substantial portion of your salary is based indirectly but inexorably on profiteeringterm for "pricing what the market will bear"
My dictionary suggests that "profiteering" is a reference to price fixing, gouging, and other unsavory business behaviors -- not market-based pricing.
Moreover, data is data. Charging more for one kind of bit than another is ridiculous.
power companies are regulated utility monopolies that have to respond to state governments
And why not communication companies, then (beyond the small degree they're regulated)? Obviously there's a need.
This shouldn't surprise you, because there is arbitrarily segmented pricing in everything from hotel rooms to canned tomatoes to beer to office space to cars to computer chips.
Every type of product and service you mention has an open market and real competition. If I don't like the price of Heineken I can just buy Coors (presuming I think they're of equivalent quality).
AT&T, Verizon, and their cohorts have the mobile market locked up -- no other company is going to come along any time soon and offer carte blanche data access, because the whole market is engaged in "wink-and-nudge" collusion. They don't have to actually conspire; they just know they can all get away with the scam if they all pull it.
Comments
substantial portion of your salary is based indirectly but inexorably on profiteering term for "pricing what the market will bear"
My dictionary suggests that "profiteering" is a reference to price fixing, gouging, and other unsavory business behaviors -- not market-based pricing.
Moreover, data is data. Charging more for one kind of bit than another is ridiculous.
power companies are regulated utility monopolies that have to respond to state governments
And why not communication companies, then (beyond the small degree they're regulated)? Obviously there's a need.
This shouldn't surprise you, because there is arbitrarily segmented pricing in everything from hotel rooms to canned tomatoes to beer to office space to cars to computer chips.
Every type of product and service you mention has an open market and real competition. If I don't like the price of Heineken I can just buy Coors (presuming I think they're of equivalent quality).
AT&T, Verizon, and their cohorts have the mobile market locked up -- no other company is going to come along any time soon and offer carte blanche data access, because the whole market is engaged in "wink-and-nudge" collusion. They don't have to actually conspire; they just know they can all get away with the scam if they all pull it.