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Single Group Dominates Second Round of Anti Net-Neutrality Comment Submissions
New submitter aquadood writes: According to the Sunlight Foundation's analysis of recent comment submissions to the FCC regarding Net Neutrality, the majority (56.5%) were submitted by a single organization called American Commitment, which has "shadowy" ties to the Koch brothers' network. The blog article goes on to break down the comments in-depth, showing a roughly 60/40 split between those against net neutrality and those for it, respectively.
If there's ever a time - it's times like this. Koch brothers' evil and the bullshit associations they support, typically lobbying for the opposite of what their names indicate (ie. "America" or "US" or "Family" combined with "Freedom" or "Prosperity" or "Commitment" or some other similar term) and the public would be greatly served by having these organisations dismantled, only, the people need some help -- the lack of transparency and lack of media coverage of these types of incidents means the majority, whose votes 'could' count, are too often taken for a ride.
I wonder why they felt the need to spam the submissions. We all know the decision is going to be based on which side pays the largest bribe.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
And yet there is the evil George Soros which is the boogeymen of the left....
As an American, I'm sick and tired of the straw horses being trotted out by both sides. It's time to flush the toilet and kick both sides out. Obama just got a new "shellacking" and the democrat in power that helped move legislation which caused the "shellacking" promptly blamed the other side and said "ya'll should be working with us".
Cut spending, Stop showing up on trendy shows, back off on policing the world, and learn to live in a fricking budget!
We have a third of America on Food stamps and we are inviting others to pile on into the party.
That's not going to work. Is it going to take a major economic colapse to wake America up?
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
Because concrete ties can't fuel conspiracy theories and pry open wallets.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Agreed! Who could be against the FCC regulating the internet? Nutters and Koch brothers types, that's who! I look forward to the FCC getting it's mitts deeply into the regulation of the interntet. I mean, how else can I be sure of getting cheap, fast pings for my games if not by getting the feds involved? My freedom to ping REQUIRES laws, bureaucrats, agents, and harsh penalties to ANYONE who fucks with my pings!
Given that all a lack of the FCC being involved has got you is a Comcast/Time Warner monopoly, prices 2-3 times as high as the other side of the atlantic, service an order of magnitude slower than the other side of the atlantic, and double charging both the sender and receiver for data... YES, FUCKING AMEN, WHO THE FUCK COULD BE AGAINST GETTING THE FCC INVOLVED!
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/American_Commitment
American Commitment is a conservative, right-wing 501(c)(4) non-profit organization founded by right-wing operative Sean Noble and led by Phil Kerpen, former vice president of Americans for Prosperity.[1] Its website says the organization's mission is "restoring and protecting the American Commitment to free markets, economic growth, Constitutionally-limited government, property rights, and individual freedom."[2] The group spent millions on "issue ads" during the 2012 election campaign, most of them attacking Democrats.
American Commitment appears to have received most of its funding through large donations from a handful organizations with close ties to the Koch brothers.
After a comprehensive analysis of the comments provided to the FCC regarding net neutrality, it was found that a great percentage were form letters based on one of some 30 templates one organization made available... So what?
No one is sledging the comments were not submitted falsely - each comment represents a valid comment.
The organizer of the form letter campaign gave people some thirty choices to find a message that resonates with them - each template represented different reasons to oppose net neutrality.
If abortion or the environment were the topic of the open comment period, would you discount form letter submissions from say the Sierra Club or Planned Parenthood because the wording was suggested by an advocacy group? Of course not.
Ken
... of the FCC in the process. That is their primary beef. They see it as an encroachment of federal regulation which they're reflexively against.
This said, if you want the conservatives on your side there is a way to do it while getting effectively to net neutrality.
The issue is that we have a few large companies that are monopolizing everything. Why is that? Mostly because it is almost impossible to lay the last mile of cable from a regulation stand point. Cities, counties, and sometimes even states put taxes, regulations, and conditions on laying cable on the last mile.
