(October 7, 2009) — Capitalism is a cornerstone of the United States. But so is socialism. And while this remains true, entrepreneurs are seeking new ways to escape the inefficient bureaucracy of government regulations. They turn to cyberspace. In Glendale, our cable provider is Charter Communications and our electricity company is Glendale Water and Power. Only Charter and only Glendale Power. The government provides for basic needs. Free enterprise economy? Yeah, and Mr. DeVore’s class is easy. Satisfaction may be a virtue, but in no way an excuse. Online, competition exists because it is allowed to exist. And where there is competition, there is no such thing as satisfaction. There is no “who’s first?”—only “who’s better?”: we were satisfied with commenting (MySpace), but we now can poke (Facebook). Freedom, however, is temporary, as we have seen in the brief history of American laissez-faire . We now have environments to protect—polar bears hiding from gas leaks and birds from windmills. And tests to pass—2.001% fiber or 2.002% fiber. Those who survive are favored by the government. We speak against, but vote for monopolies. A local company can’t afford the gas leak fine, but Shell can. A small biotech company can’t wait years for a drug to be approved, but Genentech can. The Internet is yet to be considered an endangered species. And regulations are only in their first stages. There is still time to become another Google or another MySpace, to create new algorithms or a Facebook pinching feature. The clock is ticking, however. According to National Public Radio (NPR), the Federal Communications Committee (FCC) is proposing regulation aimed at protecting net neutrality, prohibiting Internet service providers (ISPs) from providing higher quality service to certain websites. David Young, vice president of Verizon regulatory affairs, is “pleased to hear that the chairman intends to do only as much as needed and no more.” But Mr. Young is forgetting the Constitution. Here, freedom of speech is protected: ISPs can’t provide lower quality service to websites with unpopular beliefs, as MoveOn.org and the Christian Coalition, according to NPR, believe. Here, competition is also—supposedly—protected; government can’t interfere. I f a company pays more, it gets better service. Simple. Constitutional. But let’s repeat history, so that we’ll end up protecting microchips from extinction. Let’s repeat history to say we’ll never repeat it again.