Sheeple Telecom here to bludge

Tue, 30 Nov 2004

Sheeple Telecom here to bludge

"What is it with Australian telcos and corporate welfare?" asks Libertarianz spokesman Andrew Bates. "First Telstra buys the previously profitable Clear Communications and openly builds a business case around bludging off Telecom's and Vodafone's investments. Now the pinky-named Sheeple Telecom are forming an alliance with Call Plus - those opportunistic, regulation-hungry parasites of other people's investments - admitting that they won't invest here until our 'embarrassing' lack of regulation is addressed."

"Between them they call for increased regulation of our telco industry in areas such as mobile termination rates, mobile origination rates, local loop unbundling, number portability, DSL pricing, DSL wholesaling and DSL product offerings. Even their own staff point out that management is not focussed on customer service. Is there anything in the Telco business about which Call Plus and the Aussies won't run to Nanny State and the Telco Commissars for help?"

New Zealanders need not be embarrassed about better protection of property rights, Bates notes, adding that when pioneering investments are appropriated for the use OF others - as in the case of Econet's lobbying for the expropriation of Vodafone's infrastructure - pioneers become less willing to invest. "Moreover, when regulatory uncertainty dogs every strategic decision, making investors and entrepreneurs wonder whether the state will punish them for being too competitive, paralysis grips the industry, hamstringing innovation."

Bates refers to the proposed Libertarianz Constitution for New Freeland which recognises property rights as a fundamental moral right necessary for human prosperity and which would ban government regulation of the economy. "With the property rights of shareholders respected, we'd see investment by the right kind of firms, firms which focussed on building better customer offerings through their own investment and innovation. The parasites' lobbying would have no effect and they would be consigned to the economic compost heap where they belong."

ENDS

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