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Rural Broadband to Replace POTS As Beneficiary of US Gov't Subsidies
IDG reports that "The U.S. Federal Communications Commission has voted to overhaul a decades-old system of telephone subsidies in rural areas, with the funding refocused on broadband deployment. The FCC's vote Thursday would transition the Universal Service Fund's (USF's) high-cost program, now subsidizing voice service, to a new Connect America Fund focused on broadband deployment to areas that don't yet have service. The FCC will cap the broadband fund at $4.5 billion a year, the current budget of the USF high-cost program, funded by a tax on telephone bills." That cap, says Reuters, is "the first budget constraint ever imposed on the program."
I have been trying to get broadband for my parents for years. They live a mile off the main road in a deep valley. Thus far...
* No ISDN. A year or two ago Tennessee decided it no longer had to be a tariffed service, and AT&T burned their ships behind them as rapidly as possible, because I was told our CO no longer has ISDN hardware (it did back in 2001-2002).
* No DSL. AT&T has a cluster of SAI cabinets 1 mile from their driveway, but no free ports on their DSLAM, and no intention of adding new ones. I've voluntered to *BUY* them a frickin' VDSL2 DSLAM and give it to them, but I've never heard back from them on that or any of several other offers. AT&T is a bigger information sink than /dev/null
* No Fiber. I have asked Charter if they could provision single-mode fiber if I pulled it to the road. I was agnostic about whether that's a pure FTTH setup, or just a cabinet by the road with a cable modem and a fiber converter. Nope. They cannot provision my fiber under either scenario, but they *can* provision fiber they lay themselves, which strangely costs roughly "one new car" more than doing it myself. Which is kind of hard on retired fixed-income folks.
* No cable. Their house doesn't have cable coax. See Charter's idea of fair price above.
* No cell. The valley effectively blocks all signals. I have maps of every cell tower in a 10 mile radius, and never found a useful signal on any of them.
* No satellite. They don't have line-of-sight with geosynchronous orbit, and even if they did, the satellite providers in our area aren't accepting new customers right now.
I mean, what can you do at this point? My next step is getting two 2 watt Wi-Fi routers and a couple of high-gain antennas, setting up a couple of passive repeaters between them and my house (very NoLOS), and hoping I can set up a wireless bridge. My next step past that is contacting CERN to see if they can beam internet over neutrinos.
The last time this issue came up on Slashdot, the (L)ibertarians came out of the woodwork, blaming my parents for building a house somewhere where there's no broadband, despite the fact that they built the house in 1985. Which is about as rational as blaming settlers in the 1700's for not building cities where the interstates were going to be.
They also pounced on me for wanting something subsidized. Except you're not subsidizing me one thin dime. The phone cable is already in the ground. All I need is a DSLAM in the local SAI cabinet, *which I volunteered to purchase myself*. No go. A free market only exists when the buyer actually has a choice (see "healthcare" for another example of your economic ideologies colliding with reality).
Freshman economics tells you that some business don't behave well under the usual free-market rules, and thus need to be heavily regulated. Those business are called "natural monopolies", which is why gas, electricity, sewage, roads, phone (hah!) are provided by either public utilities, or publicly-regulated private utilities. A utility only needs one set of physical plant, one set of staff, one set of senior management. Multiple companies waste megabucks on multiple plant/staff/management. They waste further megabucks on advertising, trying to steal profitable customers from each other in a zero-sum game. All that needless spending increases your costs, increases the necessary rate of return before they will provide internet, and ends up marooning a lot of marginal households on the wrong side of the digital divide.
In the middle 2000's several underserved TN cities and utilities got tired of being ignored by the AT&T and Comcast's of the world and were looking at getting into the game themselves. And then in 2008 our state politicians decided to actively hinder the formation of municipal internet and the entrance of local electric utilities (existing ones got grandfathered in), in the name of "encouraging compet
The changes will cost U.S. residents paying less than $30 a month for telephone service an additional $0.10 to $0.15 a month
This sounds great. Good for people without broadband, insignificantly more expensive for people who currently get a POTS subsidy from the program.
Now how about an urban broadband fund, to replace the worthless service tens of millions of us still have, service so bad it isn't even legally 'broadband' in any other industrialized country, with something usable?
If nobody lived in the country, what would you eat? Good luck with raising cattle on the roof of your apartment building.
