Sometimes dirty politicians are caught at the right place at the right time, and everybody thinks they’re a hero. This is the case with Moshe Kahlon, another Likud politician who left the party to form his own Kulanu party. Others who left have been Lieberman, Bennett, Livni, and Sharon. Kahlon is a two-bit loser lacking any guts or backbone, that was shoved in the right office at exactly the right time to make one move and now people worship him.

What people think he did was introduce competition into the cellular market, thereby lowering prices. If he had done this, it would have been a good thing. Unfortunately, this is only partly true. He did allow other phone companies to exist (amazing) thereby increasing competition. But there was one caveat that nobody seems to care about that will bite everyone in the ass very soon.

They never tell you this detail in the media, because the media is stupid. But Kahlon’s “reform” goes like this. Companies have a finite amount of time to start up and get as many customer as possible. In order to enter the market they have to pay a huge deposit to the Misrad HaTikshoret or whatever department is the overlord of the phone market. And then the 4 or 5 (forget how many) companies with the most customers gets their deposit back from the overlord government department.

This, of course, encourages rock bottom prices at a loss for the phone companies because they are trying to stay alive in the race to be allowed to continue operating. My phone bill, for example, is 10 shekels a month with Golan Telecom. They are charging ridiculously low rates because the owner, Something Golan, wants to be in the running to survive and get his deposit (bribe) back from the government.

After the time limit is up, which I believe is at the end of 2015, the remaining companies will then jack up prices to higher than market rates in order to make up for their losses in trying to bag as many customers as possible within the time limit. There will STILL be a lack of supply because other companies will STILL be banned from the space and forbidden from competing with the survivors.

So much for Moshe Kahlon, who, if he had any guts, would have simply closed his department and allowed anyone to start a phone company at any time anywhere.

All a government minister has to do in order to really succeed is close his office, lock the doors, and never show up.

Unfortunately, that is not what Kahlon did.