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Is Cheap Broadband UnAmerican?
Reader Ant wrote to mention the article entitled Is Cheap Broadband UnAmerican? The author argues that media companies are systematically ruining the MuniWiFi efforts across the country, likening the community initiatives to a form of communism. From the article: "Telecommunications giants have mobilized a well-funded army of coin-operated think tanks, pliant legislators and lazy journalists to protect their Internet fiefdoms from these municipal internet initiatives, painting them as an affront to American innovation and free enterprise"
Their weapon of choice is industry-crafted legislation that restricts local governments from offering public service Internet access at reasonable rates. Laws are already on the books in a dozen states. This year alone, 10 states are considering similar bills to block public broadband or to strengthen existing restrictions. Spinning broadband as theirs alone to provide, ISPs have chalked up some early victories--including a draconian law now on the books in Pennsylvania, which strips local governments of the right to choose their own homegrown broadband solutions without the prior approval of a monopoly phone company. In late 2004, Verizon dictated the law word-for-word to local legislators, who then quietly slipped it into the middle of a 72-page bill that appeared to call for improved communications infrastructure for all Pennsylvanians.
It will have the opposite effect.
No way! You mean that our elected officials are being paid off by corporations so that state citizens get the shaft? Who would have thought?! Personally, anyone responsible for cheating and lying to the citizens of the states involved in this should be ousted. Why aren't we revolting against this crap now? Oh yeah, we're lazy, sorry; I forgot.
A nation that once prided itself as the global pacesetter in technological innovation and affordable communications is now held in the thrall of corporations eager to keep a basic 21st Century right--the right to connectivity--from citizens who can't afford their exorbitant access fees.
How has America fallen so far back?
Because we take the word of the conglomerates as the word of God, that's why. People see a price tag and they just accept it as reality. Most people are uninterested in shopping around for better service, better prices, etc. It's just easier to plop the good old CC down and have it paid automatically every month.
People don't realize that 1500/256 is crappy service for DSL and that 5000/384 is just as bad. People say, ooooh, Cable is faster than DSL and less money! They don't bother looking into the hidden restrictions and commonplace bullshit that the ISPs pull (such as UNLIMITED SERVICE - as long as you don't pass over our unknown bandwith usage threshold).
Some people say, "but there is no alternative." Sure there is... Become active and do something about it. Oooh, but that would take away from your time watching Survivor and The Apprentice. Perhaps the Cable company would even come and shut off your precious mind-numbing TV delivered drugs. Wah.
Americans are lazy, undereducated about technology, and just don't give a shit about making their own lives better. As long as it is easy and they are told it's acceptable they are good to go.
To this mix of industry sock puppets add a gullible media. In a finely targeted media campaign, the "evils" of municipal broadband were pressed upon local journalists who were willing to echo corporate concerns without digging for an opposing view. Too often, local papers failed to follow the money that linked their sources at the Cato Institute and NMRC to the industry--taking at face value comments and data from these think tanks without revealing the conflicts of interest that would impugn their research.
Welcome to the Georgenium! The one where people believe everything they see on TV and do no self-research into finding out what might be true and what might not be. Why should they form their own opinions? There are two sides to every story but the news media is fair and balanced right?
Realize that we have not only corporations funding false research and presenting it as true we have our own government doing the same thing. Sadly people fall for it and even want more of it!
The corporations are going to quickly realize that what they are doing is going to cause even more problems for them. Yeah, you are going to shut out competition from the municipalities... Just wait until the residents of that municipality cre
I thought telephone company monopolies were unamerican?
Welcome to the new America.
When corporations see things happening that they don't like, they call the congressmen that they've bought and paid for and tell them to fix it.
Look at the bankruptcy bill. Nothing could more blatantly tell the American public that our lawmakers are only concerned with the interests of large corporations and the ultra-wealthy.
Just as the article points out, this is like a public library having to ask permission from Borders before checking out books.
It's sad that it's come to this, but there just isn't much that can be done.
DeviantArt Page
NSFWWell, its better then socialist wifi.. at least the 'people' ( local ) are in control, not the government ( federal ).
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Maybe they are against having public libraries, also? And streetlights? What about public roads, are those manifestations of communism too?
