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Telco Sues City For Plan To Roll Out Own Broadband
Syngularity writes 'MaximumPC is featuring an article about one broadband provider's decision to sue the city of Monticello, Minnesota after residents passed a referendum to roll out their own fiber optic system. TDS Telecommunications had earlier denied the city's request for the company to provide fiber optic service. During the ensuing legal battle, which prevented the citizens from following through with their plans, TDS Telecommunications took the opportunity to roll out a fiber system.'
Next time the town should be more careful about granting exclusive contracts.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
Problem solved. Actually I bet just the threat alone would be enough to make TDS fall on its knees and obey the government.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
So you're against public roads then.
Except in this case the citizens *asked* the government to perform this service (hence the part about the referendum). This isn't the government "dabbling" in other services. This is a government doing exactly what it's citizens are asking it to.
Indeed Thomas Jefferson would roll over in his grave if he new we had public mail service. Oh wait... And of course our socialist fire department.
Democracy Now! - your daily, uncensored, corporate-free
Did you READ the article, douchington, or do your Ayn Rand superpowers render that unnecessary? The private company refused to provide a service that the residents wanted, so said residents passed a referendum to do it themselves. The private company turned around and used the court system to hold up the process while it built a system, and is now butthurt because the city might offer competition.
And yes, TJ is rolling over in his grave - because idiots like you try to invoke his name.
These people wanted fat pipes, but private enterprise wasn't going to give it to them. So like any free group of people willing to pay the costs necessary to get what they wanted, they started gathering the money necessary to do it themselves.
This is capitalism at its finest.
"His name was James Damore."
For too long now, fire departments across the United States have been SOCIALIST organizations, resulting in TAXES on the American people.
FACT: Most Americans never use the socialized services of the fire department. We have the best fire departments in the world in the US, but that doesn't mean that anyone (even non-US citizens) should be able to dial up and have fires put out, etc. There are private companies (Halliburtion, Etc.) who could step in tomorrow and take over every fire department in America and charge the consumer directly.
This is AMERICA. NO FREE FIRE SAFETY.
"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in asbestos and carrying a fire hose."
This is THE new political movement in America. The Birther movement and The Teabagger movement have FAILED. We are The Flamer movement, and we are succeeding at tearing down ALL forms Socialism - starting with our Fire Departments.
Please tell everyone you know about this group.
When it comes to ObamaFireCare, remember, we are: Taxed Enough Already For American Red Truck Socialism.
"This is America. Pay to Spray." - Member Susan Weinberg
Democracy Now! - your daily, uncensored, corporate-free
The Citizens of Monticello request several times to TDS Telecommunications that they upgrade the cities connection. They kept saying "Soon, we'll get to it" That is when the citizens, not the government, passed a referendum to install a city run fiber network.
It was only after the city started installing that TDS Telecommunications sued the city and tied them up in a prolong court battle, which prevented them from continuing their install. During that time they started laying fiber of their own, by the time the city won the law suit TDS Telecommunications had completed their project and now offer 50mb to every household there for about 50$ a month.
I guess this just shows if you want your ISP to upgrade your connection, pass a law to get the city to do it and force their hand.
I used to live in a Tri-City area outside of Chicago. The three towns were going to go in on a municipal internet system that would have provided TV, Phone, Internet, over fiber-optic.
Comcast did a massive advertisement campaign against the system and how if it failed we would foot the bill. They also had techncians out for three weeks straight installing new lines across the town. When it came to vote in my city of the three city's it failed 6000 votes to like 7500 votes, the funny part is, if the 6000 people who voted yes bought into the system and the system lasted for 5 years it would have paid itself and would have become self-sustaining.
Municipality can run water pipes, sewer pipes, and gas pipes.
Please tell me why the Internet pipe is any different from these other pipes.
My company actually did some of the design for this. Now I know why they wanted such a fast turn around time on it.
There is a war going on for your mind.
This doesn't relate to the article, but I can't not respond to the parent.
