My sense, from my own area of work, as well as in reading the news and reading economics research, is that there isn't enough competition in the market, and there's too many monopolies.
The problem as I see it, in the US at least, is that the solutions to these monopolies don't fall along the lines of the "government good versus government bad" rhetoric that tends to dominate partisan discussions. In some areas and in some ways we need less government, maybe a lot less, and in some areas and in someways we need more, maybe a lot more.
In some areas, to my view, there needs to be a lot less regulation, such as in some aspects of healthcare research and service provision (e.g, licensing laws, lots of drug regulation). Sharply reducing intellectual property laws are another example (sharply reducing copyright duration, making patents much more difficult to obtain, reducing terms). In other areas there might be a need for more regulation, such as in pricing transparencies, maybe even in applying anti-monopoly laws to some hospital and insurance groups in some areas.
Why aren't we in the US rolling out massive municipal ISP infrastructure, for example? This would solve multiple things at once.
I could go on and on. Basically, I see monopolies everywhere. I feel like the government needs to take action to introduce massive amounts of competition into the economy, whether that be through public projects or deregulation, or both.
One of the best set of podcast episodes I ever heard (there are many great podcasts out there, but this is one of them) was on Heavyweight.
It's about one of Jonathan Goldstein's friends (Gregor) who is trying to retrieve a CD set of Alan Lomax recordings from ... Moby, of all people.
This podcast is brilliant to me because, while it somehow manages to be comically absurd, it also raises all sorts of issues about success and credit and how it is achieved, and what worth that actually has. The Lomax recordings, for example, were arguably central to Play as an album, and it was Gregor that introduced Moby to them. So although Gregor just wants his CDs back, by the end of it, a lot of issues are raised about how much credit Gregor really deserves for Play, and Moby's resulting success from that album. Gregor himself isn't looking for financial compensation or anything, but you kind of start to wonder if Moby should have done more for him interpersonally or something, or in terms of acknowledgements and introductions and something, if nothing else as a friend.
But then you meet Moby, and you find out he was severely depressed after the album came and went, because he's realized he's been one fad in a stream of fads, and that a lot of the issues he had in his life weren't going to be addressed by the fame. But then again, he's sitting in this really nice house, and doing pretty well for himself, and he still doesn't give the CDs back to Gregor, and dodges the issue almost entirely, other than to say they're locked in an archive somewhere that Gregor can't get to.
I'm approaching a point in my career and age where I'm looking back and myself and looking at others, and starting to feel like a lot of success is just luck, or chance, or coincidence, or something like that. Not all of it, but more than we give it credit. I also feel like it operates in these subtle, cumulative sorts of ways. I'm also frustrated because it seems like people go through these contortions of hindsight bias and selection bias and all sorts of other things to justify these things post hoc, or that discussions become distorted.
For example, Phelps is a great swimmer and I don't mean to suggest he doesn't deserve his medals. I also don't want to suggest that Moby lacks talent or something. But what if Gregor hadn't shared those Lomax recordings with him? Would Gregor's career been different if Moby had actually shown thanks to Gregor, by forging connections for him, etc.?
I have a mentor and friend who is wildly successful in their career, at the top of what's achievable in that field, and well within the top 1% income-wise. At one point, for various reasons, especially because of their spouse, they moved to a position with a different organization. To me it seemed like a great fit. This friend had entertained other moves, that never seemed right to me, but this one seemed right. In the end, though, it killed his productivity, and he stopped being able to do much of anything, just because differences in culture and fit at the two institutions. He got out of it and returned to where he started his career, and things became ok again, but I've often wondered what would have happened if he had started at the second place he worked at. I have a strong suspicion people would have attributed whatever happened to him to him, rather than his circumstances or fit, and I'm not sure he would have had a point of comparison to know enough that he would do better someplace else (after all, everyone thought the move was a kind of win-win-win for everyone involved, when it turned out to be the opposite).
I contacted my legislators about this a couple of times (maybe more?) first by email and then by phone. This was before Pai did the inevitable.
The staff who answered the call were variable in how aware they seemed to be about net neutrality. Some of them seemed to know what I was talking about, and others seemed clueless.
At the time, maybe a week or two later, I got a typical kind of response. I wouldn't say it was canned, but maybe something like that, explaining their position and so forth, which I knew. I've received many of these types of responses over the years on various issues (I'm not saying all the responses I've received have been like this, but a lot of them have been).
The thing that's strange is that the last couple of days, about the time the dems managed to gather their 50 votes, I started getting these emails from some of the same legislators explaining that they were crafting a response. These were legislators that already replied to me, a couple of months ago or so, and the vibe I got was that they wanted to reapproach the issue or something. I've received one of these letters, and the overall position hasn't changed, but it was more detailed and a little more defensive or something.
I'm not sure what's going on, but my gut impression is that the GOP legislators here are realizing they're on the minority end of this issue with regard to public opinion, and are trying to reapproach voters with a different PR spin, trying to do damage control and a "do-over" on an issue they weren't paying too much attention to before. They seem a little nervous about their position to me, even if they haven't changed it formally.