"When the government picked companies and gave them monopoly rights to frequencies in San Francisco and Los Angeles and New York and Chicago, it was picking the winners of the competition; it wasn't setting the terms of the competition"

This quote by Robert McChesney is describing the federal government's function in the telecommunications industry. The government has the power to grant monopoly rights to particular business, allowing them to manage the frequencies in major cities. This means that the government is basically deciding which companies will achieve success in the market, instead of allowing the marketplace to decide. This can be viewed as an unfair advantage, as the government is essentially choosing the winners of the competition without enabling any competition. This can cause a lack of development and a lack of competition, which can be destructive to the market as a whole.