I feel the government should encourage broadband as much as possible, but I wouldn't want to invest in providing a commercial service for customers and have the government come in and with MY TAX MONEY compete with me.
It's just not right.
That said, municipal WIFI districts are not too bad an idea IMHO.
.
Each community should have the right to choose for itself.
I really don't see municipal wireless broadband efforts as any different.
It's really similar to how some communities offer garbage service, whereas others do not. If the community's taxpayers are willing to pay for the service, then the local government should be willing to provide it (within the standard Constitutional limits).
Additionally, if a local government provides a broadband service, it should be like the public streets--open to all. I'm not comfortable with the economic exclusion of parts of the taxpaying public through the charging of a separate fee (no matter how small this fee is). Furthermore, I don't have a problem with the implementation of a "Fair Access Policy", which tacks on a surcharge for those users who utilize the network the most, so as not to penalize the light users of the network.
However, what concerns me the most, however, is the community policing of these broadband networks, including government intrusion on people's privacy and censorship of content deemed inappropriate for the community.
One more thing, by all means, the opening of community broadband should not be a dedicated monopoly on broadband service. Thus, communities should NOT be allowed to block other broadband services from coming in to service their residents. This should force the alternate broadband service providers to provide better services and specialized content to get people to want their services.
I do not want the goverment in controll of my access to the internet. If the govenment gives away free internet access, the "for pay" services will not be able to compete and will go under. That will leave the government in full control of my access to information.
I have no problem with government agencies providing free access in libraries, parks, airports, schools, and government buildings. I consider this to be approprtiate and even usefull. I do not, however, want the government providing free wifi in my home.
Insert Generic Sig Here:
Big food companies are systematically ruining the Apple Pie baking efforts in kitchens across the country, likening these home baking initiatives to a form of communism.
"Pie manufacturing giants have mobilized a well-funded army of TV commercials, huge supermarkets and lazy mothers to protect their Apple Pie fiefdoms from these home kitchen initiatives, painting them as an affront to American innovation and free enterprise"
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
HOW dare any of you try and keep a corperation from making maximum profits by forcing people to use their service....
damn community WiFi people are TERRORISTS!
Let the wireless companies compete. And not just on WiFi. Verizon has EVDO, and Sprint is starting up their EVDO. Don't take tax money and give it to an inefficient -- and potentially tyrannical (in terms of ready cooperation with snooping federal agencies) -- government-run communications operation.
Any goal of bridging the "digital divide" for the economically disadvantaged should be handled by private charities. The last thing we need is for that segment of the population to have a government-run ISP censor blogs like whatreallyhappened.com (which was classified at one point by a censorware company as being "anti-Semitic", and thus presumably unavailable at some public schools and libraries).
Duh, everyone knows only those socialist over in Europe actually do things like this.
It really is disheartening when I run into to people who don't understand the inherent value of cooperation, especially as it applies to legimate government interests. It's american in so far as it expresses the will of the population. So people unfortunately have been convinced that the people don't have the same rights/privledges as the "professions" do. Society has been sectioned off, we consume, they make and how dare we cross that line.
Burn Hollywood Burn
Countries like Canada?
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
Agreed!
How much you want to bet that the government network won't allow porn - "for the sake of the children."
If the same idiots that run the building department get to run the local internet - I'll will make AOL dial-up seem like a breath of fresh air.
[Version=NPR_Snooty]
it will make AOL dial-up seem like a breath of fresh aire.
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
With a co-op, you can actually do something. You can elect new board members that will better represent your interests. Heck, you could even start a campaign to recall the SOBs. With a private utility company, you have absolutely no power and no choice in how the place gets run. With a co-op, at least you can make the bastards sweat a little even if you can't get the membership mobilized to throw the bums out.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
and the knowledge that while it's a co-op I have no other choice but to be a part of it.
:-)
Strictly speaking, that's not true. Co-Ops have to compete in the market just like everyone else. (Unlike direct government services.) The real reason why you don't have a choice is that utilities tend to be monopolies, period.
You might want to talk to someone in your town government about what you and your neighbords can do to improve your services. You may actually have some control over the company and not even know it.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
The public shouldn't be forced to pay for a service that will compete against private sector alternatives. Socialized internet services will only lower the quality of the service in general where they are implemented because people will go to them for the price: free or near free. It's one thing to provide broadband for free in public libraries or to subsidize a charity's computer lab for those without the money to own their own computer and broadband service. It's quite another to provide an entire service that competes against real providers.