Laying backbone cable is much easier. I think I saw an estimation that over 80 percent of US backbone bandwidth is laying idle. The issue is the last mile and the problem is government interference. LOCAL government interference. Not federal.
If you pitch to conservatives "hey, you're allowing monopolistic companies to rob you because local corrupt government officials are getting bribed to shut out competitors" then you're going to have an easier time getting conservatives on board.
If what you want is a better and freer internet... then this gets you that. With expanded competition, the big ISPs will not be able to play these games. Mom and pop ISP providers will sprout up like mushrooms in any area with an issue. Yes, running an ISP is an investment but not nearly as big of a deal as many people think.
If you only serve a given neighborhood then the costs aren't that big a deal. Why does a new ISP automatically have to service the entire city? Does the local sandwich shop need to open 50 locations to be able to operate? Obviously not. You open one franchise in one area that you feel you can turn a profit in and you expand from there if you are successful.
THAT is what the future of ISPing should be. Local ISPs that run last mile internet service in a few square blocks, cut their teeth on that, and then expand to neighboring blocks as they recoop their investment.
You don't need mega billion dollar corporations to make this work.
Right now, look at the cost of fiber cable. The raw wholesale cost of fiber. Look up what a fiber switch costs to serve a couple hundred users. This is the sort of price structure you are looking at and it is comparable to what you find in a lot of other small businesses.
Pitch this and conservatives will be all over it. If instead you say "we need the federal government to come in and regulate everything for the greater good"... you're going to run shivers up the backs of conservatives and they're going to fight you reflexively.
Why do we need to do it this way? Won't it be better this other way? Think about it.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
You didn't mention raise taxes.
So we can guess what spending you want to cut.
This American is tired of the rightards false equivalences.
from tfa:
net neutrality and a free and open internet is the 99%, imagine that.
but, the 1% will prevail, of course.....
State PUCs regulate local internet fees, if the FCC does go after Net Neutrality they still won't regulate local prices for Internet access... Or connection speed... Or anything else you rant about.
Ken
What they are saying is that a lot of letters sent in to comment on net neutrality have been derived from a small set of sample letters. That doesn't mean they represent astroturfing, it merely means that a lot of people who sent in letters founds those sample letters to be a good starting point and in agreement with their views.
"back off on policing the world, and learn to live in a fricking budget!"
Sure, any time you want to cede world dominance to China or Russia just go ahead. The USA is the biggest bad boy on the planet and that costs money and has responsibilities especially if we want to keep it that way. Don't want the cost and responsibilities that go with the job of top dog then give it up and suffer the consequences of living under Russian or Chinese rule. Damn cheap, short-sighted, self-serving fools.
The FCC comment system was written over 50 yrs ago. Back when a senator might actually understand.
Neither party in congress understands the problem now.
Bunch of Friggin Idiots. Blind leading the Blind.
I was tempted to give a history lesson, but this isn't the audience.
SO:
garbage in
garbage out.
Usually the US is policing the world too much: eg. No-fly zones inside the sovereign space of Iraq and Iran. But this president has done too little policing the world: Hence the rise of militant Islam in Nigeria, Syria/Iraq, Mali, Libya.
Unfortunately, this president also inherited the cluster-fuck of secret prisons and occupied Iraq. Just like the Russo-Afghan war, that's going to have repercussions for 20 years. The American military can't fight all of the fall-out, so it needs to drive other para-military forces around the world to protect human freedoms. The US president is failing that in his own country.
The first comment by Rick in China made sense and was a reasoned argument. It was followed by utter nonsense. Seriously, all the argument was was that regulation in general was bad without a single bit of evidence or logical argument to support that. Plus it treated everyone else like a 2 year old. Is this really the best the Koch brothers and their ilk can afford to spam us with? He did make one valid point in that if the FCC starts regulating something, they are more apt to regulate things like decency and such. Still, while that has a certain amount of truth to it, it is a bit like saying there should be no building codes enforced because the current codes and processes put an unaceptable burden on interested parties. In short the argument doesn't follow. There is such a thing as a reasonable amount of regulation which does more good than bad, though it does indeed require vigilence, to prevent it from going too far.