You're complaining about the youth offenders system in Australia? On /. ? People complaining about short jail sentences, particularly for young offenders was why I had to stop reading the forums on Canadian news sites. Canada and Australia both have extremely low crime rates because the criminal justice system has reasonable sentences, especially for young people. I'm tired of the "lock them up and throw away the key" mentality; it focuses on vengeance rather than prevention.
The role of the criminal justice system is to make streets a safer place, not to make you feel better after crimes have been committed. If you make it impossible for offenders to find jobs or otherwise become part of society again you limit their options and increase the likelihood of a re-offense. Certainly a strong punishment is necessary for the enforcement of laws but longer sentences are not the solution to crime; they're a simple campaign line for politicians because everyone loves to hear it. The only important factor is making sure that the fewest possible crimes occur.
I plan to move to Australia later this year. Don't fuck it up before I get there. (It already seems to be the only developed country with worse internet service than Canada, which makes me sad, although the weather looks better.)
So if this is the future...where's my jet pack?
The problem with this is that gas taxes do not even come close to covering the costs of building and maintaining the road network. Public roads are heavily subsidized.
Just because you are paranoid does not mean that no-one is out to get you.
has had a municipal fiber-to-the-premises system for the past two years. I doubt I would have been alive long enough to see FIOS rolled out, particularly since the outfit that Verizon dumped^H^H^H^H^H^H sold their landline infrastructure to, Fairpoint, has just filed bankruptcy. Comcast, the only other game in town, has been howling to the state regulators about the sheer UNFAIRNESS of a publically-owned body actually implementing something that they had no intention of providing (in their neverending quest at maximizing shareholder value). Most recently, certain parties (first two guesses don't count) have been agitating to have the city shut down Burlington Telecom over perceived financial malfeasance. After all, it's downright UN-AMERICAN to have such an important piece of infrastructure exist without money flowing into corporate coffers!
Can you imagine what this country would look like if we had treated paved roads like we have treated much of the rest of our infrastructure (i.e. only allowing private companies to build and maintain them). Does anyone honestly think we would have an interstate system today (or even standardized road signs) if we had followed that model?
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
If you don't drive, then you don't pay the "use fee" collected at the pumps.
Your kidding, right? Do you ride the bus? Buses run on Diesel (mostly.) which pays road tax. Do you purchase food at local stores? Guess how it got there.. You pay more as a driver, but everybody helps pay for it. But mostly, Look at water.
You know, other easy to make comments aside, you have no idea how much we take water for granted in the US. The vast majority of Americans are given very clean drinking water, and their waste is treated, by the government. We take that for granted, but many illnesses that used to be very common are exceedingly rare in the US. People talk about bottled water, and how much it makes for the companies, but its usage pales in comparison to a single days output from a municipal system. If you want to see the errors in your very conservative logic, go read about south America, where several nations (bolivia comes to mind) have "sold" the exclusive rights to make drinking water to a private, profit driven company. Make sure you read about the riots, protests, cost increases, and even how some protesters were killed. Meanwhile, we take it for granted here.
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
what happnes when you dont drive - dont pay for the road and you have a heart attack does the ambalance have to drive cross country because YOU never contributed to a road in your life?
Should someone come and take all the pavement and street lighting etc up at your your house?
... on what grounds TDS sued the town? This is not explained in the article.
False. The amount of money collected from gasoline/diesel taxes *far exceed* the amount spent on annual maintenance. Where does the excess go? I don't about your state, but in mine the gas taxes are used to subsizde the Light Rail trains. I've sat in the State House and seen the vote for myself - money taken from the road fund and used to build a new rail line from Tysons Corner to Towson.
The senior minority leader had a fit, saying it was a misappropriation of funds, but of course he was unable to stop it.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Right and if your are not a victim of crime then you shouldn't pay for the police, courts or jails. If the polluted water or air isn't passing through your sources then you shouldn't have to clean it up or pay to enforce environmental laws to make the guilty parties pay - assuming they are still in business, that you can find them and that they have the means to pay for the damage. If thugs go after some ethnic group that isn't yours you should not have to pay for their protection. If some indigent gets sick or insured you shouldn't have to pay for their care. Let them die if they don't have the money. Children too. If children are stupid enough to have poor or dysfunctional parents, screw em. Let them all suffer and die. Maybe they can get jobs in the child porn industry. Yeah. My birth and education were paid for by the citizens of my parents generation but now that I'm an adult I can just walk away from it all. Who needs government to force us to help people. We can rely on the charity of all the suckers who are willing to pay and if that doesn't work then too bad - unless it's me that needs the help.
