[Here's a comment from Carolyn Sortor:] Thanks for your excellent post. This may be a bit of an aside, but potentially important in understanding the precise direction in which we should be trying to push. I wish I'd been following what happened to phone service 30 years ago -- I wasn't, so I can't be certain of all the details (a link to a solid historical account from a non-neocon source would be appreciated). But what I CAN tell you from my own experience at the time is that telephone service used to be much more of a monopoly but was much more highly regulated and was MUCH cheaper, easier, and faster and more reliable. Certain functions are "natural monopolies," in the sense that it does NOT make sense economically or otherwise to allow competing standards or to expect more than one company to duplicate the infrastructure etc. required. In these cases, the best system may be for the service to be owned and operated by the government, or to allow a monopoly but to regulate it effectively, for the benefit of the public at large (compare and contrast with supposedly competing corporations which are really run primarily for the benefit of their senior management, secondarily for the benefit of their directors, relatively remotely for the benefit of their shareholders and not at all for the benefit of the public at large). I'm not kidding, the phone system used to be terrific. It was super-cheap and the fee structure was simple and fair. There was one phone book that contained all the numbers you could ever want, there was one directory assistance that always connected you to the right number, connections were always virtually instantaneous, and I NEVER experienced a dropped call. The phone service was wonderful UNTIL it was split up and de-regulated. Within the last two years, I arrived at my dad's house, he didn't answer the door even though he should have been expecting me, I called him but the line was busy, I tried to get the phone co. to check the line, it took me at least 20 min. just to get a human on the phone, and that person couldn't actually check anything, the answer was basically f--- you you're on your own. My dad was dying inside. It didn't used to be this way. Before de-reg, I could have gotten a human within 15 seconds, and that person could have told me almost instantly whether the phone was off the hook or there was a malfunction in the line. I wanted to clarify this because I think we've been sold on the idea that competition is always the answer, but if you look at the historical record and think through the various factors, it clearly isn't. E.g., the internet in its present state is quite wonderful, and I'm betting there's virtually no competition among those who presently control it.