President Trump: The NEW one and only politics thread

For what it is worth, I think those businesses -- content and broadband -- have changed so rapidly and in ways that people didn't see too far in advance, that it's a hard game of conjecture to play. It's why he whole "antitrust" thing is silly to me. It's like Mr. Magoo trying to dribble a football. This is a heavily regulated marketplace, which has already created winners and losers in a corrupt way. But to the extent that there has been any measure of free competition, we are seeing things that the power brokers trying to stack the deck 10 years ago didn't anticipate -- whether it is Netflix or streaming Pay TV skinny bundles that tens of millions of consumers have already embraced. Where broadband goes in the future is a guess -- will it be 5G service putting cable / satellite / fiberoptics out of business the way you are asking? I am sure you are right, that the established providers are trying to figure that out and are trying to position themselves. Whether they will get it right is always a question. There could be technology that isn't on our radar screen at the moment that gets a foothold and makes any of them obsolete. Which again, is why from my perspective, people's faith in czar-like bureaucrats creating "competition" (the idea is Kafkaesque) is mind-boggling. The reality of what they do is politicized corruption. You said, "Comcast practically has a seat in Congress." I wouldn't be surprised by that.

We don't know where the future of content is going to be. For one, even if you or I have it right, there is no accounting for how the government messes with the actual competitive environment and stacks the deck somehow. Which could create a whole different set of outcomes (ones that will cost consumers -- whether people see the costs of what "could have been" instead.). For another, it is evolving quickly, and there is no accounting for misexecution by any of the players trying to win in that market. But from the outside looking in, it actually looks like some serious competition is happening on its own as you have providers and consumers doing their thing -- to the point that margins are so low on some of those streaming skinny bundles, that the providers are not making money on them. Look at who is involved. ... the traditional pay TV providers, of course. The idea behind any "trust" accusation against any business always defies reality, but in this case, you need to allege that businesses that are scrambling because they see uncertain futures. ... are trusts. You have Hulu (which Disney, and both Comcast and Time Warner have stakes in). You have Google with its YouTube TV. You have AT&T with its streaming service. Sling TV from Dish Network. You have Netflix creating a headache for all of them. And several other streaming providers. Who the winners and losers ultimately will be. ... none of us know. Maybe content remains fragmented for a long time and niche players thrive, rather than someone doing world domination. What I do know is that actual competition would come from letting them compete and letting consumers buy what they want. It doesn't come from czars interfering in private business activity to somehow CREATE competition. They are doing the opposite.