The third commend by the Bionic lemming was basically the usual false equivalency argument. I haven't heard much from Soros lately, but a quick google shows the Koch brothers are outspending him four to one, so, well I'd be happy for Soros to stop his spending if the Koch's would stop theirs... A quick fact check shows about 50 million Americans on food stamps out of 319 million, so that is around one sixth, and while still bad and nothing to be proud of, is only half as bad as the stated figure of one third. Still, the points about spending, budget, and policing the world are fair arguments. The trendy show bit was well useless. In today's day and age you have to engage the American people to get support for things. It is just life. Still, my proposed solution goes something like this.
1) Let serving in the house of representatives be similar to jury duty and essentially random save they must come from the representative districts. You will have to, by necessity require minimum education though some of that could also be experience. Basically the people chosen need to be know enough to at least know what they don't know and then learn about it. Being between 30 years and retirement age probably also wouldn't hurt. (Note that this approach would still require gerrymandering to be elimnated via some sane automatic algorithm to draw districts, at least for best results.)
2) Let people vote on their Senator from the pool of those who served their two years in the house, since sometimes you need some experience. Limit them to one six year term. As a corallary, you probably need to include some kind of education program so ex politicians have job options other than being a lobyist.
3) The president can be chosen from the pool of people who have served a full six years in the senate by a simple popular vote of the people. The president can also pick his VP from that pool as well, but the voters would obviously need to know about who he or she picked before voting.
4) As far as appointments go, have the committees in the house generate a list of say a hundred candidates for each position and also have each researched and make that information available for public feedback. (All candidates must meet the job requirements and be able to do the job). Then the house can use some form of instant runoff voting to pair the list down to say the top five for each position. The president could then pick from those five. For the top positions you could require a simple up or down vote in the senate. Such a vote would be required to be held within a reasonable time frame else the president would automatically get his choice without any strings attached.
At any rate, that is my basic outline. Avoid the corruption that is professional politicians and interest groups and just put people in who are likely to treat it like an actual job to help our country, not a way to manipulate things for their own petty interests. BTW, prior to joining congress or government in any form the person would have to transfer any stocks and similar into a government account with sa
Yeah, but you spend more on military than the next 26 countries combined, 25 of whom are allies.
I take it you don't trust your friends to not dump you on the side of the street when you pass out drunk either...
Bullshit. That's not even true to the already shoddy analysis of the New American Foundation. And it neglects the PPP and lower incomes of Europeans. And to the degree that prices seem lower, people are simply paying higher taxes, which then go on to subsidize big European corporations that are buddies with European governments and provide those services. If you think the Comcast/Time Warner "monopoly" is bad, you haven't been screwed over by European telecoms, which is far worse. But liars and idiots like you will manage to bring us even more of that European crony capitalism than we already have.
Anything the Koch brothers support has my support as well.
Um.... I have 100mbit fiber to my apartment. It costs me about $25usd per month - fully unlimited traffic, no DMCA notices - ever, and includes IPTV with too many channels/movies (mostly Chinese, however).
I pay very little in taxes/fees, to boot. Thanks, corporate shill #108277.
Welcome to the party, comrade! In soviet amerika you care for obama!
Taxes are plenty high enough as it is. The middle class is paying almost 50% of income in taxes. The poor pay less, but still a substantial amount of their income. This american is tired of lefttards pretending the government shouldn't have to work within a budget like the rest of us. This american doesn't buy the lefttarded assumption that increasing tax and inflation will fix anything.