âoeIn theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not." â Albert Einstein
Why is that my problem?
I agree with building out ISP service, but handing the money to private companies is not going to work. They will just steal it and still demand to not be regulated.
When I drive around in the vicinity of the Mohave Desert I see houses scattered - a line of poles provides a telephone line may extend to 20 miles, or more to a lone dwelling. So to provided High Speed there will need to be either fibre or a series of amplifiers and power to them. Not something a phone company would enjoy doing, for one dwelling.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I don't see where he said that no one should live in the country. That's a strawman.
Choices have consequences, and it would be nice if other people weren't forced to subsidize your particular choice of lifestyle.
The internet may be important but the telephone remains more important, especially in remote areas where it is the norm for business and power distribution may be less than reliable (POTS usually has backup power supplies, which is useful in emergencies).
On the other hand, there are plenty of places where the telephone system is just fine and they are looking for broadband.
So shouldn't the region be deciding what's more important given their needs and level of development?
It is subsidized because it has been determined to be beneficial to society as a whole, just like phone service and education. Also, this is probably the largest factor holding us back from a paperless society.
That is just as much a strawman. Living in a society means one way or another people are always subsidizing one another.
For laying fiber in rural areas, a quick search comes up with a cost of between $16,000 and $80,000 per mile. This appears to include digging a ditch, laying the cable, repeaters, etc. So, for $4.5 billion we should be able to lay about 90,000 miles of fiber. Of course, pretty much all of these rural places that need broadband should already have phone service (and power; internet is probably not terribly useful without it), so in theory we should be able to hang new fiber on the existing utility poles - that should bring the cost closer to the $16,000 figure, which would allow 280,000 miles of fiber to be strung up, ignoring all costs of "subsidizing" people who already have connections.
Oh, just noticed that only $300 million is earmarked for deployment, so I guess we're only looking at 6,000 - 18,000 miles of fiber next year.
Maybe it's time to move to the country - it seems I would be far more likely to get better internet there than waiting for AT&T or Comcast to ever actually upgrade their systems.
Why are we're supposed to provide your parents with broadband?
Why are hospital emergency rooms supposed to provide everybody with care instead of turning away patients who cannot pay? Public investment in services that have become necessities helps reduce the demand for criminal services. Are you familiar with the plot of the film John Q, about someone who used crime to obtain health care?
I notice too that you have fiber (and probably DSL), but aren't willing to pay to have them installed yourself.
Grandparent is willing to pay for parts and labor to have them installed, but the carriers want to add a surcharge of tens of thousands of dollars (search post for "one new car").
t is subsidized because it has been determined to be beneficial to society as a whole, just like phone service and education.
I seem to recall hearing something about a few upset people staging sit-ins recently partly as an indirect result of states deciding to de-subsidize higher education.
nah, those chickens will never come home to roost, we've got "Survivor" and "Dancing with the Stars", gay marriage and abortion to worry about.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Lets see some quotes for that.
Not a lot of city folks getting farm subsidies, and welfare rates are pretty high out in the country.
the phone company wouldn't accept an outside sourced piece of hardware to be installed in their cabinets and connected to their networks?
Requiring the local phone monopoly to accept any conforming equipment wouldn't be much of a stretch from the Hush-A-Phone and Carterfone decisions.
I don't think any taxes should be spent on me. Everyone should pay for exactly what they use and not a penny more.
The fact that the government forces me to accept ill-gotten gains in a thousand different ways (most of which I can't even see or adequately account for) does not make my position inconsistent or hypocritical.
If nobody lived in the country
Food prices would go up.
what would you eat?
Rising food prices would lead to a lot more tomatoes and strawberries raised in Topsy Turvy planters, along with other crops commonly found in 4x4 foot raised bed planters. Only government interference (such as the case of Julie Bass of Oak Park) prevents such victory gardens from becoming more widespread.
A strawman is when someone sets up a position that their opponent did not take, merely so they can have something knock it down (e.g. glrotate says he doesn't want to subsidize people living in the country, and sumdumgai sets up and knocks down an argument about no one ever living in the country at all). Where did I set up such a position?
My mistake, I meant you present a false option.
Why should people with no kids pay school taxes? Why should people with no children in college fund public universities? Why should people who live outside the city pay tax on their cars to subsidize a subway system 90 miles away? Why should I fund state or national parks if I don't use them?