Very often, people confuse simple with simplistic. The nuance is lost on most. - Clement Mok
That's fine. Their town; their decision.
But rather than have government do the job, I think I would simply called Verizon on the phone and said, "We want FiOS and and have the 70% of the population willing to buy it." Corporations have the expertise and experience to do the job, which politicians lack, so let corporations handle it.
Preventing the creation of a governmental company, no matter what line of business, is anti capitalistic. Sometimes something is of the collective interest of everybody, then, in general, there are no differences. When everbody agrees (more or less) is when you create a governmental postal system, fire dept., health care, roads, and in this case communication. There should always be private alternatives and they should never be banned, as that would be anti capitalistic as well. But adding the artificial constrain on a market which means prohibiting the formation of a governmental company does not foster sane capitalism. There should be fair grounds though, but that's easily arranged.
I am the lawn!
Huge difference in what you're trying to compare. One is the government providing a service, the other is denying human rights.
I'm as free market as anybody, but wiring is infrastructure, and I don't have a problem with infrastructure being provided by the government. Let the local government, through the power utility, run fiber optic to everyplace that receives power, unless a private company provides a 100MB connection to the house for less than $20. That 100MB line should have low enough latency to provide live TV and VOIP phone connections. If the private companies won't build a better product than can be provided publicly, they shouldn't expect protection from competition.
Ironically, people investing their own money to solve their problems (because there is no one else who offers a cheaper solution) would not sound too much out of place in an Ayn Rand novel ...
>>>Preventing the creation of a governmental company, no matter what line of business, is anti capitalistic
Yeah I agree.
So what's that have to do with my original statement, that I think a private corporation like Verizon FiOS would do a better job? This is no different than if the U.S. Army says "we need more tanks." They don't build the tanks themselves. They ring-up Lockheed or Northrop or some other corporation and have them build the tanks.
Also: I don't agree with your premise that a government monopoly is any better than a Comcast monopoly or Microsoft monopoly o ATT monopoly. We should steer clear of monopolies wherever we can, which is why I disagree with having a postal monopoly (which is deep in debt) or passenger rail monopoly (ditto).
I like choice. Monopolies take away that power.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
That said, even getting food at your local store is indirectly using using the road (to get the food to you) which results indirectly in you paying the road tax which in my opinion is completely fair.
I have no idea what Jefferson would have thought of municipal fiber(though he might have said something pro or con about the establishment of the post office, and you could probably draw cogent analogies from that). However, there is a more general point that deserves clarification.
Jefferson and his colleagues wrote the federal constitution, laying out the powers and operation of the federal government with other powers reserved to the people or the states. The constitution they wrote placed considerable limits on the scope of the federal government; but placed very few limits on the scope of state and local government(pretty much, "no foreign policy, no violations of citizens enumerated rights" and not a whole lot else). Had the constitution been written to create a libertarian government, rather than a limited federal government presiding over a collection of state governments, it would have looked hugely different.
Of course, just because state and local governments can doesn't necessarily mean that they should, so it is perfectly legitimate to advocate for state and local governments along libertarian lines; but the assertion that the legitimate scope of government is tightly limited simply because the legitimate scope of the federal government is tightly limited is silly.
Obviously you didn't read the article. They contacted the telecoms company, and they said that they were not willing to deploy fibre in that area for the foreseeable future. Then, once the referendum had passed, they turned up with teams of workers and started deploying fibre...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Way off topic here, but the reason that 'socialist' fire departments are common now is that the people who were paying for private fire protection saw things like the great fire of London. It's much cheaper to pay for someone at the other end of the street to have their house put out than it is to pay to fix the damage caused (by both the fire and the water) when the fire reaches your house.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Annual maintenance is only part of the cost of public roads. There is also the cost of building the roads, and many other associated costs. Gas taxes alone do not cover all of these costs.
