I was raped by Verizon the other day. How can I complain? Everyone gets it. The short, short version: the antenna came off my phone and it wasn’t working very well. I should have tried fixing it with a paper clip and some duct tape, but I was in a hurry. Stopped by a Verizon kiosk only to be informed that Verizon doesn’t sell replacement antennae. What? The phone has your logo on it but you don’t support it? Good to know. I was eligible for a new phone since I’ve had my old one for two years too long (two years), so I got one. Paid money even though it was “free”. Well, TANSTAAFL.

The entire unpleasant experience got me thinking along another set of lines, specifically those of, “there has to be a better way”. Indeed, it turns out there is, but everything is stacked against it, favoring instead large companies such as Verizon. Which makes sense; they thrive. One solution I came up with is to use cars as the basis for ultra-low powered transceiver, which could connect to other cars and anything else with a transceiver, such as houses. The problems with this are pretty large. Many people use cell networks, so there is no public band that would have enough bandwidth to continue supporting this. They’ve all been auctioned off to the highest bidder, which is no person, naturally.

Incidentally, I’d like to complain about spectrum use for a moment. I find it very curious the way we handle the electromagnetic spectrum. There’s only so much of it, so the government gets to own all of it and dole it out to people? Isn’t this communism? Maybe it’s the best way, but ultimately I don’t think it is. Nobody can go around claiming they own the color green. So why does someone get to own 1911.15mhz? Yes, freqs are prone to jamming, but physical property is prone to vandalism. This doesn’t mean the government steps in and tries to own all property. Besides, it’s a piece of cake to find a jammer because they’re broadcasting their position to every person they jam. That’s like a graffiti artist who only tags with their address.

Anyway. All that to say: there’s no practical way, in this era, for non-monolithic groups to join forces and create a cheap alternative to the cell phone network. Everyone is a victim of monopoly and there’s nothing you can do about it.

As a testament to my bizarre ruminations, consider this very real train of thought I’ve been entertaining for the past few days. Important people like the President are always protected by a small army. But less important people such as, say, Verizon’s President of Operations, NE Region, aren’t. Now, what if people revolted—not against the government, but against corporations themselves? In other words, operatives sneak in and take out people just under the board. Do this enough times in a row until nobody wants to take the position. Assuming you can get away with this (well, that’s easy. Hire lackeys to do the dirty work), you could possibly get a company to the point where nobody would want to take responsibility for anything for fear they’d be the next target. Then watch as the company trips over itself. It wouldn’t actually solve the problem of electromagnetic monopoly, but it would be interesting to witness.

To rephrase my earlier statement: there’s nothing legal anyone can do about monopolies if the government encourages it. Well, almost.

My thoroughly unpleasant Verizon experience directly led me to be a proponent of open source. Previously, I was rather ambivalent about the whole concept. I didn’t think it was practical, but if other people wanted to spend their time working on stuff they’d just give away, more power to them.

But as I got to thinking, I now believe that the only way to produce something cheap and with quality without a monopoly is with open source stuff. Competition doesn’t do it because that will net you cheap, or quality, but rarely both together because—here’s the crux—if someone offers cheap and quality together, they get a monopoly. Now you can certainly have a principled and just monopoly holder, but let’s be honest: doesn’t happen.

Well this is a puzzler. How can we encourage competition when it will either lead to a series of decent, but not great products, or a monopoly of initially great, but eventually decent and more often crappy products?

I think the answer to this lies in open-source stuff. The idea behind open source isn’t that it’s free (not all of it is), but that it is open. The “source” refers to software source code, but more generally refers to information. In other words, nothing in open source is proprietary. Anyone else can take a look at the underlying code, data, or what have you, and figure out a better way of doing it. Then they can actually do it. Give credit where credit is due, of course, but remix and improve. Another way of looking at it is preventing a monopoly by turning the monopoly-holders goods against them. There’s little incentive for a monopoly holder to improve the quality of their product. By making intellectual property open, anyone can improve it.

I don’t expect anyone to jump up and down regarding this, or even care. It’s just that for me, personally, I now consider open source a lot more important and relevant than I did before. Although that’s only because I was inconvenienced—and by inconvenienced, I mean sodomized.

-Ted