Soviet Union Of America (1)

Prologue

I believe the history of the U.S. in the 20th century and beyond is full of examples how similar the U.S. economic policy came to mimic the Soviet Union system. Perhaps this will become a series of blog posts as time goes by. :-)

Trigger

Just read “Net Neutrality: Good for Google, Not Consumers/Businesses used to accept being charged to use technology. Now they fight to shift the burden.

” by G. KEITH Cambron published May 1, 2014.

Here is the salient quote from this article (Emphasis added):

“When I began my career as an engineer at Bell Telephone Labs in the 1970s, one of my jobs was to figure out how much offering new services would cost. ATT our parent company, would use the information to calculate proposed tariffs for state and federal regulators. These tariffs governed what consumers and businesses paid for communication services.

The regulators had a guiding principle: Businesses should subsidize consumers to promote the public good and ensure universal service. It was common to charge businesses twice as much as consumers for basic phone service, and for additional features such as call waiting. Businesses accepted the policy because they recognized the value of services that helped customers reach them.

Mr. Cambron is the former president and CEO of AT&T Labs and author of "Global Networks: Engineering, Operation and Design" ( Wiley, 2012).”

Government Price Controls

Like in the Soviet Union government price controls have been and still are present in the U.S. or if they are not present any industry or business has to fear that the federal government or a state or municipal government could step in any time.

Mr. Cambron claims that “businesses accepted the policy because they recognized the value of service ...”. I would claim Mr. Cambron is quite wrong. If big businesses like AT&T accepted it then because it preserved their monopoly business from competition with the help of big government.

We the people (consumers and entrepreneurs) lost here in more than one way! For decades, they had to pay too much for service and innovation was stymied thanks to this collusion between big business and big government.