tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21829866.post9116259966294382507..comments2023-08-20T07:06:14.115-04:00Comments on Thurber's Thoughts: Just another way to not be responsibleMaggiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12677808307727487766noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21829866.post-68885058831318971962010-05-12T13:16:16.340-04:002010-05-12T13:16:16.340-04:00MadJack - no matter what your beef with a cell pro...MadJack - no matter what your beef with a cell provider, government has no business telling them that they must (under force of penalty) notify you if you're close to exceeding your usage limits.<br /><br />This is not government 'listening' to constituents. This is government being used so constituents don't have to be responsible for themselves. No person should need a government rule or law to keep them from going over their cell phone minutes.<br /><br />And I did say that bills could be simplified. But the rules Congress created in the effort to "help" have made the process far more complicated and now they're making more rules because they couldn't predict how the myriad of individual activities in the marketplace would respond. No government can do that - which is why a 'free' market is so much better and wiser than any group of politicians and/or bureaucrats.<br /><br />Of course a business wants to maximize its profits. Part of the problem is that ALL businesses look at what Congress does and still find ways to make a profit. That's not a bad thing. <br /><br />In a truly 'free' market, the market would respond to bad business practices (like gouging or providing bad service) and the company would be out of business very shortly if it didn't change. (or get bailed out by those same clueless politicians...)<br /><br />But instead of that being allowed to happen, people turn to government to 'force' their own personal preferences outside the market system. And politicians, eager to use such issues as campaign fodder, are only too eager to comply.<br /><br />The best thing a politician can tell a constituent is "I understand your problem, but that doesn't mean that government must act."<br /><br />I had to do that numerous times when an elected official and all the people I told that to were more empowered as a result.<br /><br />That's the core issue here - whether government is going to 'represent' the people .... or turn them into mindless idiots who cannot act on their own without government telling them what to do or protecting them from the consequences of their own stupid mistakes.Maggiehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12677808307727487766noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21829866.post-51478835366933782932010-05-12T11:34:28.031-04:002010-05-12T11:34:28.031-04:00I don't agree. It's past time for the FCC...I don't agree. It's past time for the FCC to regulate cell service providers. Consider that cell phone providers operate like any other company in the US (or anywhere) in that their primary motivating is maximizing profits. The reason your bill is difficult to decipher is not the government regulations; it's because the company has found multiple loopholes and is using them.<br /><br />From Maggie Thurber: <i>But some people didn't pay attention so along comes a bunch of bureaucrats and politicians who think that's just too much to ask of individuals so they want to create a LAW to force companies to perform this task for us. They call it a regulation, but it is enforced like a law with penalties for non-conformance.</i><br /><br />Yeah, imagine that? Elected officials actually paying attention to the complaints of their constituents. What is the world coming to?<br /><br />It's true enough that this is called a regulation but is enforced as a law, but if it were not enforced as a law the company would ignore the regulation as having no teeth.Mad Jackhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06190137186843630543noreply@blogger.com