I already pay $45 a month for Adelphia's cable service and it would make me quite mad to have to pay more taxes to subsidize someone else's connection to their home. I would mind a buck or two going to buy cable access for the local library since that is totally open to the public. Free wireless though, is something that people can use in their own homes and thus I oppose it. If they are going to get free access then it should be only in a public place where the government can scrutinize their use. The last thing I want to pay taxes for is a connection that lets some mooch run file sharing software off the public dime all day.
Oh and if the government is running the wireless service you can pretty much bet safely that the government will let the police play around with the ISP. They'll be free to log everything and scrutinize everything you do on it because it's a government resource owned and operated by a local government, not a private corporation. That means that if they want to log everything and periodically check to see who is doing what, well that's their prerogative. Your expectation of 4th amendment protection online will all but go out the window if you use the gubermint's service.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
Who's to say that comcast won't send 404s when someone visits AdBusters or tries to download an application to protect their privacy.
The idea that a corporation is any more trustworthy than the government is ludicrous. If anything, they're even less trustworthy because we can't vote them out of office without cutting off the very service we wish to save.
You have two hands and one brain, so always code twice as much as you think!
Only a freakin' idiot would make the leap to equating this with Soviet State Communism, Stalinism, the murder of millions of people, and hence, evil. Communism isn't inherently evil, any more than most philosophies.
The fact that oppressive dictatorships arose in the last century that called themselves Communist (while doing a lot of unCommunist things, like, I don't know, oppressing the workers a lot worse than the capitalists were doing before them) doesn't make any vaguely socialist proposal the edge of a slippery slope to totalitarianism, and more than the Crusades prove that all Christians love killing Muslims.
Anyone who tries to advance their political ends through misleading labeling should be tarred and feathered.
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
As much as I admit you can't trust the government, I don't see your reasoning that companies will somehow be better.
I mean, the free market doesn't really work for things like that because it's fairly easy for companies to sell your information in secret, and if customers aren't aware of something, market forces can't fix the problem.
People are greedy (not just in capitalism mind you, but in general) and will screw you over behind your back as much as they can, and in front of your face as much as you will tolerate.
Unless you're talking purely hypothetical, in which case I'd rather pay for magic elf powered Internet.
"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." -- Hanlon's Razor
Yeah, but do you really want to pay for your broadband and their broadband (through taxes). Might as well have the city foot the bill for electric, gas (natural, unleaded and diesel), telephone, cable, netflix, mmorpg's, and iTMS while you're at it. There is no such thing as 'cheap' wifi...it's just how/when you pay for it. Only advantage to municipal is that your payments (sales tax/income tax/property tax) are federally tax deductable.
I absolutely, positively, and totally detest the notion of everything and everything being a "right." Connectivity isn't a right because it's not something innate to you. We're not born with the ability to access the Internet. Someone has to build the backbone, the infrastructure, and the hardware to enable Internet access. It's not like freedom of speech, in which case we're all born with the ability to speak.
Defining something as a "right" which requires one to use the labor of others isn't a right -- it's saying that you should have control over someone else's property or work. It's like someone saying that they have the "right" to take GPL software and use it commercially without adhering to the GPL -- they're taking someone else's work and using as it they wish without consideration of the author's wishes.
If a community wants to implement a "free" wireless network, fine. Let the electorate of that community make the decision. However, don't try to sell the line that one has a "right" to something that they didn't produce. That is Communism, and not only does it not work practically, it's ethically and morally unjustifiable as well.
Then you believe that Western Europe is communist as well?
Actually, I said "communist-like". And yes, Europe has taken that path. While it generally works pretty well for most Europeans, it is a different system than the US is founded upon.
And then there is US "education"...
Indeed. Public education sucks, but note how popular home schooling has become. Also note the counter-intuitive state of how well educated home schoolers generally are. (It's very rare for a public schooler to get a perfect ACT score, but very common for home schoolers.) Europe may have a better "system", but it's still a system. The US has always maintained their lead in the world by saying "to hell with the system, I'm going to be more than I'm told I can be." And that's exactly what they do.
