> For this argument to work you have to believe that decreasing the price of service delivery wouldn't decrease the price of health insurance.
I think we are talking past each other. My argument is not that lower prices for medical services wouldn’t lead to lower insurance costs. My argument is specifically that increasing supply doesn’t necessarily lead to lower prices for medical services. It would be quite a finding if US cities with more doctors per capita have cheaper medical services but if anything the opposite is true
I think you’re still missing the point - it’s NOT classic supply and demand because the mechanism by which that works is prices, and in many healthcare markets including the US — the buyer isn’t the payer, and shortages lead to rationing (via wait times) rather than increased prices, so often increasing supply doesn’t change prices even as it increases aggregate costs (because there’s still excess demand and rationing).
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My point is that carrier locking is about managing credit risk and fraud, not an evil plot to trap customers, and not a mechanism for discouraging street theft.
It’s only complicated if people conflate issues or fail to understand the mechanics of carrier locking. You can just call up a carrier and ask to have the phone unlocked and they’ll oblige if its paid off. Sometimes people confuse carrier locking with imei blacklists, which is for stolen handsets. Sometimes people confuse phones with modems or firmware that only work with specific carriers as “carrier locked” but again, that’s not the same thing
It’s not speculation - this is literally why cell phone locking was invented. The imei blacklists were created much later specifically for theft, not to manage credit risk of customers getting subsidized phones.
You can literally just call your carrier to ask how to get your subsidized phone unlocked. There’s no need to speculate- it’s not a secret!
This is incorrect. You can pay off a phone early and simply ask that it be unlocked - the carrier will happily comply because you are no longer a credit risk. You can also just purchase phones unlocked by paying cash upfront. You don’t need to be a genius to deduce how this works.
The imei blacklists for theft were created much later and aren’t honored globally
It’s impractical to “repossess” phones so in practice the carriers wouldn’t be able to stop people from deliberately defaulting on the contract with no repercussions (they can bring it to a different carrier who is indifferent)
It is 100% an anti theft mechanism - it prevents people from stealing phones from carriers. The scam is:
- get a new iphone from tmobile that costs $30 over 2 years.
- don’t pay them anything: you just got a free iphone. Tmobile is mad and won’t provide service to that handset because you stole it from them.
- You open a new line with at&t and tell them you’re bringing your own phone.
Carrier locking prevents this. If someone steals your phone on the train that’s a different problem with a different solution
Outlawing certain kinds of math is a level of totalitarianism we should never accept under any circumstances in a free society