People in my area (100 miles from NYC) have an extremely heavy burden in the form of draconian land-use restrictions in order not to harm the water supply to the city. Is that fair?
You do realize that the people who 'choose' to live in the country are the ones providing YOU with your most basic needs, like food and energy, right?
It is called society. Every one gets to pitch in. Get over yourself.
You may be consistent, but you are probably hypocritical.
Would you like to see the roadways that you use dug up? Those are subsidized by taxes, and are essential for everything from personal transportation to industry.
Do you seriously want to depend upon unaccountable businesses to provide safe water? Remember, businesses will gladly raise rates and cut safety measures simply to break even (and that is before you factor in greed or negligence).
Are you willing to go without electricity? A lot of our power comes from megaprojects ranging from hydroelectric dams to nuclear reactors, none of which would have been build without government backing.
The basic rule is that you don't depend upon unaccountable businesses to provide essential shared resources. When you do, society will fall apart.
And the list can go on.
if broadband can be made as reliable as POTS, nobody will need POTS anymore when they can VoIP.
It's a red herring anyway, along the lines of "Group A steals from Group B so it's okay for Group B to steal from Group A". Statistics can give you an idea of the overall size of the problem, but justice always requires an individual solution. If someone steals from you, you are owed recompense from that individual, and not every individual that shares some real or imagined group affiliation with them.
I thought we were talking about subsidies, where did the theft angle come from?
VOIP is available as well. Seriously, it makes good sense to convert POTS lines to DSL/VOIP systems. It might even make sense to run fiber in many areas.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Would you like to see the roadways that you use dug up? Those are subsidized by taxes, and are essential for everything from personal transportation to industry.
I support tolls. Let the people who use the roads pay for the roads.
Do you seriously want to depend upon unaccountable businesses to provide safe water?
I would argue that businesses are much more accountable than politicians. And given the shitty quality of the tap water where I live (generously provided by our wise government overlords), I would gladly shop around for better water. In fact, many people do, as it now comes in bottles (sold by ruthless corporations, no less, who, if popular sentiment is correct, just want all their customers to get sick and die, which they will somehow translate into a profit).
Technically, I don't think it's a false dilemma either.
;)
Maybe you just mean that you think I'm wrong? That's a perfectly fine position to take too.
Other economists claim that natural monopoly is a myth, and effects attributed to natural monopoly are in fact caused by 1. local government ownership of roads and 2. local government's failure to efficiently value permits to tear up those roads to install pipes, conduits, etc.
Back when I was pricing out my broadband options, I checked out Comcast's (heavily advertised) three for one package. TV, broadband and telephone. But when I called them, they told me that, based on my address, Verizon was my telephone provider and they wouldn't compete with them. On the other hand, Verizon wouldn't install DSL because 'Comcast provides broadband in your neighborhood'. Covad checked out my line and was more than happy to take over the loop and install voice/DSL. But Verizon told them that they couldn't have the pair (they'd take it and reassign it to a second residential service if ever I dropped my Verizon line before leasing it to a CLEC).
This has nothing to do with permits and installing facilities. It has everything to do with not throwing telecom execs in prison for Sherman Antitrust Act violations. If you want to keep your NSA fiber taps running in the switching facilities, you're going to have to grant these bastards immunity from the law.
Have gnu, will travel.
Surely, just like all the fast food restaurants merged into one. Now Taco Bell is the only restaurant.
Pfft, I bet you don't even know how to use the three shells.
Sorry, I'm a "taxes are theft" kind of guy, and I sometimes forget that many people believe that taking things under the threat of bodily harm is okay, as long as it's done by someone with a badge on behalf of someone behind a podium.
Either way, the same logic applies. Not everyone in a city pays the same into the system, just as not everyone in the country takes out the same amount from the system, so working on averages won't necessarily make the system any fairer.
But we PAY for beef. If the rubes want free internet in exchange for free beef for city dwellers, then I'm all for it. The rubes will be on the losing end of that deal.
Sure, but there is a difference between "voluntary subsidization" ie paying more for goods created in the country, like food products, and "involuntary subsidization" where we pay more for nothing.
Sell the roadways to private operators if you must. Privately owned roads are generally much better maintained than publicly owned ones.
I like how you think that a person can't be held accountable for selling bad water, as if people wouldn't immediately put him out of business by getting their water from elsewhere, and suing him for damages caused by his polluted water.
