After reading the Dec. 9 Okanagan Sunday story "Locked in and livid," my heart went out to those who woke up one day to find themselves inexplicably in three-year cell-phone contracts and who then ran to mommy CRTC to get them out of their self-inflicted predicament.
How traumatic it must have been to be held at gunpoint in the cellphone store and forced to agree to a contract they didn't really understand.
But now they have realized - a few months after using their handy new cellphones - that a "three-year contract" means a contract that lasts for three years, and these livid consumers once again demonstrate questionable decision-making.
They were unhappy with their phone contracts largely because the skewed and uncompetitive marketplace, created at least in part by government overregulation, offered them such a narrow range of high-priced contract options.
But instead of recognizing that, these unthinking consumers blindly ask for more of what got them into this mess.
Like a drowning man asking for water instead of air, they figure that yet another layer of government regulation will fix the cellphone contract problem.
Surely, a proposed "national code" - to be created at a cost of millions to taxpayers, complete with a series of public hearings by busybody CRTC bureaucrats - will do the trick.
Overregulation of the marketplace helped put those consumers in their situation. The remedy they should be calling for is a big cut in the number of regulations and bureaucrats, and let a freer marketplace offer increasingly competitive options.
Canada has legions of public servants who are no doubt wonderful people and who do a great job for us - but there is a huge strata of public officials at all levels who believe they know better than you just how you should act, and they would love nothing better than to tell you and me exactly how to live our lives, right down to the smallest details.
If the public doesn't wake up and put the brakes on the inexorable creep of additional regulations in all facets of our lives, then the busybody officials will get their way - and valued things like the free market and even free speech will eventually be gone.
Lawrence McMahen,
Naramata