I'm not pro-either side's corporate bullshit. But this is a specific case in point about the Koch brothers and *their* evil deeds. They are trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the public. I'm not making any statement here about the left being better, or worse, or the same - I'm commenting on this specific issue, on Net Neutrality and the fact that by deceiving the public, the Koch Brothers and other corporations end up victorious - and appearing to be on the 'right' side of the public, no pun intended. In fact, when PEOPLE -- not corporate shills -- are educated on the subject and asked what they think, I don't think any legitimate poll/collection of opinions has any reasonable weight behind allowing the corporate megagiants to continue to try to fuck other people hard for their own personal gain, but rather to allow the government to step in in this specific case and prevent the monopolies from getting away with what they're attempting here: controlling and taxing the shit out of the internet to the detriment of other services and individual's experiences when accessing information.
If you only serve a given neighborhood then the costs aren't that big a deal. Why does a new ISP automatically have to service the entire city? Does the local sandwich shop need to open 50 locations to be able to operate? Obviously not. You open one franchise in one area that you feel you can turn a profit in and you expand from there if you are successful.
If sandwich shops were utilities they would need to open 50 locations. Pick a closer analogy and it becomes more clear - electrical service. Lets contract it out to an unlimited number of companies and let them pick and choose which neighborhoods get wired up and which ones don't based on how much money it generates for them.
I'm afraid you've really discounted the effect of natural monopolies here, it isn't just corrupt politicians, it is the physical world that conspires against effective competition.
Isn't that a synonym for suspected but without evidence?
Just so we're on this front, I think that aliens have shadowy ties to the Egyption pyramids. I heard one of those pyramids has a weapon that can destroy planets. Maybe I'm thinking of the death star and its shadowy connections to the Empire.
K
I live in the Netherlands. In your opinion a far left, almost commie country if I read your comment well. We used to have a good health insurance system, good public transport and an excellent mail service, all state financed. Until some of our right wing bastards decided to leave all that to 'the market'. Services would improve and tariffs would decrease under the pressure of all the competitors in The Great Free Market, is what they told us.
The result? As to be expected with companies trying to deliver the least possible service for the highest amount of money (which IS the thing 'Free Market" is all about), health insurance prices are rising through the ceiling while coverage goes through the floor, public transport is more crappy than ever with higher prices and mail delivery goes the same way.
The blessings of Free Market and its Invisible Hand, as touted by right wing parties, are only blissfull for the Big Companies and their filthy rich owners. And taxes? Gone up anyway, except for the richest.
So, i will take a bit higher taxes in exchange for better services anytime. Here we see what your Holy Free Market does, and very, very few people like it. (Why they keep believing the shit the right wingers here spout and keep voting for them against their own interest keeps baffling me,)
What person will donate an airborne act of love?
The government gave Comcast/Time Warner a monopoly. Clearly we need more government to fix this.
And this propaganda is brought to you by the far left Nazi like propaganda machine paid by deep pockets of the far left and/or your own tax dollars. Lets just shout "Koch" a few times and walk away before people start asking for IDs or fact checking. This is why I ignore internet facts or anything from the mouth of a liberal. They mean well but the hypocrisy is a bit thick at times.
You didn't mention raise taxes.
Why should that matter? Without some sort of financial discipline, it'd just be more money flushed down the drain.
This American is tired of the rightards false equivalences.
You're the one making the "rightard" equivalence between lowering spending and raising taxes.
If what the OP said is correct I would be paying $150+, depending on the exchange rate, in the states for 2MB access, is that so?
The only place you get cheap internet access over here in Europe are places that are subsidised or in large cities. I can also get internet access for around $30 US but that is for ADSL
and that costs money
It's worth remembering here that what's being paid for is a huge amount of corruption. That costs money too.
You're confusing last mile connections with... some bullshit you made up.
I can get a line brought to a neighborhood from the backbone. It could cost a million or a couple hundred thousand... or substantially less. It depends on how far away it is from the neighborhood I want to wire. Ideally you should pick one close to where ever it coming from so you pay as little as possible initially. But once that has happened, I have all the resources at that point to wire the neighborhood. That is if I have the fiber to do the last mile and some switching and routing equipment. All told it is entirely manageable. I do not need to wire the entire city. All I need is a fat link. And those links are not provided by Comcast or Verizon etc typically. They tend to be offered by companies like Qwest communications.
