I began writing a blog post about a very unpleasant discovery that Comcast began deliberately blocking our port 25 this morning — without informing us. All day we were not able to send outgoing email — and if I didn’t work in the software industry, I would likely take more than just an hour troubleshooting and creating a temporary workaround. I had a entire post written about how unimpressed I am with Comcast and their business procedures, their outsourcing residential customer service to India, Net Neutrality in general, and the slow erosion of the rights of an Internet customer.

And I could write lengthy articles about the business model that Dex Media engages in, where it is more profitable for them to provide poor service than good service. Regulations or competition are the only things that could change this. We have all had these experiences with large companies. You probably can think of at least three immediately. And there are no benevolent alternatives because for many industries there are so few choices the it is a battle between a poor company, a worse one, and not having the service at all. Some examples are national news companies, Internet access, cell phone service, cable service, satellite radio, and radio conglomerates. And luckily this is not the case for some services like water — at least in most of the US.

We have been hearing since the early 80’s that free markets are the cure-all for any industries. Conservative politicians and some political pundits still cite this as common knowledge. Graduating from the conservative University of Chicago school of economics, we were taught that a free market naturally leads to many desirable properties including enormous efficiencies and cost-savings to the customer.

But.

There are some assumptions that must be in place for free markets to lead to these desirable properties. There must be significant competition. And customers must have ability to readily switch from one competitor to another. Four cell phone companies is not significant competition. One high-speed, residential Internet company is not real competition. When there is little or no competition then businesses will immediately maximize their profit by charging more money, locking customers in, provide poorer service, making customer service less helpful, creating policies that weed out the most costly customers. The most costly usually are the highest risk, those with the least money, or those with the most demands or complaints relative to their revenue.

This is not a problem for high-end sports car oligopolies. This is a problem when there is a monopoly on the sale of water. For example when water became a monopoly (aka privatized into a single company) in Bolivia — they drastically raised the prices because that would increase their profits even though it would price people out. On the scale between sports cars and water, where does Internet access lie? Where does cell phone service lie? Where does access to investigative journalism lie? The only protection to monopolies are regulations and restrictions for industries that either structurally require few companies (such as electric companies with their power lines) or end up that way through mergers and acquisitions.

Consumers don’t have the advocacy organizations, the will, or the money to compete with these companies. We, as consumers, have no voice but our ability to take our business elsewhere. Or in the case of these monopolies and oligopolies, take our business nowhere. Our government is the only entity that is in the position to create a level playing field where consumer rights are just as important as corporate profits.