Now if we could only collapse the damn social support system here in the US, we might be able to regain some of the brains and brawn we've been losing.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Bingo!
You said it yourself. Americans are lazy because that is what the WANT! After pulling more then 60 hours a work week, maybe being lazy when you get home is what they/we want at the end of the day.
As soon as joe sixpack wakes up from this lucid dream, the sooner he will see just how long he has been chasing his own tail.
Life is not for the lazy.
The common thread in all of these cases is people working together, cooperating rather than competing, to improve living conditions, either on a local or global scale. In some cases, governments have been elected with "socialist" policies where the government takes the view that it is the will of the people and has a moral right, under socialist morality, to maintain certain services. But to extend, as you have, the assumption that this means that socialism "means" government monopolies is like arguing that flying by plane "means" crashing into the World Trade Center.
I've commented before I find it amusing that many self-styled Libertarians who use the "S" word as an insult are high up in movements like the Open Source movement. It's a shame people are so hung up on certain words, they'll jump through hoops to describe things they agree with in any other way possible.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
What happens to wiretap laws when the gubmint is your ISP?
If I have a contract with, say, my excellent local service providers North Valley.net or the venerable Sunset.net , I do so with the understanding that
A) I'm contracting with a private entity, whose existence is perpetuated by the charges I pay, and
B) that the company has every legal right to examine my traffic for any purpose whatsoever, though generally it's going to be only to diagnose performance problems.
Because of "A", I know that they don't have any particular interest in examining my traffic and/or violating my trust and privacy beyond "keeping me happy". If word gets out that the admin at either of these companies is reading customer email, and maybe even silently forwarding private messages to other staff, there'd be hell to pay in the court of public opinion, and in the company's bottom line.
But, if the "gubmint" does it, why, it's simply called a "security matter". Rattle off a few department names (FBI, CIA, City Police, State Troopers, whatever) and everybody turns their head silently.
In this case, I think I'm on the side of the companies, even though I dislike their reasons for doing so.
I do not want my Internet service provided by an entity with a vested interest in violating my privacy, whether that interest is in the name of law enforcement, anti-terrorism, or just shits and giggles.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Can you say 'gas tax in the u.s. is at least .50 cents a gallon? You need to pay for that side walk somehow.
Oh god, shut the fuck up. Seriously, cork it.
The entire country is run by a handful of firms that control most of the copper and fiber backbone. That's hundreds of thousands of miles of transmission lines in the hands of a tiny group of firms, so you wanna tell me again that the government is over-regulating things?
Don't use the fear of bible America to push erroneous free market drivel. It's unbecoming. If the local municipality gets demands from it's constituents to provide a low cost alternative and it decides to provide it, don't go demonizing the government..point at the private entities and ask them to get on the ball and bring prices down.
It's pretty widely accepted that the government has a role to play in providing roads and bridges. This is basic infrastructure that enables the rest of the free market economy.
Do the people making this argument also think that the government should get out of the "road" business, and that all roads should be privately run toll roads?
Broadband is the 21st century equivalent of a road. If a region doesn't have broadband, it becomes the economic equivalent of a third world country with dirt roads.
Adina Levin
SaveMuniWireless.org
How is towns offering WiFi different from towns offering garbage pickup, or electricity, or water, or cable? In each case, the town decides to go with one company or another, but it could choose to provide the serivce by itself.
"Do I dare disturb the universe?"
As good as "free" sounds it's a very short sighed objective. Why would you hamper your Wifi network in the bureaucracy and complete idiocracy that plagues most city governments?
The reality of our governments, local, state, and federal, is that the people that participate in them aren't our nations best and brightest, they're running Fortune 500 companies not running for city council.
My two year old really likes "free" things too. But successful, educated, adults understand that only through free markets and sound business plans can you support the enormous technology rollout that would be required to get Wifi to the masses.
So, instead of trying to find ways to get our governments to do if for us, we should be brainstorming ways to start our own WiFi companies and start getting it out there.
Of course, we don't want the city governemts to roll in and take away our customer base. Vote down any attempt to establish a municipal wifi. Let them go back to making paper clip scrulptures or whatever it is they do all day.
And that pretty much guarantees my kid, no matter how smart she is, will have to be very lucky to beat the sucky public education system (and you can bet your life that no matter how bad your Public School is, the one in the slums is worse).