And as I said, 80 percent of the backbone is idle. It is a buyer's market.
I do not need to wire the entire city to wire a single neighborhood.
All I need is a permit to do it.
You could have high speed fiber in your house right now if your local officials just allowed this to happen. It would cost them nothing.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
We used to have a good health insurance system, good public transport and an excellent mail service, all state financed.
And also a democracy, if I recall correctly. One wonders why the electorate thought it a good idea to vote for those darn ravishers of near perfection.
Without regulated net neutraility, your concept would never work, since the big carriers could just pick favorites among the little guys and dictate who actually gets to run fiber into your neighborhood. Yeah, other companies could, but they're going to get just a trickle of bandwidth.
Play Command HQ online
It couldn't possibly be because they were dissatisfied with the existing situation.
No but they will curb the abuse of these companies. Clearly the US needs a lot more regulation to make their internet comparable to the rest of the developed world.
Thank you, Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden and so many others, for courageously defending humanity, my freedom and more!
I live in a town with a population of 70k in the UK and have had 76mb fibre for a couple of years; so no, no just in large cities or even large towns.
We should bomb burning man next year.
Would really cut down on this libertarian bullshit.
I'm almost with you, but why does net neutrality enable mom and pop ISPs to pop up more than without? Just fill in that step, and you've got me.
Mostly because it is almost impossible to lay the last mile of cable from a regulation stand point.
Mostly because it makes a fucking lot of sense to not dig up the street every time someone switches to a new ISP.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
The big companies in this case are not the ISPs giving you trouble. They're the backbone ISPs. Completely different culture and mentality.
What is more, what you're not getting about the backbone ISPs is that they're not as heavily controlled as to when and where they can lay cable. As a result there is competition there already. They already know that if they mess with the flow someone else will run cable next to them and they'll lose.
Competition works.
Look at your shoes. Did they need to pass regulations to make your shoes not terrible? No. Competition did it. You as a consumer check out the shoes in the store and you only buy the ones that are worth your money. You don't buy the ones that are bad.
The same principle can work in almost infinite applications.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Right, because there is no other possible way to lay cable then the way they've always laid cable.
Or really do anything besides the way it was done before.
Which is why no one drives cars... because how do you put a saddle on a car?
Idiots like you shouldn't enter speculative discussions. You lack the imagination to see obvious solutions to simple problems.
Any place that had frequent changes to the cabling would either have an accessible conduit system or run the cables on poles.
In large cities, the conduit system would make the most sense. Most major cities already have versions of this in place thus requiring no change what so ever to existing models.
In small towns etc, they tend to run cables on poles and if there are only a dozen or so ISPs then they could all coexist on the same poles without a lot of trouble.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Flip that around. Competition itself ensures net neutrality. If I have five to a dozen ISPs to choose from at any location then why would I choose the ISP not offering net neutrality? It is the last mile providers that are dicking with the data. The backbone providers already embrace net neutrality.
The reason the last mile providers are dicking with the data is that they buy bandwidth just like their customers from an ISP in most cases. And that ISP links them to the global web. And the last mile ISP can make a little extra money by short changing some customers while being very careful to not interfere with the communications of clients that paid extra to be left alone.
If you have lots of last mile providers then every customer becomes important because the small customers have options and will leave you. Mistreat them and they're gone. Individually they're not very important, but collectively they're the most important.
As to mom and pop ISPs... there is no reason why an ISP couldn't be that small. The capital investment in equipment isn't a big deal. The primary reason we don't see this is that frequently ISPs are required to service an entire city if they service any part of it. That sort of outlay is not reasonable in most cases and well beyond the means of most businesses.