Just because you are paranoid does not mean that no-one is out to get you.
So, they're not friends of competition, are they?
50-100 years ago we had this collective dream of free markets, capitalism, solving our problems.
Then, corporations found out that the actual free market is bad for profit margins. Once they grew powerful enough, they started changing the game.
Events like this should have the capitalists and free market supporters up in arms. But it doesn't. Why?
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
"By your logic food should be provided by the government."
Haha, wow bro, have I got some news for you...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_stamps
Telco Sues Municipality For Laying Their Own Fiber on Friday September 12 2008, @08:28PM http://tech.slashdot.org/story/08/09/12/2326251/Telco-Sues-Municipality-For-Laying-Their-Own-Fiber Your Rights Online: Judge Tosses Telco Suit Over City-Owned Network on Friday October 10 2008, @08:23AM http://yro.slashdot.org/story/08/10/10/1243212/Judge-Tosses-Telco-Suit-Over-City-Owned-Network Telco Appeals Minnesota City's Fiber-Optic Win on Saturday November 08 2008, @11:15AM http://yro.slashdot.org/story/08/11/08/1532237/Telco-Appeals-Minnesota-Citys-Fiber-Optic-Win
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
This is a very familiar story, that we have seen play out with Greenlight in Wilson NC.
FTTP, up to 100 symmetric bandwidth, and the telecoms threw a freaking fit, and did their best to annihilate municipal broadband, and failed to stop it.
Reply to That ||
The Constitution defines the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT. All other powers are reserved for the state. Nothing, even in looking at the founding father's writings imply that LOCAL GOVERNMENT cannot compete with private industry. The City of Monticello is not, despite the suprising ignorance shown here this topic, part of the Federal Government.
The City is more then capable of telling you what colors you can paint your house, where you can and cannot plant trees, and so forth. The issue building permits and license everything from the number of dogs you can have to how often you can water your lawn. They also can restrict businesses from opening from granting licenses to zoning requirements.
Cities and Counties and even States run and operate businesses as far back as the 13 colonies. We have Police Depts, Fire Depts, various inspectors (electrical (state), building (city), surveyors (county), assessors, DNR, etc... All of which can be hired in the capacity of a business in the form of permits and special services (Fire dept. will burn a building down for you, police can be hired for security for special events, etc.)
The sheer ignorance and lack of understanding of what the Constitution of the United States actually does is astonishing. The fact that when I was in high school and we were required in social studies to actually read the federalist papers compared to the teachers now that, "that stuff is nothing but a bunch of lies" thank you teachers union in district 622 here in MN speaks on how much misinformation exists on the purpose.
Of course I expect little from my home state now, we've elected a wrestler and now a bad comedian. Perhaps Louie Anderson can run against Frankin... Hell I'd be happy to have KKKKAAAAAHHHHHNNNNNN! KKKKKKKAAAAAHHHHHNNNNNN!!!! tossed out...
For those that do understand the Constitution, kudos for keeping the arguments rooted in reality.
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
Goes to show the biggest enemy of the free market is...the free market.
Next time the town should be more careful about granting exclusive contracts.
Exclusive deals usually go sour before the ink is dry. It's not a new problem and if it were easily solved, it would be solved by now. Here's the obligatory quote summing up the problem:
It's tenacity probably owes something to shortcomings in human nature and the inability of society to self-correct in those areas.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Do you ride the bus? Buses run on Diesel (mostly.) which pays road tax.
No they don't. Special pumps owned by the city, filled with gas on which the taxes are not paid, same for all other city vehicles.
The reasons against capital punishments are far simpler than you think:
1) The way it is done usually is far more costly (and that does not even count wasting the massive investment a society puts just getting someone to adulthood, particularly with a good education)
2) All methods seem to be rather cruel, despite claims to the contrary
3) You _will_ end up killing innocents. Lots of them. A government that is routinely involved in killing innocents in my eyes has very little justification for judging others. Few people would support murders as judges, but that's essentially what death sentences imply in a non-perfect world.
