ATT Unterminated

I think some repetition is desirable on this news.

The great deregulatory stories of the 1980s, which conservatives tout, are all turning into nightmares or hoaxes. The airline industry is the clearest example of nightmare, since, excepting SouthWest Airlines, U.S. airlines have been in a downward spiral since shortly after deregulation started. Now the telephone industry is the best example of hoax, since the old T. Rex of the industry has been reborn. The recreation of AT&T is the Jurassic Park of the business world. Meanwhile, the uncompetitive U.S. auto industry is dying a terrible death: an immensely obese, vegetative dinosaur being torn to pieces by Tokyo's newer and quicker versions of Godzilla.

What these latest spectacles demonstrate is what we should already know. In the 200 or more years of Capitalism since Adam Smith's 1776 Wealth of Nations, monopoly and depression have been regular events. Almost every generation has had at least one depression. The current Baby Boomers were one of the few generations saved from that indignity by the New Deal policies those ingrates so detest. The Great Depression of the 1930s was one of the worst in American History, but there were other major Depressions after the Revolutionary War, after Andrew Jackson, after the Civil, War, and during the Cleveland Administration in the 1890s. I have no doubt the present Bandit Administration will bring about another of those periodic catastrophes. The ineffectiveness of conservative government in the Katrina disaster should warn us that economic collapse just awaits lighting the fuse.

Besides depressions - the supposedly inevitable Capitalist business cycle - there is monopoly. While self-proclaimed "economists" (people who swear fealty to the market gods) assure us that Capitalism does not promote monopoly, other observers have repeatedly noted that Capitalism ends in monopoly. In the Capitalist jungle, whichever business is best at putting aside competition , by whatever means, will go on to dominate the market. The most ferocious will eat competitors and/or their lunches until only the most ferocious are left standing. Then, those predators will attack each other. In the end, there is either one King of the Hill or, less often, the Plutocrats form a Junta of Oligarchs. But even among oligarchs, there is usually one of their number acknowledged to be their Great Leader. Jungles don't have much room for Kings.

So, after a generation of "deregulation," which saw the destruction of Bell Labs, endless bankruptcies of lesser phone companies, and the end of telephone service as something one did not have to think about, we have almost traveled full circle. The difference is that thousands and thousands of employees were dumped by the wayside, those who now work for the reborn giant are insecure, and orphans and widows no longer get dividend checks. Almost all the benefits of the telephone business are now reserved to its managers and major shareholders, fat and toothy lions all. Unlike the nasty old regulation days, there is no 800 pound gorilla hanging about to make our lions nervous about their surfeit.