Claiming it can't be proven is ridiculous, gravity can't be proven either.

In the words of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.  When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

Everything else has been proven wrong.  Until we come up with something else to eliminate, the free market economy is the only method known to man that might actually work.  All others have proven self destructive on a massive scale, even the so called limited intervention.

The power grid in this country is so inefficient that over half the power generation never even makes it to an outlet.  It's pissed out of leaky transformers all over the country.  That's the buzzing sound in the radio when you're driving past the poles.  If the power companies had competing lines from other companies, they'd actually have to maintain them instead of charging twice what the power consumption is worth to make up for the half that's lost.  You don't have any idea how utterly fucked you are just because it's been like that.  You only notice when something changes for the worse, if it's already a horrific ream job you're oblivious to it and assume the system is functioning.  Still worried about your internet?

In honor of 'my friend' psychoak, I have to say: Well, why don't you move to a world where everyone is always able to do whatever is ncessary to achieve their goals--otherwise known as Dreamland. 

The problem with you market-worshippers is that you continually discuss markets as if they were the environmental equivalent of gravity or the bipolar water molecule. Markets are fundamentally social, and trying to talk about them as if they could be as consistent as physics or chemistry is just silly.

I'm a lapsed anarchist, which makes me strongly sympathetic to general claims like "let companies run themselves," but I'm a practicing small-d democrat because I accept that I live in a real, specificaly detailed world that demands compromises from everyone who wants to have anything to do with the agora/forum/market/polity/nation/whatever. Whether or not a customer is being 'forced' into anyting in a commodity market like bandwith services, even if it is generally considered a non-essential commodity, is definitely a judgement call; it is not a matter of 'science' or crudely binary rhetoric.

Monopoly or not, we can tip the scales as consumers.  I voted with my money and switched to Earthlink.  I'm getting the exact same speed and using the exact same cable modem, but I no longer have to face the limits that Time Warner is trying to impose on us. My internet cable bill actually went down from $39.99 for Time Warner to $29.99 for Earthlink and my measured speed went up from 1.5mbps to 2.0 mbps.  (I attribute the speed increase to the time of day I tested and not the switch, though.  The same infrastructure is most likely going to give the same speed).

It's because of government's intervention that this is even possible for me.  Time Warner has to allow Earthlink access to their infrastructure.  On the other hand again, it was the local government that gave Time Warner the advantage of a defacto monopoly anyway, with their city contract.  Once the metropolis of Austin sold the right of way to Time Warner, the other two cable companies in Austin and the surrounding towns went under.  It's a two edged sword.

Whether you agree with government intervention or not, you still likely have a choice similar to mine.  If Time Warner is the only cable provider and there is no DSL in your area, there's more than likely a secondary provider that you can switch to.  Doing so will send the message to Time Warner that we as customers are not pleased. 

Bring the company to its knees and boycott the service.  Either that or don't download much.  Contact customer service and drive them up the wall.  If African Americans can live without bus service in the wake of the heroic action taken by Rosa Parks, you can live without internet except what is absoutely needed for a job, etc.

Fight or complain, your choice.

Just because you live in a world that doesn't have any free markets doesn't mean you can't strive and fight to get closer to that (instead of further away).  While I would definately like a Free Market in the world I also understand that there aren't any but I still vote on things that push us a little closer to a free market instead of a little away.  I also pointlessly argue on random internet forums and IRC channels for changes that put us closer to a free market, instead of pushing us away in hopes that even a single other person will join me in voting against socialism in the future, or perhaps take up arms in some far off revolution.

Just because you live in a broken world doesn't mean you should actually argue to make it worse.  All I'm trying to do is persuade people (0 or more) to let companies run themselves.  I'm not expecting things to change because of my arguments but the theory is that if enough people are educated about a better alternative eventually things will change.  Unfortunately, most people are not properly educated on the subject and thus the reason we are going down the path towards socialism (which, according to Marx, leads to communism).

