🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <3CE6DD73.905BA40A@sympatico.ca>, 
  "Dave Smith" <adavid.smith@sympatico.ca> wrote:

| > You are free to drop the service in the case of a price or service
| > change from that which you originally purchased, are you not?
| 
| Of course I am free to drop the service.  I should not have to. I
| contracted for *unlimited* access. That is what was agreed to and that
| is what I expect.

I guess, then, that the "really bad decision" made by Sympatico was
offering an agreement to people like you in the first place.  You
seem to be suggesting that they locked themselves into providing you
with "unlimited" internet access in perpetuity, regardless of
whatever costs your use of this access would impose upon them.

You admit they should be able to raise the price to cover
these costs, it seems.  But then you insist that they must
raise the price for everyone, including those who are *not* 
imposing very large costs on them.

Why should I have to pay a much larger price for my access
in order to subsidize someone who uses a great deal more
bandwidth than I do?  I applaud Sympatico for having the
fair-mindedness to make the heavy users pay their share of
the bill (not really though, see A. Smith on the butcher
and the baker).

That having been said, of course, I don't know to what
extent the proposed new Sympatico prices actually do end
up charging people for how much they use (why for example,
does it kick in only at 5G/month?  I use only .3G/month, 
and I get plenty of use out of the internet.  And $8/G on
downloads over 5G seems to be quite a bit pricier than
the cost per G below 5G).  Perhaps they are just hiding an 
attempt to rip people off behind what appears to be a fairer 
way to distribute the costs we must all bear. 
  
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Calvin Ostrum                                              cbo@interlog.com
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 To say altruism and morality are possible in virtue of something basic
 to human nature is not to say that men are basically good.  Men are 
 basically complicated; how good they are depends on whether certain 
 conceptions and ways of thinking have achieved dominance, a dominance
 which is precarious in any case.  The manner in which human beings have
 conducted themselves so far does not encourage optimism about the moral
 future of the species.   -- Thomas Nagel, "The possibility of altruism"
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