Earlier this month we noted how Disney and ESPN had sued Sling TV for the cardinal sin of actually trying to innovate. Sling TV’s offense: releasing new, more convenient day, weekend, or week-long shorter term streaming subscriptions that provided an affordable way to watch live television.
These mini-subscriptions, starting at around $5, have already proven to be pretty popular. But, of course, it challenges the traditional cable TV model of getting folks locked into recurring (and expensive) monthly subscriptions. Subscriptions that often mandate that you include sports programming many people simply don’t want to pay for.
So of course Time Warner has now filed a second lawsuit (sealed, 1:25-mc-00381) accusing Dish Network of breach of contract. In the complaint, Warner Bros lawyer David Yohai argues that this kind of convenience simply cannot be allowed.
That sounds very good, and I agree. But I think even that system would be capitalistic too. But with way more control and ownership of it given to the people instead of the 1%.
In Denmark we have some of that, although it was partially undermined by the right wing government in the 80.
But electric infrastructure is “in principle at least” owned by the users. The same is somewhat true with water supply, Public transportation, Postal services used to be but aren’t anymore. Some of our internet infrastructure is indirectly publicly owned. So we have 1 Gbit internet at a fair price.
All these things exist fine withing a well regulated capitalist system, and even with private competition. The real key is taxes and distribution of wealth, and in that regard the biggest problem is to balance being part of an international community, which a small country like Denmark absolutely has to be, and balance that with the race to the bottom we often see from other countries.
It would for instance be easier to tax the rich fairly, if there weren’t tax shelters. But the rich can spend a lot of money on tax and accounting specialists to avoid tax. And they are often very difficult to pursue legally.
These are the real world problems, not just the knee jerk “capitalism is the problem” that is so often thrown around.