Tuesday 28 November 2006

Who's the face of Telecom theft now?

So with Annette Presley gone, who is the Face of Theft for this latest raid on Telecom? David Farrar, who's lapping up this Cabinet-level sortie into the nation's boardrooms? David Cunliffe, the smug bastard holding the gun? Or all 119 MPs who on the back of a Select Committee recommendation to "split" Telecom today have signalled they will vote to further dismember the private property of Telecom shareholders, confirming the loss of one-third of Telecom's value in just six months.

This is an outrageous assault on private property rights.

Says the report of the Finance & Expenditure Select Committee in recommending this change: "There are many precedents for this type of regulatory action..."

Yes, there are. In Venezuela.

LINKS: 3-way split for Telecom recommended - NBR
ACT: The only party to support property rights - Scoop
Annette Presley: The face of theft - Not PC (May, 2006)

RELATED: Telecom, Property_Rights,Politics-NZ

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Quite! If I were Telecom I would simply deny every one access to its private property for a week, just to remind the Government who owns its property.

Anonymous said...

How about a bit of praise for ACT in standing alone on this one?

Anonymous said...

James said...
[How about a bit of praise for ACT in standing alone on this one?]

Agreed 200%.

Libertyscott said...

There are no such precedents - the closest was court action in the US on AT&T which was in an environment where there was legal restrictions on competitions. The electricity market may be another example, but that was against official advice and did little other than allow SOEs to enter the retail market creating their own vertical integration (i.e. it failed).

What is worse is that Telecom goes along with it.

Kane Bunce said...

Indeed, PC! I was angry when I heard about it on the Breakfast show and ASB Business this morning. So angry I wrote up a huge post for my blog about it. One that goes into more detail than this one. feel free to go and read it everyone.

Alone? No, James, the Libertarianz stand against, as you would know if you knew anything about them.

Liberty Scott, British Telecom split themselves in two out of fear of a government proposal to do it by force that would of passed otherwise. I'd call that precedence. How about the LLU for a more local precedence? It includes just as big a breach of property rights and includes mention of this kind of thing. I'd call that precedence. And the US government at one stage proposed splitting Microsoft into four separate companies. Yet more precedence.

Yes, Telecom going along is worse. Don't act in the chiilinhg effect Telecom! Fight for what id yours and yours alone! As I said in my blog, that's what I would do.

Kane Bunce said...

In fact I'd threaten to close Telecom down all together. I'd say something like, "We operate with full and exclusive control of our property, with no government interference, as we have the right to do, or we don't operate at all. How will you get your intended increased investment then?"

Anonymous said...

Alone? No, James, the Libertarianz stand against, as you would know if you knew anything about them."

I meant those in Parliment Kane....come back when ya have some fuzz on ya balls son....;-)

Anonymous said...

Luke H commented on David Farrar's website regarding this issue in September:
[They (Telecom) have a monopoly because no-one else has bothered to build a competing service. This is partly because the NZ regulatory environment makes it difficult if not impossible to build a parallel physical cable network. It is not because Telecom threatens other companies who are thinking of making it happen.]

This is exactly the point that David Farrar and other leechers (Ihug, darling Annete Pressly Slingshot, Telstra, etc...) are failing to grasp.

Yahoo & Microsoft were the 2 duopoly in search engines domain, because no one else challenged them during their dominance period. An unknown new comer (Google) in the late 1990s thought that the 2 giants could be toppled by entering the market & compete directly with them. There was no law at all that forbid them from entering the market at all. They just wanted to get there and cause some havoc amongst the other 2 duopoly. What happens now? The new kid on the block in the domain of search engines is now the new monopoly.

There it is. You cede control something to someone because whingers & leechers don't have the guts to stand up and compete.

Kane Bunce said...

I meant those in Parliment Kane....come back when ya have some fuzz on ya balls son....;-)

Being offensive doesn't help you. I am 24 so I am old enough to have "fuzz", not some young kid like you imply.

Besides if you meant that you should of said so. If you want to be understood you need to be clear in your wording.

There it is. You cede control something to someone because whingers & leechers don't have the guts to stand up and compete.

This is one of the rare times I agree with you, Falafulu. In my blog I recommended removal of these restrictions. Another idea that would help is stop taxing people. More people could afford broadband then. And more companies could afford to create their own network.