My available options for broadband in my home?
Comcast and TDS.
And yes, I get better customer service from Comcast. Which should tell you something about TDS.
"An unarmed man can only flee from evil, and evil is not overcome by fleeing from it." Col. Jeff Cooper
http://www.lawlibrary.state.mn.us/archive/ctappub/0906/opa081928-0602.pdf
setting aside for a moment the fact that "we'd like faster internet" and "we love oppressing minorities" are apples and oranges, please show your work. specifically, i'd like to know what rules and laws prohibit a local government from providing a service that private industry has refused to roll out. I think you're thinking of 'unreasonable' government competition. hint: if the private sector has refused to provide a service, the government isnt competing by providing it.
Come read my stupid blagablog. Rants and Giggles
Well if killing were always wrong, you'd have a point, but there are times where its justified.
Personally, I think its a great way to deal with the dregs of society; eliminate the ones causing problems, and you'll only be left with people who aren't causing problems.
It is called a trade off. When the government spends money on infrastructure it isn't throwing it away. That money will provide jobs to people in the US those people will buy stuff and provide more jobs and all those people will pay taxes. Some of that stuff may be education for their children or themselves which will pay more benefits.
Think about the rural electrification project from the 1930s. That paid huge benefits to the country in increased productivity and quality of life in rural America
In the end things like roads, phone lines, and now data lines are used by everybody. The more people that have access the more benefit to everybody. I know that it is may be unpopular to say it but $300 spent on infrastructure will benefit the US a lot more than that same money spent on a game console made in china by a Japanese company.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I hate how 'vengeance' has become a dirty word; and yet if you have been the victim of a crime, surely it is a basic human need. If you don't factor it into the sentence, you will just encourage vigilantism.
Light Yagami, is that you?
If they lost a number of law suites, I take it they'd be liable for costs. Presumably there wasn't a business case for building the network in the first place. And finally, no one thinks the better of TDS for the these events.
How much did this cost TDS and did anyone in a decision making position loose their job?
TFA sucks and sucks hard. Ars Technica has a far better article. The suit is over, it started two years ago and the telco lost.
Free Martian Whores!
Once you total up gas costs, parking fees, aggravation from driving down there... the train makes a hell of a lot more sense.
I agree! in Chicago I use the train almost exclusively. The problem is that most people from around here freak when I say that.. One mother of a friend of my daughters said, "The train? and have to be around all those icky poor people?"
Most people here in the USA are bred to be against public transportation. They think it's "icky" and they see them belching black smoke so it's "dirty"...
It's heavy training from TV that you must own the biggest car you can get, and that public transportation is BAD!. Hell the Tv show Seinfeld. They lived in New York, What idiot drives everywhere in New york? Most people in reality use public transportation in NYC. you NEVER saw them on a subway, always in jerry's or kramers car.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Raise gas taxes and people use less gas. It's a regressive tax and if you push it too hard you'll see a massive flight to higher millage cars or even non-petrol cars. Then what do you tax? Electricity? Now you're taxing people who may or may not use the roads.
As a second point everyone benefits from good roads not just those who drive on them. Police and fire departments can respond better on good roads. Less congestion means better air quality. Better roads also bring in more business which means more jobs. The road infrastructure is tied into almost everything we do. Thus everyone helps pay for it. Your precept that only those who drive benefit from roads is both short sighted and incorrect.
Moreover, (and I'm getting more off topic) disease is a lot like fire. America will probably get a single payer health insurance plan after a plague does for health care what the London fire did for firefighting.
There's a chapter about this in "Freakonomics" by Dubner and Levitt, where they run the numbers and point out that legalizing abortion and putting more cops on the streets has done more to lower the crime rate than any number of executions per year ever will.
--Obyron
No, the biggest enemy of the free market is the abused court system in this example...
Before commenting on the Bible, please read it first
Police are not babysitters. They are not there to protect us from ourselves. They are there to defend property and citizens from each other. For those reasons they are important.
If thugs go after some ethnic group that isn't yours you should not have to pay for their protection.
What does ethnicity have to do with anything? They are people too and would get the same protections of property and self as any other ethnicity.
