Friday, May 16, 2014

Congressional Republicans: Wholly Owned Subsidiary of the Rentier Class

Comcast buys themselves a Majority Leader, tries to become rent seeker extraordinaire, by @DavidOAtkins
Comcast is an egregious example, and a particularly pernicious one given the importance of an open internet. But they are just one among many.
"ISPs attempting to rid themselves of pesky net neutrality in order to charge a toll for higher speeds online is a classic example of rent seeking. Comcast didn't do anything to earn the right to charge those prices. The taxpayers funded most of the infrastructure of the Internet. Comcast is simply one of the companies that made it to the top of the heap when we foolishly privatized the profits of the internet investment We the People made. Now they want to strip net neutrality regulations in order to charge a toll for no good reason at all. Rent seeking is at the heart of much of the economic malaise we suffer from. Exorbitant and pervasive rent-seeking is a byproduct of the misguided move to worship asset ownership instead of working wages. Using our utterly corrupt money-is-speech election donation system to buy rules to allow greater rent seeking is the epitome of economic evil in politics. And Comcast and John Boehner are right in the middle of it."

Money isn't speech. Corporations are not people.  And a bought and paid for government is what you get when you allow rent-seeking behavior to flourish. 

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