Letter of the Day: ‘The elephant in the room’

Editor, Index-Tribune: If you have a cable or satellite TV account, you must get their set-top box and pay a monthly fee for it.|

Editor, Index-Tribune:

If you have a cable or satellite TV account, you must get their set-top box and pay a monthly fee for it. Consumers pay an average of $231 a year to lease these devices. The FCC estimates that the prices for these electronic devices rose 185 percent over the last 20 years, while prices for smartphones and other electronics plunged.

This illustrates how a company with a monopoly can take your hard earned money and there’s nothing you can do about it except, of course, cancel your service completely and go without. The FCC has five commissioners who will vote to possibly overturn this set-top box monopoly and unlock the set-top market to innovation. The consumer stands to both save money and get a wider level of features if the FCC votes in favor of the proposed rule change on Feb. 18.

The five FCC commissioners consist of three Democrats and two Republicans. The three Democrats have indicated that they will vote in favor of the proposal and the two Republicans have indicated that they will vote against the proposal.

When one thinks of corruption one may imagine something that happens out of the public’s sight. However, can corruption also include when public officials create regulations that don’t provide for a greater public good, but just benefit a commercial enterprise at the expense of the consumer? Are the two Republicans that are voting against the proposed rule change to break up the set-top box monopoly being corrupt? Is there some greater good that the public and consumer receive from having a set-top box monopoly?

I think this clearly illustrates the difference between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. The Republicans generally choose to be against the consumer and to favor the large commercial enterprises. As a result, we are all getting milked, a little bit each day, just like the Clover dairy cows.

Will this continue forever? Maybe not, the commissioners on the FCC are scheduled to vote to end the set-top box monopoly soon and, thanks to the Democratic commissioners, it appears that this monopoly may go away. That’s good news! You and I will eventually pay less for these boxes and get more features in them. Maybe we can work toward a single-payer health care system next? Paying a couple of thousand dollars extra in taxes to save $10,000 in health care costs seems like a good deal to me.

Moo...

Reed Peters

Sonoma

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