If you remove those restrictions, then the only expense is the actual cost of laying the cable, the actual cost of the equipment, and whatever the service fee is to link to the trunk line. All of which is easily affordable since the trunk contract would be on a bandwidth basis. If you're only linking a couple blocks then you only get charged for a couple blocks of bandwidth. Take whatever your operating costs are, double or triple that and pass it on the consumer.
Talk to the people in salt lake city. Google is offering magnitudes more bandwidth then the competition at the same price.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Second all of that from Germany.
Energy companies - privatized. Prices have gone up, service is still good mostly because of government regulations, the market is now largely dominated by less than 5 big energy companies. Only recently thanks to renewable energy have smaller, local players re-emerged.
Public transport - long distance privatized. Service down, delays up, lots of smaller stations have been closed and lines discontinued, government subsidizes the whole thing still.
Telecommunications - privatized. Looked like a success for many years, but now that the old monopolist has stopped being a dominant player (it wasn't broken down like AT&T), service is going down the drain and prices are secretly climbing (base fees are low, nobody dares being the first to raise them, but they're all adding all kinds of additional charges, reducing service for the base fee so you have to buy a higher contract for the same, etc.)
Pensions - being dismantled as we look. We had a great state pension system. It survived both world wars and managed to pay out pensions even when the rest of Germany was flat broke. Heck, even in the few years after WW2 when Germany didn't exist at all and it was just an occupied zone. Now the state pension system is being systematically dismantled by politics while private pension funds and insurances work hard to convince you that you absolutely need them or you'll be poor when you are old.
The examples go on and on and on. In the end, it is quite clear that what my old philosophy teacher in school said was right: capitalism, communism, fascism, extremism, islamism, doesn't matter, be aware of everything that ends with -ism.
The free market is a cute idea and it works great for trade. But don't make it a religion. Many human endeavours are not trade and not suitable to be treated like that. I hope we all agree that things like art and love fall into that category, so we should be open to at least discussing if health, transportation and communications might fall into it as well.
The same is true for communism. The idea that every is equal is great for politics, and a lot of what's wrong in the west today is caused by our hidden abolishing of the "one vote per citizen" rule by allowing campaign financing to dominate the results instead of votes. But again there are lots of areas where treating everyone the same is not the right approach. Education, science, sports and business are all places where it's good if people start out with equal chances, but as their talents and abilities emerge, they need to be treated differently. And planned economy has been pretty much proved to be a disaster, too.
In every other -ism you will always find at least one small grain of truth. Maybe even ISIS has a right idea in its idiology somewhere. The problem is always if you think you can explain the whole world by one truth, one interpretation, one approach.
But religion doesn't built space ships, and science doesn't write operas, and capitalism doesn't create families.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
> That doesn't sound like a free market to me.
That's the point. Free Market is great, but it simply does not exists in reality.
And don't forget to blame former President Bush too. And the Tea party, and religion especially anyone Christian. And the 1%, damn rich people but only the right wing rich people because the left rich people look out for our best interests. Don't forget wall street they're a bunch of rich jerks tho. And anyone driving cars bigger than a compact, trying to kill the planet. Gun rights idiots, anyone eating beef because cows release methane, gamers that waste electricity and don't play nice with girls, white males but only right wing white males especially those that drive trucks and have big dogs.
It couldn't possibly be because they were dissatisfied with the existing situation.
No, they were not. They were duped by parties who promised to do A but did Z when elected. Those parties told everyone that everything had to be left to the market by command of the European Union, while they knew that not to be the case. It was pushed through by the right wing parties with the help of some semi left wing and centre parties, where the first mentioned mostly talk left wing at election time but act right wing inbetween elections and support the right wing shit.
Problem is the electorate is so stupid they remember only the rethorics spewed from at most two month before elections and forget about the actual actions of the parties involved. And the rich keep laughing, since most things are going their way for the last decade...
What person will donate an airborne act of love?
This happened during the formation of ICANN. They wet with "the majority".
It's over 50% for a reason.
Anon can't really do much about this I'm afraid.
Need Mercedes parts ?