So it's considerably more unlikely that my kid, regardless of her talent, is going to break the cycle of poverty.
And that's why well-funded public education isn't an add-on; it must be a vitally important part of any country that wishes to call itself a "Land Of Opportunity."
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
I am SO tired of seeing that term. The Right-Wing started it since 9/11. Now, EVERYONE uses it.
:) )
The only thing that IS "un-American" is NOT talking/communicating about things (issues, debates, ideas, etc.).
We have dealt with "corporate America" in the past and we will continue to do so.
The only thing, in MY opinion, is that the vast majority of people in government (not talking about workers, interns, secretaries, etc.) are rich... I am referring to the legislatures, congress people, the house, executive, and judicial branches. The vast majority of them are rich, again MY opinion... (don't like it, I don't care J )
THIS is a problem. It is a problem because those in power (most, not all) are only interested in keeping their power and money and therefore are not interested in the common man, woman, or child. Just look at the incredible level of poverty around the nation. MOST them are focused on gaining money from a variety of sources (corporate America, "Religious" groups, and Iraq) keeping the people of this country focused on "other things" while they do it. Again, MY opinion...
The Right-Wing used (and continues to use) the term "un-American", among others, to divert (and scare) the mass majority of sheep in our country away from the REAL issues facing our country. This is done to pass legislation that would NORMALLY not make it and to continue their greedy ends...
BUT using FEAR and BRANDING as tactics seems to be working. I am just SICK, and tired, of this CRAP!
THAT is all it is... Feces! (guano, excrement, whatever... You get the point, it's all POO!
Co-ops are also more in the spirit of the Internet. In the Old Days, nearby sites which each had expensive connections would create inexpensive local links so that local traffic didn't go out over the backbone. Larger ISPs still do that, under certain conditions.
It oughta be this way (and when I am King, so will it be):
Johnny has a broadband cable connection. He also has a local WiFi network so he can use his laptop wherever he wants.
Johnny's WiFi signal reaches his neighbor Susie's house. Susie also has a WiFi network, and a broadband DSL connection with a different company.
Johnny and Suzie get together and agree to include each other's WiFi routers in their routing tables. When either Johnny's cable or Susie's DSL is unusable, their TCP/IP software automatically routes their traffic through the WiFi connection to the other network.
Now suppose Pat wants to connect to the Internet, but doesn't want cable TV and doesn't like that the DSL provider insists on bundling local POTS and long distance phone service with the DSL connection. Pat pays the JSDotNet Cooperative some fee, and they let him piggyback their connection. If Pat had a broadband cell phone connection, the JSDotNet Cooperative could use it as yet another alternate route.
The trouble with that scheme is that typically consumer broadband services won't allow you to share your connection, even though it would potentially benefit them if their customers had secondary routes.
sigs, as if you care.
"(e.g. Dailey tearing up the Meigs Field Airport in Chicago.)"
You mean you didn't buy his BS of it being a potential tool a terrorist could use to attack Chicago?
Now.. Don't get me started on Daley and his airport BS.
-A
They have the least ammount of vacation days here and don't even try and have gaps in your resume when you didn't work in your life, or you will be "required" to explain and will be labeled as lazy. Whether that's right or wrong, you decide.
Poeple here are also obsessed with making money and acquiring goods. I know you'll say, well who isn't? I would answer that I have lived in other countries and it is definetly an order of magnitude higher here. People don't like to talk about money, just like they don't like to talk about sex but they obsess about it. This is the only place I have been where it is extremely not appropriate to ask someone how much money they make, it goes beyond the "I don't know you that well, why should I tell you" it is more of a "why, are you going to come and murder me, my family and my dog and steal it?" type reaction. It just shows even where people's hearts are - with their money. I would expect that in a poor country where money is to used mostly to buy food to survive, but not here, where money is to exercise the "right to be happy" and the right to "instant gratificiation" People need to buy, see and eat more and more things regardless of how much they already bought, seen and eaten.
I am always amazed at how even the poorest people still get double digit ammounts of credit cards so they can buy luxury cars, shop at GAP and get $200 shoes. I am also amazed at the rent places that tell people that cannot afford a plasma TV to just rent one and pay a monthly fee. The credit card companies want people to dig themselves into debt and end up slaving day and night to keep up with the fees.
