OpenMedia.ca Are a Bunch of Socialists

This morning a friend of mine posted this link on Facebook.

“Big phone and cable companies are putting a pay meter on your Internet and increasing prices across the board. These big telecom companies are now charging upwards of $10 a gigabyte of data when it costs them only a penny to provide it. This is gouging, pure and simple.”

There's a problem here. Allow me to give a brief overview of OpenMedia and why I don't support these economic illiterates.



My response to my friend's status was this:

“OpenMedia are a bunch of socialists. This is a problem with government. The Telecommunication Acts forbids foreign ownership, so any American ISPs that are perfectly able to cross the border, offer better services, lower prices and create a real market for internet usage are forbidden by law. "Big Telecom" are just looking for profits - completely rational, and logical as the high prices are subsidizing the smaller ISPs they are required by law to host. The core of this problem revolves around government and the artificial monopoly* they've created.”

His response:

“Have you looked at there site at all?”

So I replied:

“Yep. They blame big business, want government to fix the problem (not Harper's government), they advocate Net Neutrality laws (more government control) , they believe every Canadian has a "right" to internet, and they want made-in-Canada solutions, including non-for-profit. Sounds anti-market to me. I'm all for their goals, I just disagree with their approach. They're blaming the wrong people. They're ignoring basic economic logic.”

And that ended the conversation (and perhaps our friendship). Isn't election season fun? Everybody's got an issue they think they can fix by voting for government regulation. It's a great opportunity to continually point out the gun in the room.

Tanstaafl, Canada.