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> By Jerry Knight
> ...
> since then, competition has driven down the price of long-distance
> calls -- > and the value of the long-distance companies. MCI was
> sold to WorldCom for ...
> Cheaper phone calls and cheaper phone stocks are the free market at work,
> dollars-and-cents examples of the "creative destruction" that capitalism > can unleash.
The above is typical of the mantras chanted by the business types. They ignore the role of technology in the picture. If fiber optics and microelectronics had not appeared on the scene we would still have expensive long-distance phone service, regardless of competition or the lack of it. Deregulation is still spoken of as if it were a panacea. People tend to forget that the reason we got regulation was to curb the abuses that were taking place in its absence.
jhhaynes at earthlink dot net