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The $200 Billion Broadband Rip-Off

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the where's-my-dsl-dangit dept.

Jamie noted that Cringley has a piece about the US Broadband situation. He talks about where we were and where we are: 'not very fast, not very cheap Internet service that is hurting our ability to compete economically with the rest of the world' and about the $200B the phone companies got to make it that way.

5 of 464 comments (clear)

  1. Re:more evidence by Wonko+the+Sane · · Score: 5, Informative

    Except this isn't an example of "unbridled market capitalism". The original copper network was a private/public compromise built on private property seized by the government with its power of immanent domain.

    The federal government allowed monopoly control of the copper by one company, as long as it agreed to follow certain rules that a normal company would not need to. That is why multiple phone companies were allowed to compete on the same copper.

    Now we have the case where companies are not fulfilling their part of the bargain and the government isn't enforcing it any more.

  2. Re:Umm... have a look at their taxes.... by abigor · · Score: 5, Informative

    Not the Netherlands - they have a +$45 billion trade balance and a budget surplus. Financially, they are golden. The only G7 country that is in similarly great financial shape is Canada.

  3. Re:more evidence by iminplaya · · Score: 4, Informative

    ...the Mexican telecom magnate and his monopoly in Mexico

    A very heavily government protected monopoly. Hardly a case of "lack of regulation" I guarantee you. In fact it's a prime example for the libertarians to use against regulation. What we need is for the public to keep a close eye on how things are regulated and actually use their vote to weed out the crooks, otherwise it will only get worse.

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    What?
  4. Re:Don't blame Canada by m.ducharme · · Score: 5, Informative

    Corporations aren't people and aren't treated legally as people, except insofar as their owners are people. Bzzzt. Wrong. A corporation is treated as a person in the sense that the corporation as a whole is legally responsible for its actions, and not its constituent parts (the people who make up the corporation). This is what protects the average joe at the bottom of the heap from being personally liable for what his employer tells him he has to do. Neither he nor his employer is responsible for those actions. This is what is wrong with corporate personhood. When a bunch of people in the corporate body behave badly as a representative of the corporation, it's the corporation that gets punished, not the people doing the wrong thing. This absolves everyone from the employees to the board, to the shareholders, from responsibility for their collective actions. Corporations have rights to free speech qua corporations, not because of the rights of the constituent parts. You will notice that the right to free speech of corporations is curtailed in ways that a natural person's right to free speech isn't (i.e. false advertising laws, etc). You should also have observed that your rights as a person are much broader than your rights as a part of your corporation. Various forms of financial entities are granted rights of possession and litigation in line with their purpose as financial entities, but they aren't treated as people in general. The supposed "person-hood" that financial entities have is an extension of the actual, physical person-hood that their owners have -- corporations have rights to free speech because their owners have rights to free speech, and I don't see any pratical way to change that, short of opressing the person-hood of business owners.
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    Rule of Slashdot #0: You and people like you are not representative of the larger population. - A.C.
  5. Re:Don't blame Canada by norton_I · · Score: 4, Informative

    Actually, "corporate personhood" only protects the owners (i.e., shareholders), not employees. Employees of a non-corporate company (i.e., a partnership) are no more or less liable for their actions that those of a large corporation. In principle, employees are responsible for their actions, and management is responsible for actions of their underlings, though in practice it is hard to convict people, this has nothing to do per se with their status as a corporation. The difference is, in a partnership, if an employee screws up while performing duties for the company, all partners have potentially unlimited financial liability. In a corporation, liability to the owners only extends to the assets held by the corporation.

    There are lots of other ways in which corporations are treated as people, but most of it comes down to "they are non-person entities which can own property" -- this is the root of their ability to be slandered or libeled, their ability to be a party to a lawsuit, and so forth.