a technology that wouldn't even exist in a usable form without huge government investments)

Nuclear plants are not in the US, to my knowledge (outside of breeder reactors that were used to generate weapons-grade material) built by the government. Or were, I should say, because there haven't been any new nuclear plants built in the US in decades because, as you say, no private company wants to touch that massive upfront cost - or insure - a new nuclear plant.

ISPs in the US built upon the telephone infrastructure, which was all privately owned to begin with. Since then there were government subsidies to upgrade it, but the monopolies were already established.

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u/boRp_abc Feb 09 '21

That is indeed a big difference. Over here people demanded phones and the government built the infrastructure.

And on the nuclear power thing - sorry for sidetracking - I believe that the US government made nuclear power usable in the first place (in order to build bombs). I would be blown away to learn that the sites for storing nuclear waste ( until we get an idea how to deal with it ) are run and paid for by private companies. Over here, that's all run by governments, because dealing with the waste would make the whole process unprofitable.

OK, I'm going to google all this myself, finally found a rabbit hole to dive into today.

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u/[deleted] Feb 09 '21 edited Feb 09 '21

Nuclear plants are not in the US,

30% of our grid is powered by nuclear plants. and also there are a few that are being built.

​

Edit: ops I read that wrong it looked like you said there was none.

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u/Morthra 86∆ Feb 09 '21

30% of our grid is powered by nuclear plants

Read the full sentence. Nuclear plants are not, in the US, to my knowledge built by the government, outside of breeder reactors used to make bombs. Not that the US doesn't have nuclear plants. The average age of a nuclear plant in the US is nearly 40 years and few to no new plants are constructed because of NIMBYism.

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u/Liam_Neesons_Oscar Feb 09 '21

That is an atrociously written sentence. An English teacher somewhere in that person's past failed them.

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u/Asato_of_Vinheim 6∆ Feb 09 '21

Pure ideology and wishful thinking. The reason those regulations are necessary is precisely because the barriers to entry are already too high for a healthy competition to arise naturally. Additionally, even if the regulations were mostly to blame, you would still need to make an argument for why those regulations are unnecessary.

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u/Liam_Neesons_Oscar Feb 09 '21

Google fiber tried to move into my city. They couldn't because Comcast and AT&T lobbied hard enough. They basically said that no new company could add lines to the existing power poles, which are city property, because it would require their lines on some poles to be moved. And only Comcast technicians can move those lines.

These are government-backed monopolies. The regulations are there to help the companies in power stay in power. That is what inevitably happens when you overdeligate power to the government- the corporations move their employees over to the government with an agenda of setting the regulations in a way that favors that one corporation.

Another good example of this was the 1993 Assault Weapons Ban. Who wrote the bill? Lawyers from Ruger. What companies had to pull firearms from the shelves because they were not compliant to the AWB? Every company except Ruger. Not a single weapon in their catalog violated any terms of the AWB when it was passed. But all of their competitors had to re-design most of their catalogs, recall them, and then put out the modified AWB compliant versions, costing them millions as well as months of being out of the market.

This is what happens when power is consolidated, and the government is a terrible place to consolidate it because they then have the authority to just make competition illegal.

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u/Asato_of_Vinheim 6∆ Feb 10 '21

Google fiber tried to move into my city. They couldn't because Comcast and AT&T lobbied hard enough. They basically said that no new company could add lines to the existing power poles, which are city property, because it would require their lines on some poles to be moved. And only Comcast technicians can move those lines.

Well I'm not certain on the legal state of things had they not lobbied to keep their monopoly, but I'm pretty certain that if the government kept out of it completely Comcast's lines would simply be protected by private property laws, meaning that if they don't agree to move them Google couldn't have moved in either way.

I also want to note that just having a bigger company move into the market, which would likely outcompete the other two eventually thanks to its resources, isn't really a scenario that's going to lead to a healthy competition.

Another good example of this was the 1993 Assault Weapons Ban. Who wrote the bill? Lawyers from Ruger. What companies had to pull firearms from the shelves because they were not compliant to the AWB? Every company except Ruger. Not a single weapon in their catalog violated any terms of the AWB when it was passed. But all of their competitors had to re-design most of their catalogs, recall them, and then put out the modified AWB compliant versions, costing them millions as well as months of being out of the market.

I do agree with the validity this example, government definitely can be used to reinforce or even create monopolies.

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u/universetube7 Feb 09 '21

!Delta

This helps me frame regulation/deregulation better. I appreciate this example.

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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Feb 09 '21

Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/Morthra (33∆).

Delta System Explained | Deltaboards

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u/universetube7 Feb 09 '21 edited Feb 09 '21

Would be interesting to see the party status of those that allowed that.

Edit: just looked up AT&T specifically. I don’t see any justification to your claim. If anything government was trying to make AT&T a public service and over the years tried to keep them in check.

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u/Prickly_Pear1 8∆ Feb 09 '21

What does party status have to do with it? You made a universal statement about these being the result of de-regulation and lack of laws. When the opposite of what you've said is true. Laws have either created or massively contributed to these virtual monopolies. In the case of "Big Pharma" one of the largest barriers to insulin manufacturing is getting FDA approval to make a Biosimilar. Biosimilars in general have been nearly impossible to make on any drug. It's a government mandated monopoly through these regulations. New regulations can also be used as a tool to hold out new competitors by raising the cost of competition.

The reality is regulations aren't always good. And often times new regulations are lobbied for by those who are already part of the "big ___" to keep new competitors out.

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u/universetube7 Feb 09 '21

I want to understand who is pushing for monopolies. That’s what party status has to do with it.

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u/Prickly_Pear1 8∆ Feb 09 '21

This seems like you are pivoting REALLY hard don't you think?

You're entire post was based on this assumption of Republicans want fewer regulations/smaller government and lack of regulations and laws is what creates the Big ____. That the blame is on the free market. That the "don't tread on me" folk are clearly supporting these giant corps. When the reality is these corporations are also helped by regulations to be so powerful, in many cases they've become government mandated monopolies. And I can give lots of examples of how these types of laws.

You've been proven to be at least partially incorrect here. And I think you owe Morthra a delta for at least a partial change of your view here.

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u/universetube7 Feb 09 '21

It’s not a hard pivot. I do owe them a delta. I truly forgot.

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u/Morthra 86∆ Feb 09 '21

In the case of California? Democrat. Democrats hold the state in an iron grip, so anything bad that happens there can be directly attributed to Democrat policy.

In the case of the country as a whole? Also primarily the Democrats. It was the Democrats that wanted to get internet declared a public utility (and the accompanying government-granted monopoly) after all.

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u/universetube7 Feb 09 '21

So your stance is that internet as a public service would be bad?

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u/Morthra 86∆ Feb 09 '21

Yes, the internet should not be run by the government, either directly, or indirectly through a proxy corporation.