Just because the government funds a lot of things doesn't mean that those things wouldn't happen without government funding. Indeed, private citizens, with the money that would have been spent on the programs PLUS the amount of money that would have been spent paying the salaries of the government workers administering those benefits AND the salaries of those private sector workers who oversee regulatory compliance could create more efficient projects, and have more money left over for more capital investment.
Which are thought to be Tyrian shekels of 1.38 troy ounces each. At current price of 35 USD per troy ounce, Judas turned in Jesus for less than $1,500.
Wow, that's scary. He should have at least held out for $5000!
Sounds like you should move. Somalia would probably be a good fit.
Taxes are the price of civilization. I am happy to pay mine. I would even support a government program to buy your kind of folks a free one way trip to nations like Somalia.
The problem with that is that the provider will know you did it, because it's been done right.
If you do a half-assed looking job you can just call 'em up and when they say "we don't have a cable into your house" you can reply "yes you do, what are you talking about, I'm looking right at it!" and make them send a truck out to check. The guy on the truck will say "hmmm, looks just like one of ours" if you do the job badly enough, and you'll probably get hooked right in.
Maybe you forgot the part where we paid for telco lines and cable lines to be run to these people's houses to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars in straight tax money in addition to the fund that the article is talking about.
Like the billions that goes into the infrastructure to build cars? Aircraft? A steel plant? Finance and financiers funds industries that have timelines that take decades. Comparatively digging ditches is cheap.
You clearly don't see Internet access as a basic human right,
It's not.
You sure would have a problem driving to a new spot you haven't been to then... Your taxes go to roads. Roads you don't use right now. So in your view, all roads should be toll roads, and you should pay for each road you drive on. That would sure be a fun thing to manage.
Why should people with no kids pay school taxes? Why should people with no children in college fund public universities? Why should people who live outside the city pay tax on their cars to subsidize a subway system 90 miles away? Why should I fund state or national parks if I don't use them?
All very good questions to which there are no good answers. People shouldn't be forced to pay for things they don't use, including all these examples and more.
People in my area (100 miles from NYC) have an extremely heavy burden in the form of draconian land-use restrictions in order not to harm the water supply to the city. Is that fair?
No, it's not fair. It's your land, and it's not like anyone from NYC has a legitimate claim on the source of the water or the water table itself. If supplying water to the city is a problem they are welcome to collect it closer to the source and have it shipped in.
You do realize that the people who 'choose' to live in the country are the ones providing YOU with your most basic needs, like food and energy, right?
To the extent that they do, they are payed for the service. That's all the "subsidy" they need or deserve. To forcibly increase their compensation leads to overproduction, misallocation of resources, and a net loss for society as a whole.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
Wouldn't be as hard as you think. I (gladly) pay for toll roads where I live now, and I don't even have to think about it except when my transmitter comes unstuck from behind my rear-view mirror.
The theft angle comes from not honoring the requirements of the 1996 Telecommunications Act.
They are past the time limits of the provision. They haven't delivered what they are supposed to (45mbit symmetrical broadband to every house) and thus this is stealing money and not giving the required service.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Sounds like you should move.
Nah, I'd rather stick around and try to change my country for the better. Only losers cut and run. ;)
(Speaking of false dilemmas, "Institutionalized Theft or Somalia" is a classic!)
We do, they are called fuel taxes.
All the local phone companies where I live (Northern ND) have some sort of FTTH plan. I work for a contractor doing the work in people's homes after the fiber is buried, and the larger 'cities' (50 to 3000 people) all have fiber, now we're working on the tiny towns, then the farms, etc. Whatever stimulus money they're getting to do all this sure is working. I hope it works for you all in the future too (especially the gentleman in TN.)
LRN 2 SWM
Just read a fair bit of that article.
Author must be a migrant worker--he's supremely skilled at picking cherries.
There are no places devoid of all taxation that are not in a similar state.
It's also a false dilemma that we must choose between involuntary taxation and no taxation at all.
I hate the FCC. They'll now have an extra 4.5 billion to give back to the major telcos, that already owe 300 billion in undelivered broadband. I harped on my local rep about this when he was head of the house subcommittee on telecommunications, but he was in the pocket of Telcos then. Since the telcos lobbied so hard to roll back the telco reform of '96, that ended up killing CLECs and ISPs, we know who will obviously win with a few billion more - the monopolies.
