So file one.

You left this out:

Not all businesses are equipped to comply with employee regulations and tax laws for every country around the world. They don't know what they are, they don't want to know what they are, they don't want to have to worry about a bunch of different compliance requirements for various countries around the world. Furthermore, for many businesses, it's just not fucking practical.

Imagine if currency were backed by hookers and blow.

That would be a pretty exciting world to live in.

Why should the French care?

I suspect I have a lower standard of "perfectly nice" than most.

I mean, I lived in a place with no running water for a year.

Yeah, I dunno about your statement that I'm too lazy to quote.

I left Verizon for US Mobile and cut my bill to less than half of what I was paying Verizon.

I'd say US Mobile is competing against Verizon just fine.

I think the real issue, and I'm just guessing here, is that most people have never heard of small companies like US Mobile. I don't think I have ever seen a big ad campaign from them. I could not even tell you how I found out about them. But I sure am glad I did! I love having a 2-line phone bill for a lousy $37.50/month. With Verizon, it was over $100.

If you wanted to address that issue, and I'm not in favour of it, you could require the Big 3 to include info about VNMOs in their monthly bills to customers. It could take the form of a one page ad for any VNMO that requested their ad be included, with the contents determined entirely by the VNMO running the ad. If you felt like it, you could limit it to the top 5 or 10 VNMOs in the service area.

This approach gives the small companies an easy way to directly hit up Big 3 customers, and gives Big 3 operators an incentive to lower their fucking prices in a bid to keep customers.

The other way to do it, and I am not in favour of this either, is to not allow infrastructure owners to offer cell service. They'd have to be wholesalers only, and be prohibited from owning or being owned by, in whole or in part, any company offering cell service to end customers. That's pretty heavy-handed government, which plenty of people on this forum should love. Regulate wholesale rates ala Utilities, and let the customer-facing companies compete on price and value-add. The Big 3 all get a small but practically guaranteed rate of return on their investment and end users benefit from maximized competition. To prevent the Big 3 from doing the minimum to stay in business, require them to invest in themselves or lose their assets to a company that will, provide incentives for infrastructure investment, etc.

All of that said, I'm perfectly happy with the current state of affairs and would not change anything. Personally, I think I get a METRIC SHITLOAD of value for my less than $40/month and have absolutely no complaints.

Which does not mean a whole lot. That includes the best neighborhood in Dallas and the shittiest on in Shit Hole, TX, wherever that may be.

I bet there are some perfectly nice houses in Texas for under $150K.

Walmart?

Let me know when the govt is giving out free pussy.

And it needs to be free pussy that people actually enjoy fucking too.

Many places around the world suck.

Money.

They sue for money.

If they say anything else, it's all a bunch of bullshit.

We are very upset that your chat program killed our little boy!!

But a few million dollars will make us feel a lot better.

Sure.

The concept even extends to politicians.

"The White House said...."

"The Kremlin promised...."

"No comment from 10 Downing Street...."

Interesting story. Thank you for sharing it.

In my case, in April 2022, I was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer, metastatic to the liver and lymph nodes. After chemotherapy, chemo-radiation, and radiation, I had surgery to remove it all. Initial scan showed it all gone, just what you want to see. But at my first regular 3 month scan, it was back. I've now had 5-6 surgeries, more radiation, a shit more chemotherapy.

And what did I get for all that? It's back in the liver. It's back in the lymph nodes, it's in the lungs ("too numerous to count"), and, worst of all, it's now invading my vertebrae. As a result, I have a compression fracture in L4 and L5. My bones are being crushed under their own weight. It is INCREDIBLY painful. I can barely walk.

It's a punishment I would not wish on my worst enemy.

Were it not trying to tough it out for the sake of my (now) 9 year old little boy, I would have tossed in the towel a long time ago. As it is, they are out of treatment options for me. I'm on a waiting list for some experimental treatment. You know how those go.

In the meantime, it's nothing but pain and misery every fucking day.

I don't think it will spontaneously disappear.

Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it isn't a nice wage.