Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit
> There is a counter incentive, the money the companies pay the politicians.

That's disingenuous. The public has been told a beautiful fairy tale about technology for years. There are huge outcries every single time any politician tries to regulate big tech.

Now I know that this isn't because the public is somehow ideologically opposed to regulation. We have been paid off, just as much as the politicians have. When they increase the prices of televisions and say it's because they this new regulation, we show up to support them.

> The public has been told a beautiful fairy tale about technology

He typed, from a tiny device in his hand, from a bed in an air-conditioned apartment millions of miles away. Or perhaps from a jet sailing through the sky, via a satellite in space

Modern technology is basically magic but all anyone wants is flying cars.

Wi-Fi on planes is truly astounding when you think for even a moment.

The fairy tale is not about the capability of technologies. That part is wonderful. The fairy tale is the techno-optimist "democratization" nonsense. I can recommend reading "Cyberlibertarianism" by David Golumbia if that distinction doesn't make sense to you.
It is not plausible that a company would raise prices as some kind of revenge or play to overturn a regulation. That is not how prices are set in a free market because any company that did that would immediately lose to their competition. Unless we have a cartel of television manufacturers, which would be news to me.