DSL Outage: Even a Tinge of Competition is a Better Alternative

There is another principal way to spot whether an industry has been competitive or has been plagued by politics.

Market competition essentially emphasize on the satisfaction of consumers PERIOD. 

As the great Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises explained:

The real bosses, in the capitalist system of market economy, are the consumers. They, by their buying and by their abstention from buying, decide who should own the capital and run the plants. They determine what should be produced and in what quantity and quality. Their attitudes result either in profit or in loss for the enterpriser. They make poor men rich and rich men poor. They are no easy bosses. They are full of whims and fancies, changeable and unpredictable. They do not care a whit for past merit. As soon as something is offered to them that they like better or that is cheaper, they desert their old purveyors. With them nothing counts more than their own satisfaction. They bother neither about the vested interests of capitalists nor about the fate of the workers who lose their jobs if as consumers they no longer buy what they used to buy.

The race to win the votes (expressed as money sales) of consumers comes through many channels, such as pricing, product/service quality, distribution, accessibility, after sales services or more…. 

In other words, the market economy is about the pampering of consumers, where competition plays a very important role in arriving at such goals.

In the context of my current predicament where I had limited access to broadband services over the entire week, when an industry leader who reportedly commands 70% share of market, blatantly neglects and disregards the concerns of their affected consumers, which leave the latter groping in the dark as to when such disruptions will end—supposedly due to “network maintenance” or transition pangs from “system migration”, and where the service provider hardly offers a meaningful feedback on the status of restoration process or at least propose alternatives to the ease the burdens of consumers from such troubles, such attitude exudes not only overweening contempt on consumers but also manifest on the malady of deficiency of competitive forces in motion. 

By the way, this has not just been about me. Current troubles supposedly involve about 10-20% of subscribers according to one of their service agents. The industry leader perhaps think that household internet access may have been only about access to popular media networking sites, so they can just go about ignoring consumer’s concerns.

Here is a public figure virulently castigating the industry leader over at social media due to exceedingly “slow internet access”

True there may be existing competitors, but if the supposed competitors deal with consumers in the same manner but whose difference lies in the degree of (lesser) apathy, which means consumers have been seen as a secondary priority then such is a manifestation of a heavily politicized industry. As a side note, feedback from some friends suggests that the alternative major competitor seem to share the same outlook as with industry leader.

Nonetheless still even a tinge of competition is important. One week of internet inaccessibility has prompted me to end a 10 year relationship and to experiment with a fledging competitor.

So competition provides the window of choice between having access or having totally NO access to the internet.

P.S. Due to DSL outage there will be no stock market commentary this week