I know that this is offtopic and that many of you will say, well then if America is so bad, "why dontcha get the fuck out and move to Canada or France.". I don't think this country is a bad country overall, in fact it is still the best one in the world and I love living here, it just that it has some bad "habbits" and stereotypes attached to it that I wish, through better education, those would go away too. That's it. Again, sorry for an offtopic, just struck a cord...
In a nutshell, we have Friedman essentially saying that among other things, having inexpensive and widespread broadband is essential to remain competitive. Countries like Japan and South Korea have encouraged this, since it is in the best interest of their economies. Us? We encourage the profits of the entrenched monopolistic telecoms.
Krugman talks about our health system, and has one astonishing statistic - that we not only pay twice what other countries with "socialized" medicine pay out per capita, with worse results, but almost half of our per capita is Medicare expenditures by the government. In other words, the US government already pays pretty same the much amount per citizen of what the French, Canadian or UK governments do - but we still have 40 million uninsured, and private insurance doubles our per capita. With worse results. This defies any kind of logic.
Why would a government promote policies that give worse results, while enriching private companies and special interests? Simple: our government serves those entities, but not the citizenry. I don't care about your party affiliation or ideology; spending more money with poorer results to benefit the few at the cost of the many is NOT something that represents American ideals. Anyone that says otherwise is simply ignorant or likewise beholden to special interests.
I'd blame the government, but the citizenry is who elected them. We get the government that we deserve.
jh
And if you own no car, no tax money from gasoline comes (directly) out of your pocket to help maintain those roads.
Why not complain about something worthwhile?
The complaint isn't that you're not allowed to saturate your upstream bandwidth on an inexpensive broadband account. The complaint is that they aren't upfront about it, and only tell you after you've broken their invisible limit (whatever it may be).
I think that having clearly spelled out contractual terms is worthwhile.
Trouble is, if I'm poor and uneducated, or a lone parent, or me and my partner both have to work dead-end jobs to make ends meet.
1. If you're poor and uneducated, what are you doing to change the situation? Are you educating yourself using the millions of programs and libraries that exist for that purpose? Are you making your kids take advantage of everything they can so that they can excel despite your poverty situaion?
2. Have you considered moving into a different situation where both you and your spouse don't have to work? Most home schoolers come out of rural areas where cost of living isn't as high. i.e. A single income of $30,000-$50,000 per year goes a lot farther than a dual income of $60,000-$100,000 does in the city.
3. Lone parents are the biggest issue. But one does have to question as to how they became lone parents. If your spouse is deceased (the most tragic situation), then you probably have money from insurance and/or social security (one of the few positive uses of the program) to help cover things like private education. If you're divorced, make sure you get your alimony. If you're just plain a single parent, then you kind of created a situation for yourself, didn't you.
It's the land of opportunity, not the land of a free ride.
And before you get all high and mighty in responding, consider this: I came from a poor family, lost my father to cancer when I was five, and my mother *STILL* sent me to private school before moving to Wisconsin and home schooling me. So don't you dare get self-righteous on behalf of those "poor people", because you probably don't know the first thing about them.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Can you even begin to fathom the kinds of monopolies and cartels that would form if our streets, highways, and expressways were privately owned (as some extremist libertarians advocate)? If you think the Microsoft monopoly is bad, imagine a Shell, Exxon, or Ford monopoly on the street to your driveway. Want to go to the store? Better make sure it's an Exxon affiliate. Want to go to work. Better hope to God you work for on Exxon affiliate (or pay treble). Want to compete with Exxon. God (or other mythological Dieity) help you.
That is exactly the current situation with telecommunications in the United States, and the FCC's efforts to mititage these monopolies through regulation will always be inadequate as long as the underlying infrastructure, which lends itself to natural monopolies in much the same way roads do (how many wires can you physically have running up to your doorstep, and how cost effective is it to have more than one?), remains privately owned.
Network infrastructure is for digital communicatons as basic as roads and highways are to transportation. It not only makes sense to have them administered as public works projects in the same way highways are, it is imperitive if you want to have any kind of effective competition with respect to the thousands of services that use that infrastructure. Otherwise, so hello to your local telco. They own access to your communications and, by implication, you, and you don't even have the power to elect someone new when (not if) they abuse their position.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
You are using the internet thanks to hippy government. The government started the internet since no company would take the risk to see if it would be succesful. X.25, a non-commie commercial network, lost.