Ironically, if people get their way and cable companies don't do something about their broken pricing model everyone will end up in a worse off situation in the long run: no broadband or government subsidized broadband (meaning little/no growhth).

I am a Republican conservative, but I see the limitations of the free market.  Complete unfettered free market capitalism leads to Time Warner's current atrocity, similar to how the various tycoons of past lore worked children to death for pennies a day in payment.  Some Government intrusion to lay the smack down on greedy companies is necessary, the key is a happy balance.  Lately, government has been a little too intrusive for my liking, but Time Warner ought to be put in their place.

AMEN!!!!!!!!!!!

Am I the only one who finds this hilarious?

If you're the only shmuck on this forum that doesn't know gravity is a theory, yes you are.  Since there are plenty of utter morons on this planet that share such an education, you're probably not.  There are problems in the theory of gravity that we've as yet been unable to surmount.  It may be wrong entirely. When they figure out why their numbers keep coming up wrong on slingshot mechanics and why the pioneer space craft aren't moving fast enough, we'll have a better idea.

It's nice that you use the word lore.  That's about all it is.  Child labor atrocities are a work of fiction.  Children have worked since the dawn of time.  When a kid was working with his family on the family farm or in the family store, no one gave a shit.  They still don't.  The only thing that changed was the rise of industry.  When they were doing things like beating children, or practicing forced labor, they were doing criminal acts.  Crime is crime. 

I have yet to see an actual instance of Government laying the smackdown on a greedy company for anything that wasn't criminal in the first place.  I have seen them put people out of work and into homeless shelters so they weren't paid an "unfair" wage, destroy the best companies around because they were too good and took out all their competition, and, most commonly, reverse their own actions and turn on the monopolies they themselves created when it was no longer politically expedient to support them.  Naturally it's always an evil corporation that's the target.

Time-Warner is a dying company.  They're losing money on the cable networks, lots and lots of money.  Jacking the price up is a last ditch effort to survive.  Satellite is wiping out their customer base for television, and Fios and wireless are butchering an already crumbling infrastructure that's ten years too old.  If they really are reaming their customers, competition will come in to make money off the circumstances and wipe them out for good.  If they aren't, you're paying a reasonable price for the service and you get to either accept it or drop it.

Cool.  That makes exactly 3 of us in the ToE AFAIK.  I knew there was a reason I liked you.   

+1 karma.

So the fact that the numbers are wrong, regardless of by how much, proves that the effect doesn't exist?

There are instances where the military modifier of 2.1022411 doesn't give me the exact military might that it should in GC2.  Sometimes it's lower, and sometimes it's actually higher.  Does this mean there is no modifier?

No, it means there's something unexplained in the current theory of gravity. The current theory is merely a working approximation based on observed effects with no solid theory behind why those numbers are what they are. Add in the fact that no one can completely explain how gravity works at the quantum level, and there's plenty of room for newer theories to supercede the current one. Gravity is easy to observe, damn hard to prove.

If u really must know its just greed and a way for them to limit people from the internet. they are trying to get rid of "net nuetrallity"  (AND YES THAT IS REALL) wich means one that is free of restrictions on content, sites, or platforms, on the kinds of equipment that may be attached, and on the modes of communication allowed, as well as one where communication is not unreasonably degraded by other communication streams.

and this is what Time Warner is doing  -  telecom companies seek to impose a tiered service model more for the purpose of profiting from their control of the pipeline rather than for any demand for their content or services.

If I could ascertain what psychoak's earlier comment was in response to, I might at this point be able to try to refute it.  As I can't, I simply found it humorous that he compared gravity, which by all accounts we have a fair approximation of, quantum effects notwithstanding, to economics (at least, I think that's what he compared it to), which by all accounts it appears we do not have a fair approximation of.  Except for those who think a truly free market can solve all of their problems-oh, it appears I've found what we were arguing about after all.