If you cannot figure it out for yourself with all of the readily available examples in the public arena already then perhaps there is no level of education that will benefit you.

But here goes… some portions of the infrastructure becomes public property, while other portions remains as business owned property. Example, the Telephone poles and the underground pipes that handle the cabling are public property. Telco’s pay a maint fee for what they use. This allows them to all run their own wires, but not have to dig or stand up new pathways which can be regulated by government.

The telco can still in a free market offer whaterver level of service the local market is willing to bear as they see fit without interference from locally ‘purchased’ monopolies or other fiefdoms carved out by the FCC, ISP, or Local government corruption. Since they do in fact travel across state lines they can be regulated federally blocking cities from cunting up their less than intelligent citizens options.

In one sense, it is insane to continue to ask the most corruption institution mankind creates to manage shit for us, so in my opinion… we are getting exactly what we keep asking for!

We don’t want a free market… so we do not have one.
We WANT corrupt as fuck regulation… so we get them, and then ask for more… TD fashion.
We enjoy the bribery and pork that our elected officials get us locally while incessantly bitching about the other team doing the same!

So there you have it… ‘mere mortal’ a system you wanted but say you don’t and a product of your own efforts of which you deny to have participated in!

Enjoy your mortality…

… same way you buy a pair of shoes or rent an apartment — voluntary agreement & exchange. If you want to own or use somebody else’s property — you mutually determine an agreeable exchange mode (usually money). Happens billions of times a day, in restaurants to mega-billion real estate deals.

—

If you hate COMCAST or your cable company — yes, blame it on the government (to simplify a half-century of history).

At the founding days of the cable industry, local governments mistakenly insisted that cable TV was a “natural monopoly” that must be regulated like telephone service. Selection of government-approved cable operator was a political one, with the most flattering supplicant winning the monopolistic right from city councils to string wire on utility poles and cross right-of-ways to sell cable service. Local politicians collected big franchise fees from the cable companies, shook them down for sweeteners like municipal channels and public access studios, regulated their rates, and required the operators to wire all if not most of their jurisdiction.

Of course, cable TV wasn’t a natural-monopoly (nor were telephones)– but a government-made monopoly. By the time Congress and the courts reduced the power of local governments to regulate cable in the 1980s & 1990s, the damage was done. Sure, new cable operators could apply to compete, but they still had to run the vast regulatory maze and face well-entrenched government-made monopolists. In most cases, the only new entrants were previous telephone service monopolists … with deep pockets and who knew how to play the regulatory game, such as Verizon (FIOS) and AT&T.

By legislating local cable monopolies, government created national oligopolies like COMCAST & Time Warner Cable… grew to market dominance by purchasing existing franchises, market by market. Such a quick, massive consolidation would not have been possible if regulators had pursued policies easing the way for new entrants.

In the cable industry, the regulatory scheme has been captured by the regulated, which is a sad but common and predictable event.

__