The market is self-correcting. As long as there are not barriers to entry, monopolies cannot maintain their market share WITHOUT (this is the caveat) providing better prices and services/goods than any competitor. Which is a win for the consumer.
Google falls into this paradigm. Yahoo and MSN are so incompetent, and their search so useless, that Google dominates the landscape. Both Yahoo (time) and MSN (OS) have had big traditional advantages over Google. And yet they lost out.
Someday, someone will challenge Google seriously, by taking on the search engine portion. Unless Google continues to have the best search engine, in which case again, the consumer wins with Google being available and pervasive.
As far as Enron, you're making my point. No regulation and deregulation are not the same thing.
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I just think some industries should be regulated where there is a history of no one providing a real competitor.
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So you're saying that in an industry where there is no competition, we are going to regulate it into a monopoly?
Maybe there is no competition because the cost is below the price to develop an alternative? In which case, the market price (however high it may be perceived) is not higher than it should be.
Maybe no one can compete with your electric company, because there is not enough profit in it to compete! Duplicating infrastructure may not be profitable because only a portion of the existing market will be served with 100% of the capital costs. These are just economic realities, not monopolistic agendas.
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Can you imagine your house having 5 power lines running up to it and you go unhook one and hook up another? How much would the waste be from extra lines or extra switching/metering devices?
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Can you imagine having multiple phone companies? Multiple cable companies? Oh wait, Cell Phones and Satellite TV.
The market will provide if there is demand. Just because it is a hassle to duplicate infrastructure today, doesn't mean that the free market won't create new infrastructure or find a new technique around it.
But in order to have the profit incentive to do so, the market has to have zero artificial barriers to entry. If it's too costly to get in, then it becomes even harder to develop alternatives.
It's like the so-called energy crisis. You can't drill anywhere. You can't build nuclear. There are probably a million other things you can't do. So the costs are enormous to practice any R&D and establish a new company.
So the government's solution is, spend more money. Instead, they should just cut regulatory red tape. Let people drill. Let people build nuclear. Let the market work.
You see this all day, every day. Right now, the banks are in trouble. The system is starved for genuine, real capital.
So the government will impose more regulations, force capital to flee to other markets and out of the currency. They will run up more debt, causing inflation, which will make it even harder for people to keep the homes they haven't bought yet.
When really, they should cut red tape, raise interest rates and cut spending/taxes simultaneously. That would allow the market to respond to the crisis, higher interest rates would be an incentive for people to save (savings are capital) and by cutting taxes would have the same effect. People would be more inclined to work, save and invest. The spending cuts have to come, because more debt is inflationary, so you can't cut taxes unless you cut spending, otherwise you're spinning your wheels.
Watch what the government does over the next year or two. They will do everything assbackwards, and then blame the market, price gougers, greedy capitalists etc. All while they continue to spend spend spend, and help out their buddies on Wall Street.