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Mr Khan said: But what happens in these cases is that everyone suffers before we hit that breaking point. Hell, you can look at what cable companies do in America, where their natural monopoly capabilities are "dealt with" by having them run contracts in various municipalities, such that your township suddenly gets Comcast as its only Cable provider, and then you see the municipalities alone acting as the arbiter of market competition and Comcast gets to screw over the local folks on actual rates (although what got us off Comcast was when they started turning the pressure up for us to get digital cable by kicking essential channels off their analogue cable lineup, a rat tactic of a different mold) When one farmer charges too much for his beets, its quick and easy to find the next farmer. When your cable company, or worse, your electric company, starts to get uppity, all you get is problems for everyone. |
If your cable company become jerk-offs, pay for satellite. 
The argument goes that in a free market, you wouldn't have to worry about hitting the breaking point. Because the barriers of entry would be much lower, the companies would be providing a good enough service, anyway, to protect from future competition. What would a company prefer? The price gauge for 5 years? Or to be the top player for 15 years?
When you put up artificial barriers, like contracting, licensing, zoning laws, regulations, taxes, and all the rest of it, you essentially create a barrier between the current people in the game, and anybody new who wants to get in. This enables companies like Comcast to come in and act in an uncompetitive way, and get away with it, because it is so much more expensive (and potentially illegal) for anybody else to compete.