The libertarian answer would be to stop government mandated monopolies like we have. There used to be a few thousand ISPs and the local ones would bend over backwards to help people get online. Plenty of companies would be happy to hook you up, IF there was a fair playing ground. When the Telco reform was rolled back under Bush almost all those ISPs had to close because they couldn't compete against the monopolies again. So what should you do? Vote the bastards out of office who accept lobbying. Yeah that'd be most everyone but sooner or later we'd manage to get some good people in.
From a technical point of view, set up your own last mile. Meraki - now owned by Google - makes easy and good gear. A mile isn't that big of a deal for wireless and is rather cheap. Or your own cable.
Better than some taxes, since at least they are more targeted than a general income tax, but they still leave room for improvement due to differences in engine efficiency, purchases of fuel not related to roadway use, etc.
Engine efficiency is taken into account by the current system.
More efficiency engine means less weight per hp means less wear on the roads means less tax per mile.
But you are right about fuel for non-road use, but then a fairer system would calculate how much of that isn't for road use and apply that tax money to atmospheric pollution control.
Hybrids and electrics, especially when they hit heavy work trucks and commercial vehicles are going to be a pain the ass for taxes
I have no interest in letting private companies tear up the road to my house all the time. I don't want to drive on that, both for me and the wear on my car. And I know that none of those companies would pay for the damage to me or my car unless I sue them, and I would never be able to because of the free-market costs for a lawyer. Instead, I'd rather get together with my neighbors, get some guns, and pass a few "laws" that say they can't tear up roads in my town any more. Which, incidentally, is exactly what my city council says right now. Score one for government in this case.
So why doesn't Coke merge with Pepsi?
Because the government stops them? Sometimes companies like to create a market, so that they can advertise the products as "not proprietary". But usually the company that created a market wants to dominate it, while the other companies are just there to pick up scraps. I suspect that Pepsi, not so much with their flagship product but more with their water/non-Cola/etc., have taken so much of Coke's revenue that they would happily merge/buy out if the government would allow it. Score another one for the government with your example here.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
I contend all taxation done in nations that you can leave or vote in is voluntary.
There are many benefits of living away from civilization that your parents enjoy but urban residents don't. Consider the lack of broadband options one of the costs. It's up to them to decide whether the benefits outweigh the costs.
Until you can prove that the benefit to the government of subsidizing broadband access for rural residents outweighs the costs, don't ask the government to intervene. It isn't the government's role to pick the winners and the losers.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Which are thought to be Tyrian shekels of 1.38 troy ounces each. At current price of 35 USD per troy ounce, Judas turned in Jesus for less than $1,500.
Which is 50,000 times GP's stated $0.03 per person.
404: sig not found.
Natural monopolies tend to form any time you have large up front costs that take a long time to pay off. Once someone comes in and puts down the money, it's somewhere between hard and impossible to compete.
It's nearly impossible for a new ISP to get land rights to run lines. Even if they could afford the tens of millions to connect a small city, most local governments are doing to deny yet another company coming in and re-trenching lines.
There are only so many people who can have internet. For the first ISP to come in to a town, the tear up the roads/etc and lay lines. They may drop 100mil hooking up 50k people. A few years later another ISP looks at coming in. They to would have to drop 100mil and tear up the roads/etc, except the best they can get is maybe half of the population, so they're already at a distinct disadvantage, plus they will probably have to under-cut the competition to get people to switch.
The first ISP has already paid off some of their debt. So they see this new ISP coming into town and decide to drop prices to razor thin margins. The new ISP could at best break even and never pay off their debt, so they never come in.
Could you imagine competition with roads? Wouldn't you love to have 10 roads outside you house. Where would the houses go? Roads are already like 40' wide, now you want them 400' wide and some way to keep people from going into the wrong companies lanes? But hey, natural monopolies don't exist.
That's already happened, to the tune of $200 billion dollars. You were supposed to get 45Mbits to 86 million homes for that. Instead they just redefined "broadband" to mean 200kbits.
404: sig not found.
Do you like food? Fuel for your vehicle(s)? Biodegradable plastics? Farming requires space. Space that can't be used for condos and high-rises and other population-dense structures that are "profitable" for a cableco/telco to support (but only if those structures sign exclusive contracts paying for the highest level of service for decades).
