When All Else Fails, Whine To The Government

Two very interesting business tussles make the pages WSJ today - the NFL Network versus the major cable carriers and the NYSE versus major Internet companies. The NFL and the cable guys are locked in what the WSJ rightly calls a game of chicken, the NFL wants to raise prices and get on the cable networks while the cable networks want the programming but at lower prices. And so they battle, negotiate, and each hopes that market forces will favor their position. Same thing is going on with the fees that the NYSE charges Internet companies for stock price data. Although in this case, the Internet companies are not fighting it out in the marketplace, they are whining to the government. This is exactly what they are doing in a showdown with large ISPs like Verizon and Cablevision. I keep hearing how Silicon Valley companies are full of such exceptionally smart people. If they are so smart then how come they have to go crying to the government when things don't go their way and/or they get outflanked strategically? Maybe they are smart in the sense that they know that enlisting the government is the best way to play the game with a losing hand. In this sense, they are like the airlines or the big three automakers. In light of all this, seems to me that the vaunted Silicon Valley reputation for intelligence and business savvy is a bit overblown.