Mercury, Retrograde
18th March 2012
Charlie Stross has an amusing tale of the sort we all go through on a more or less perennial basis.
Let’s look at the last paragraph particularly, shall we?
Final observation: today’s monopoly status can be as lost as easily as it was gained. Virgin Media have a monopoly on cable TV in the UK … but there are rivals; Sky for satellite TV (if you live in an area where satellite dishes are permitted), digital terrestrial TV, and BT have upgraded their phone network to the point where TV-over-ADSL services such as BT Vision become practical. The instant I can get the channels this household needs from some organization other than Virgin I will be out of that contract. And all because they stuck after-sales technical support in the wrong column of the balance sheet — as a liability, rather than an infrastructure investment.
So why is this significant? Because Charlie Stross is a socialist, and rather tiresome about it; particularly in his bad-mouthing of capitalism and all its works. And yet the competition and free markets that are the distinguishing characteristics of capitalism, and that invariably disappear in socialist systems, is what he loudly wants — and, presumably, would be the first to vote to get rid of if he got the chance. There’s enough irony here to sink an aircraft carrier (of which Britain no longer has any, poor dears, since their government spends like our government but they’ve run out of other people’s money first).