If some indigent gets sick or insured you shouldn't have to pay for their care. Let them die if they don't have the money.
In a perfect and ideal world, no this would never happen. However ( and this is the point that everyone in the healthcare debate seems to miss ) It costs money to provide healthcare. In some cases lots of money. What is the value of human life? If a procedure is going to cost 100 million dollars to save 1 person is it still worth it because life is valuable? Death is inevitable, we are all going to die. It is just a matter of time. In some cases it is not worth it, even for a family member to pay the costs of healthcare. It is sometimes better to let your own child die then pay for a miracle. The idea that the government should pay whatever costs are necessary at the taxpayers expense is impractical. It doesn't mean we as a society shouldn't strive to provide care for all, it just means you must take into account the real costs in the real world and ask if it is worth it. Healthcare has costs it cannot and never will be free. Also, death is natural and it is not inhumane to let people die - no one lives forever.
On Education: For starters a public education system is the tenth plank of the communist manifesto. Second the public education system is used as an indoctrination tool and inhibits free thought, in the public education system you are punished for being a non-conformist. Then there is the cost of public education, once again people aren't practical about how to pay for it. Even if the first two points didn't matter the public education system is horribly underfunded to even meet its stated goals. Here are two more reasons why some people don't want to support public education: 1. They never used it (private or home schooled). 2. It holds back the bright students in order to cater to the failing ones.
I don't think anyone is for no-government. However we managed just fine for hundreds of years with less government. I'm all for government, just less of it. For instance in the case of this telco issue, the people organized to put in their own fiber network (a public project is not necessarily a government project) and the government instead of promoting competition though fair trade stopped the people for building the product they wanted. In this case that is not a free market, that is a government regulated market hampering progress.
I think they're just thankful to have the service at all - I recall many of the monopolies in Minnesota are not terribly competitive. You have Comcast, the cable monopoly that aggressively goes after the high speed network market and offers high priced TV packages (compared to satellite) and anyone that uses the Qwest or Covad backbones and neither of those providers sees any reason to keep up with Comcast. Nearly everyone I know in Minnesota uses Comcast for high speed internet, and last time I checked Broadband Reports it was the cheapest and fastest overall (but from experience I know that is iffy and their TV packages are much worse than competing satellite).
And since when is Montecello a suburb of Minneapolis? Its like more than half way to St Cloud. In fact, I used to meet my boss there when I lived near the University of Minnesota and telecommuted to his business in St Cloud.
I could tell you about American Alarm in Orange County, CA who writes contracts seemingly with 1 length filled into a blank on the front but then a blanket 5 year term overriding on the back.
They have this fat, ugly, semi-female "non-lawyer" (I wrote that for her benefit since she routinely scours the internet looking for negative news about American Alarm so that she can bully sites into cleaning it up... Hi, you ugly piece of crap that was obviously raped as a child to do what you do and look like you look!)
Anyway, she sits at small claims court all day every day suing all their customers to get money for service they never provided and obtained through fraudulent means and the court backs them up, all day, every day in a complete travesty of justice...
How's that?
Umm, yeah, we don't need them. Volunteer fire departments are more efficient and don't bankrupt cities with the longstanding obligations they create, as they have in California, and now in Houston.
When I had a house fire a few months ago, the first truck on the scene was from a volunteer fire department, and they got there something like 3 minutes after 911 was called. Damn efficient, and at no cost to the taxpayer.
Dregs of society? Hell yeah! Add the Jews to the list too? Hell yeah! What about the blind, they're no good to anyone? Yeah, add them to the list too. Any generic part of society I can't stand? Put them at the top of the list.
Fucking prick.
This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
Volunteer fire departments may well be more efficient, but as this is a reply to the humorous parent regarding socialist fire departments I would say volunteer fire departments are no less such. The term "volunteer" refers to the firefighters volunteering to be on call rather as opposed to full time employees, it does not necessarily mean they work for free. Volunteer fire departments still require funding like any service to maintain their equipment, facilities, etc. The source of this funding can be federal, state, or local governement as well as corporate or private donations. Regardless of where this money comes from it needs to come from somewhere and when the smoke clears if you didn't pay the balance then the community did in one way or another.
