WhyADuck
Premium
join:2003-03-05
| reply to Camelot One
Re: what a shocking surprise!
Let me post a hypothetical here. Let's imagine a land where, a few decades past, there was no such thing as 911. Everybody had a sticker on their phone with the numbers of the local police and fire departments, and maybe the ambulance number also, attached to their phone (which, by the way, was technically an illegal foreign attachment but the phone company knew better than to make a stink about it).
The someone came up with the idea of a three digit emergency telephone number that could be used in any sort of emergency. And it was good, and it saved lives, and whenever it saved lives someone made sure it got plenty of coverage in the popular press (newspapers and magazines).
Then citizens in towns large and small started asking their mayors to get the local phone company to put in one of these wonderful emergency numbers. And in city after city, the mayor and the council members looked into it and found the equipment required, and the special trunks required, were quite costly. So they told the citizens,"we can install one of these systems but we will have to raise your taxes!" And the citizens said, "But we are already taxed for police and fire protection - use some of that money to fund the new system!"
But the police chief didn't want to take a cut in pay, and the fire chief didn't want to take a cut in pay, and none of the police or firefighters wanted to take cuts in pay, nor did they want to do without new police cruisers or fire trucks for a year or two.
Then the Man from the Telephone Company came by. And he said, "Mr. Mayor, I have a solution for you. You can have your shiny new 911 equipment and you will not have to raise taxes by a single dime." And the Mayor, who was running for re-election soon, said, "Please, Mr. Man from the Telephone Company, tell me how!"
And the Man from the Telephone Company said, "All you have to do is lease the equipment from us, and lease the special trunk lines from us. We will install it, we will maintain it, and we will repair it for a nominal fee if it breaks. And the beauty is, we will add the cost to the telephone bills of all your citizens. So, you can tell them that you got them a shiny new 911 system without any increase in their taxes, and you don't have to worry about any pesky state laws that limit how much you can tax the people."
But the Mayor said, "How do we know we are getting a good deal on this equipment? Are you charging us a fair price for it? Will it last many years, or become obsolete soon?"
And the Man from the Phone Company's face darkened and he said, "Why do you ask such questions? What do you care if you are getting a good deal or not? Your citizens will pay for it because they have no choice, unless they want to give up their telephones. We can be a powerful friend or a powerful enemy. Wouldn't you like to win re-election? Wouldn't you like to be our friend?"
And so the citizens got their 911 service, the city got some nice shiny equipment that was overpriced and obsolete sooner than anyone expected, and the extra charges remained on the phone bills and were increased from time to time, which meant the Man from the Phone Company lived happily ever after.
And interestingly enough, in this hypothetical land, let's imagine that after some length of time had passed, the phone company tried to convince everyone that in fact the equipment was theirs, the circuits were theirs, and that their profits took precedence over the safety of the citizens. Even though the people had paid many times the value of the equipment, and even though lives might be lost, the phone company absolutely refused to cooperate with new competitors who wanted to connect to the 911 trunks because after all, that equipment and those trunks were theirs.
No, that couldn't happen, could it? Nowhere would people be dumb enough to say that even though they had paid for the equipment and circuits many times over, sometimes at vastly inflated prices, the phone company should still have the right to exercise absolute control over who was able to connect to those circuits, right?
Well, maybe nowhere but America! |