My parents are in a similar situation, in that they live on a rural farm 5 miles from the nearest town, surrounded by farmland that they actually farm, but can't get broadband. Well, that's not 100% true. Where they live is extremely flat and treeless (see: farmland) so the wireless provider from the nearest town can service them. But the local cableco won't touch them when their nearest neighbor is a mile away. Signing up two contracts per mile is not profitable for them unless there's some sort of subsidy.
Or you could starve while living in your densely-populated urban environment. Your call.
So if we don't subsidize broadband for farmers, we'll starve?
No, I don't think that's true. It's quite possible that a farm with broadband can produce food more cheaply than a farm without broadband, but are the benefits really worth the costs?
Remember that subsidies distort the market, and that prevents those farmers from making rational decisions that lower the cost of food production. That means we will all pay more in the end.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
There's a price for everything. These rural residents simply don't feel that the benefits are worth the costs, and want urban dwellers to help subsidize their lifestyles.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Free-market nutters are like health food loons who have decided any "natural" product is better than every man-made product, 100% of the time.
Or, maybe more accurately, the people who thought (think? I'm sure there are still some people laboring under this misunderstanding) that natural evolution leads to an ever-improving hierarchy of animals, and that each "level" is objectively better than the one before it, rather than simply more adapted for its particular circumstances, which may leave it proper fucked when those circumstances change, while "inferior" creatures without the misfortune of now-crippling adaptations thrive.
Huh, that actually turned out to be a pretty damn good analogy for the proper place, function, and balance of directed vs. laissez faire approaches to economic policy.
At any rate, these folks really need to read up on the economic policies of postwar Japan. Pretty much blows their "government intervention can only ever harm an economy" black-and-white model out of the water. Or post-reconquista Spain. Or a lot of examples, actually. They seem to have decided that because it can go horribly wrong, it must never be good/useful.
If they can accept that government is necessary for an economy, in any modern sense of the term, to exist, they might also to well to consider the question: why should we use our collective will to create an economy? To what end?
Living in a society means one way or another people are always subsidizing one another.
So your rationale is that, since we're already providing subsidies for useful stuff like oh, clean water or national defense, then we should provide subsidies for granddad's WoW character?
You clearly don't see Internet access as a basic human right
A basic human right is something that is necessary to perpetuate existence. You can construct an argument that access to it is a right*, but prepending "basic" to it is completely nonsensical.
*Like other rights, this does not speak to affordability; you have no right to be provided, at no cost, with pen and paper, a firearm, or a bus ticket to the nearest protest. Your only right to be provided with something is in the event that the government has actively taken something from you, or is attempting to do so.
It's relatively common in rural areas to be able to buy fuel for use off-road without paying road taxes on it. Diesel is by far the most common, simply because it is used in the highest quantity off-road in rural areas (farming equipment being the #1 use), but you can usually purchase other untaxed fuels as well.
I also find your linked article highly dubious calling running multiple gas and water lines from different providers an inconvenience. Not only can it be dangerous but it's also really really really expensive to do.
It's not all or nothing. You can have legislation that makes it safe, and if it's not safe the company has to fix it.
Also if it's really expensive and dangerous, it probably wouldn't happen. Surely it's not expensive and dangerous everywhere though. Why does everybody have to be hamstrung by the lowest common denominator?
You are also confused as to what the parent was suggesting, when government owns the wires they can subcontract out to multiple providers in each pop leveling the playing field for competition
Yeah sure, and then you can argue that when the government owns the service they can subcontract out to different content providers. And then when the government owns the providers they can subcontract out to different content producers. And when they own the producers they'll still subcontract out to individual employees. It must be more efficient because there are fewer middle men.
,why should we use our collective will to create an economy? To what end?
In my experience, the true free-market loons see accumulating capital in and of itself as the ultimate goal of society. This is why economic liberty is the paramount liberty, property rights are the paramount rights. Anything that is not tied to accumulating or producing capital/labor is by definition valueless in their philosophy.
...sometimes, in order to hurt someone very badly, you have to tell that person terrible lies. - PA
Judas turned in Jesus for less than $1,500
I think we are going to need inflation adjusted figures to determine whether or not he got his money's worth.
Adjust for inflation relative to what? What does an ounce of silver buy now vs. the early 0030s CE?