Re: My Dinner With Marc Andreessen

On Wed, 10 Jul 2024 08:57:24 -0700, Dave Yeo wrote:

On Tue, 9 Jul 2024, Scott Dorsey wrote:
>

Lawrence D'Oliveiro  <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

>
The simple fact is that mobile phones took off in lots of countries,
reaching over 100% penetration in several of them, while the US
continued to lag behind. What was different? Those other countries
used the Government-mandated GSM standard, while the US just ???let
the market decide???.

>
It's true that the cellphone companies in the US lobbied congress for
a number of regulations that stifled competition and stifled the
growth of the industry, such as the Electronic Communication Privacy
Act of 1986 which remains a stumbling block for all kinds of things.

 
It is a good example of capitalism in action, using capital to acquire
more capital, in this case by buying government.

Which they did very well, to their own benefit, but not to that of their
customers who were supposed to be paying for all of this.

The Europeans managed to create a much more competitive free market.