THE ROBERT W. WHITAKER ARCHIVE

To avoid lawsuits, let me make this theoretical.

When cable television was first getting started, most cities licensed somebody with pull to have a city monopoly. Reader's Digest had a feature article telling how cities which did NOT give our monopolies got much better service and lower prices.

DUH!

In any given city, the people with the head start set up the bureaucratic, rigid, inefficient and expensive cable systems we have today. Today they are one solid mass of monopolies.

Some cable systems had a problem. Someone had read the Reader's Digest articles and some towns made room for start-up, efficient cable. In such cities, an advisor was called in and he said what Bob's Mantra logic says, "You want to protect your monopoly. Start a campaign against monopolies."

This gentleman called a Ralph Nader-type consumerist group which took on such matters. The consumer group was a biggy, and their agenda is making government bigger, using consumers as their excuse as similar groups with t heir own agenda use the environment or minorities.

So the TV monopoly's advisor called them up, as he had before, and asked their help in fighting the town monopoly. Lawsuits were brought, regulation was increased. The cable monopoly was part of a national chain. So when the consumer group came to town, all this big company had to do was turn this paperwork over to its legal staff. They had dealt with the whole thing before and everything they needed was already in the file.

But for the tiny start-up cable groups all this paperwork was entirely new. They were good at CABLE. They knew how to set up a cable system, but they had no idea what to do about the lawsuits or how to deal with the city, state, and county governments, community groups, the Federal Communications Commission and everything else a "consumerist" group could throw at them. They could not afford to hire lawyers by the hour to catch up on this stuff for them.

All competition with the monopoly folded.

So the bottom line was what it always is. In the name of anti-monopoly, we now have monopoly cable in every jurisdiction I know of.

By the way, the cable monopoly showed how it did not mind consumers watching it by making a huge contribution to the anti-monopoly watchdog group. Such good deeds never go unrewarded. The city approved a rate increase to cover the monopoly's legal and paperwork costs and the contribution.

Hate is routinely promoted in the name of anti-hate.

But back to monopolies. In the 1880s the monopoly aspect of the railroad industry, the price agreements made openly, caused a reaction. The South was kept in absolute poverty until after World War II by agreed-on freight rates that absolutely prohibited industry in the South. No one mentions this today, of course. Historians say the South was poor because it was Evil.

So the government took action on railroad freight states. It set up the Interstate Commerce Commission to regulate those rates. The ICC then made those price agreements into law. Every regulatory agency belongs to the industry it "regulates." What the ICC did, as anti-monopoly movements usually do, was to give the worst aspects of the gougers a matter of law.

Once the ICC was under way, railroad magnates never had to worry about competition in the railroad industry again. Reagan finally abolished the ICC after almost exactly 100 years of existence. He did so specifically to allow competition. The ICC had been keeping any other means of transportation from competing with the railroads by using the rails. For example, they made it difficult to piggyback trucks.

The National Association of Manufacturers, which represents big business, is more liberal, or "reasonable," about government regulation than is the Chamber of Commerce, which has a small-business constituency. Whe ti comes to Federal regulation, the CC comes off as a bunch of greedy fanatics, whereas the NAM is good and solid and moderation incarnate.

If anybody were able to think, they would realize that the NAM is more than moderate about these things. Big government means that nothing but big business is viable. No company with less than several billion dollars in assets can get into the auromoboile industry today. Environmental regulations dictate the exact shape of every car. The list of agencies at every level to which a car company must report is endless, and each one has plenty of reasons to make things hard on them.

The public cheers. The NAM "gracefully accepts" the government regulation while laughing up its sleeve.

This is ALWAYS the case. This is the most standard tactic on earth, but nobody gets it. You won't read about it anywhere but here.

The National Association of Manufacturers, which represents big business, is more liberal, or "reasonable," about government regulation than is the Chamber of Commerce, which has a small-business constituency. When it comes to Federal regulation, the CC comes off as a bunch of greedy fanatics, whereas the NAM is good and solid and moderation incarnate.

Jerry Fordism triumphs again.

If anybody were able to think, they would realize that the NAM is more than "moderate" about increased government regulation. Big government means that nothing BUT big business is viable. No company with less than several billion dollars in assets can get into the automobile industry today. Environmental regulations dictate the exact shape of every car. The list of agencies at every level to which a car company must report is endless, and each one has plenty of reasons to make things hard on them.

The public cheers. The NAM "gracefully accepts" the government regulation while laughing up its sleeve.