Comment on: "How to Fix the Wireless Market",

see
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/26/opinion/how-to-fix-the-wireless-market.html
for original NYT Op-Ed

This is an interesting example, even if somewhat innocuous, of government regulations versus the self-regulating, self-optimizing gobbledegook of free-market enthusiasts.

In the \"perfect world\" of the GOP, the government would have allowed the merger between AT&T and T-Mobile and they would ignore the predatory practices of the wireless industry, under the assumption that everyone is making \"rational choices\" with \"perfect knowledge\" and that therefore government intervention is not necessary. The net effect would again be that more wealth and power flows to the 1% and the 99% get screwed.

Now translate this to some really important issues, such as health care, where the free-market (speak the health insurance and pharma industries) are robbing the public blind, for health care results that are among the worst in the industrialized (and even third world) countries, and you start to see the ridiculousness of the GOP position: Free-market capitalism, left to its own devices, serves only to concentrate wealth and power in the hands of a very small oligarchy.

There will always be a tug-of-war between the role and power of government and the role of \"free-markets\" - given the pace of change, technological and economic, this will always require a balancing act. But given the evidence of the last 30-40 years, where the role of government has been continually cut back and the power of corporations given ever more scope and freedom, which has resulted in the current economic world-calamity, i think the dogmatic GOP positions of \"get government off our backs\" is demonstrably a complete failure.