You use free hippy roads, you leave your house and drive on toll-free hippy roads and buy things from businesses, increasing trade.
Let the govt provide ISP service, private corporations who will do things like screw with third party VOIP have necessitated this.
2 years and no mod points. Join reddit. Because openness is good.
"the rural spread of our population makes market penetration quite difficult, thus resulting in countries with higher population densities pulling ahead."
Well, since Canada has 1/10 the population and a larger land mass, they should be even more 'disadvantaged' and they should be using tin cans tied with bits of string.
As Mark Twain once said, "There are lies, damn lies, and statistics." He forgot to mention greed from the wireless phone services who feel threatened by anybody putting up an antenna for any reason.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
" Why? If I don't drive a car should I not still have to pay taxes that maintain the roads?
If I don't have kids, shouldn't I still pay taxes to support the schools?
If I don't drink tapwater, shouldn't I still have to pay for water treatment facilities?"
Actually, I would say that NO, you shouldn't. In all of those cases. The fact that you have no choice infringes on your personal freedom. Our country (I know this seems ludicrous now...) was founded as a protest against taxation!
Now I will grant that you are correct, that muni-wifi can benefit the whole community indirectly as a whole, but it bugs me that I have to pay for things that I don't want. The way capitalism is meant to work, is that you buy whatever you want. However, if you are forced to give up that choice, and are required to buy certain things, well then you are eliminating the need for competition.
Really this is a slippery slope argument, how far does it go before we end up quietly slipping into socialism??
As for that, you may ask "so what's wrong with socialism, all the people's needs are met by the government?". Well, IMHOP, the problem is that it means I give up my choice of how those needs are met. That choice is sacred to me, and I wouldn't give it up for anything. It's liberty and freedom that I value more, not comfort.
bottom line, if the government wants to enter the wifi market, to raise money and compete against the commercial providers, then fine. but there better be checks and balances to ensure they compete fairly, and the people should retain their choice of whether they even want it or not.
sometimes, i wonder if i'm the only conservative on teh intarweb. ah well, back to mah hogs and warmongerin'....
This presumes that there are any private sector alternatives.
In which case, the private company would have to offer something more than the publicly offered service: static IP, or higher bandwidth, or some other services in order to compete. The availability of advertiser-supported free television has not stopped the growth of cable TV and satellite dishes.
That would be a reasonable argument except that in many cases those who could be providing the service will not - because it's too expensive to offer it - and want to prevent local agencies from offering it when they will not. Also, the phone companies are not innocent here; they have used various methods to prevent competition, including making it virtually impossible for anyone else to provide service, creating excuses and delays to prevent competition, and artificially inflating rates and costs necessary for interconnection, in an effort to cripple competitors.
Companies that are public utilities hate competition and will do anything they can think of to stop it, including rigging the laws to do so when they can.
Let's try a rephrasing of your argument:
I think most of us would argue that having free local roads paid for by property taxes is better than constantly paying tolls for every use of the public roads. Now, maybe a private company would do a better job for less, but I think collecting a flat fee from every property takes less overhead to collect the amounts needed than collecting tolls on a per-use basis. I think we all benefit from free local roads over imposing tolls for every road we use. Sure, those that used roads less would pay less, but I think the overhead would kill us and might make traveling to see others prohibitively expensive.
The lessons of history teach us - if they teach us anything - that nobody learns the lessons that history teaches us.
socialism, marxism, communism... Ever since I moved here to the US I can't shake the feeling that there aren't many people who really know what these things are.
Socialism is about the BASIC infrastructure, that the government makes sure these things are available and everyone can have access to them. While I am not certain that the internet is such a basic necessity, yet - water, electricity, health care and the like most certainly are.
Humankind only survived and grew out of the stoneage because of people working together, people providing FOR each other. Today it seems the basic principle this country exists on is selfishness (=capitalism).
While there is nothing wrong with some healthy competition, people in this country often take this to the most extreme form (like many other things) and government propaganda is doing its own share to make sure people think the American way is the only way.