Account -> Discussions -> Disable Sigs
"Separate delivery from production" doesn't solve anything.
Say we do that, and three water companies provide water to some common pool, and one water distribution company sends that water around.
What have you solved? You still have a one-company bottleneck - the distribution company - that can charge whatever it wants to deliver the utility, because the one thing you definitely don't want to do is install two identical delivery systems.
So let's look at it from a customer's perspective: Jim wants water, so he contacts the distribution company (which actually pipes the water to his house). So we can already see that Jim doesn't get to pick his distributor - only one company has pipes run to his house. Does Jim get to pick which water supplier to use? Of course not - the water comes from a common pool! Jim still has one and only one choice - the distributor. He has to take whatever price the distributor sets.
Sure, you could set up some scheme where each water company pumps whatever it wants into the pool, and Jim's usage is metered and he pays his chosen supplier based on that - but now he has to pay two bills: one to the supplier and one to the distributor, each with their own taxes, administrative fees, and so on. Furthermore, you now have possible problems where a supplier puts X gallons into the pool one day, but its customers use X+10 gallons - and this can be true for every supplier. That kind of situation is very difficult to deal with fairly (fairly to all the suppliers, that is) when multiple suppliers have to go through a single distributor. It's kind of like ISPs' attempts to charge different rates based on content, actually - and please don't tell me you think that scheme is workable.
In other words, you've made the system a lot more complicated for zero gain. "More complicated" is of course equivalent to "more expensive" in the long run, I'm sure you'll agree.
Also, its foolish to think that having competition is going to increase costs in any way. If that were the case, then there would be no need for governments to grant monopolies to companies. They would be "natural"
I don't think you understand why the government grants monopolies to utilities. It's basically a paper saying "we'll let you run the monopoly on utility X as long as you don't screw over your customers by charging too much." It's not about the monopoly itself, per se, it's about protecting the customers - they do it precisely by acknowledging that it's a natural monopoly.
Besides, as I've pointed out, your competing "water suppliers" could not possibly reduce costs, and even if they could reduce the cost of water production you have given no guarantee that the customers would see the price lowered, because the distributor would be the one charging them.
You're assuming an odd sort of circumstance, where two companies come in and plant pipes to every house in a town even if they aren't a customer.
Exactly - and that's because the only way two water utilities could truly compete is if each company has control over the whole process, from production to distribution. I've already described why, above.
[Flying cars] worked startlingly well, and were capable of full autopilot for both takeoff and landing, meaning that there wouldn't be any problems with human error as you put it.
I'm not worried about takeoff and landing. I'm worried about what's in between. There would be TONS of problems with human error. OH no, Jim forgot to refuel his car, and now he's plummeting 2000 feet onto a school. Yeah, that sounds like a real good idea - let's implement that Real Soon Now.
I should also point out that I'm calling your bluff - your statements regarding existing viable flying cars are only valid if you're referring to small passenger aircraft (complete with wings and a propeller), rather than what the words "flying car" imply (that is, some
Not only emergency services but health care - would you actually negotiate the care given to your child to drive down costs? Do you really think you are going to hunt for lowest cost provider for your child's health (or even life)?
I would claim that this is exactly why we need to have universal health coverage - since when you need it you can not actually make those choices nor should you have to.
For the people who volunteer their time and receive no monetary compensation that is fantastic but my point is that: 1) volunteer fire fighters don't always work for free 2) to expect that the amount of people who would work for free is always going to be sufficient to satisfy the need for firefighters would be naive 3) for the volunteers that do get paid for their time, it isn't all voluntary donations, tax dollars from some level of government are generally a large portion of their budget. I'm no expert, and there may be some departments that get by on pure donations of time and money, but it is by no means a one size fits all solution.
Account -> Discussions -> Disable Sigs
... a well placed town backhoe trench. Oops.
So to summarize your position: you object to people (the government) forcing you to pay for a service, but you expect other people to provide you with a service for free.
Typical.
Mart
"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?