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Municipal Net Access: Unfair Competition?
ruvreve writes: "Net Economy has an article about how Los Angles is attempting to provide the ability for end-users to have a choice between multiple ISPs for high-speed bandwidth access, among other things. The article talks about how a city has an unfair advantage to offer such services. Unfair because the government monitors and regulates the cable and phone company but at the same time wants to compete for their customers. If it gets 100Mbit access to my front door it HAS to be good!" This issue's been raised a few times before, but the article raises some points worth thinking about.
These cities hand out welfare all the time... free food to these homeless bums, foodstamps to pregnant dropouts, etc. And then they have the nerve to regulate food? These poor commercial food companies have to sell unreasonably clean food, raising the cost! If it weren't for this unfair competition in customers, plus restrictive legislation, these food companies could probably provide food to the homeless, at a price they could afford. Who cares if its not quite up to standards?
I AM NOT A CONSUMER. If you think that my only reason for existence, is to buy your crud, and fill the coporate coffers, fuck off. If the goverment, which I pay for in taxes, happens to have a clue, and want to build infrastructure (one of its main purposes), then what right do they have to complain? They had their chance. My god, if you can't move faster than our goverment (which is ALWAYS 20 years too slow), then you DESERVE to go broke. I have no sympathies for any of these companies, that are still trying to do business as if its 1975.