Where are my mod points when I need them. All if this is sooooo true!
To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB
Here in Europe, we used to have this little thing called 'Solidarity'. Sharing the costs that everybody risked to have to make and yes, some of it (or hopefully most of it) you'd never need. But IF you came in a situation, it would not cost you two arms, a leg and half your ribcage, but you'd be covered and everybody would be happy.
The American inspired 'ME, ME, ME, MEEEEE!!!!'-culture is taking over now, and the total costs are going up for everybody (as I said in my previous post), while service levels are dropping. Not, of course, if you have shovelfulls of money, than you can pay extra for the levels of service that used to be reachable for all and better
Yes, things were subsidized then, but if you really believe taxes went down after delivering us to commercial interests, keep on dreaming... (Except of course for those poor super-rich schmuks, after all, you can't stop subsidizing their million-Euro villa's which costs just twice as much as all subsidized rent for minimum wages combined)..
What person will donate an airborne act of love?
I'm happy to cede world dominance to another country. I don't feel like my "nationalistic ego" is so damned large that I have to sink the country's economy just to ensure that my country is 'running things' or whatever.
In the states, health insurance skyrocketed after obamacare forced insurance companies to carry high risk people as well as the 'rights' demanded by special interest 'social justice' groups that the rest of us must now pay for.
A fast search led me to factcheck.org where they disagree with you. Anecdotally I know of not one single case where this is true. Everyone I know got a better deal under Obamacare. Some stories are remarkable how much Obamacare helped them. This is personal experience only. But after a decade of alarming inflation of health care premiums, we are finally seeing it slow (4%).
The Affordable Care Act has it's problems. It could be fixed. But return to lifetime caps, dumping high risk clients, & no coverage for existing conditions, no thanks. & yes, we did have "skyrocketing premiums" regardless. Become a cancer survivor & your opinion will change.
SLOWER TRAFFIC KEEP RIGHT
Because there's nothing else to vote for.
Just as fine as private industry did with work safety before OSHA, child labor/overtime/workers compensation before labor laws, and food safety before the FDA. They were really standup businesses back around 1900...
but what did the anti anti net neutrality group say.
we're they for or against both sides of a trade sharing the cost
or were they complaining making one side shoulder all the cost was double charging.
does not compute
kill them
but what did the anti anti net neutrality group say.
we're they for or against both sides sharing the cost
or did they say one side paying it all was double charging.
err does not compute.
kill them
Small town (~15k population):
I pay $14 for 100Mbps up/down via fiber.
Relatives in the same town also have fiber, from a different ISP, (even using a different fiber network(!)) for about the same price.
IIRC there are actually 3 different fiber lines used to connect this small place.
Where I work, everyone's health care went up about 40% on average last month, with everyone getting either equal or worse coverage than they had previously. I think the ACA was a necessity, but premiums certainly did spike for a lot of people.
If you want to be seen, stand up. If you want to be heard, speak up. If you want to be respected, sit down and shut up.
"But religion doesn't built space ships, and science doesn't write operas, and capitalism doesn't create families." Very well stated. Maybe a bit better: "Religion doesn't built space ships, science doesn't write operas, art doesn't make cheap cell phones, and capitalism doesn't create families."
Competition works. Look at your shoes. Did they need to pass regulations to make your shoes not terrible? No. Competition did it. You as a consumer check out the shoes in the store and you only buy the ones that are worth your money. You don't buy the ones that are bad. The same principle can work in almost infinite applications.
If you want the analogy to serve internet....what if the only shoe providers in the whole country were Nike, Reebok,and Adidas, and depending on where you lived in the country, you could only buy one brand of shoes - and you weren't allowed to shop online or travel to buy a competitor's pair?
What kind of shoes do you think you would be wearing then?
Depending on where you are, yes, broadband can get that high, because of "bundling." Cable companies in the US offer the "triple play" of internet, TV and phone in a bundle that costs you well over $100 for even the slowest internet connection they offer. Then when you ask "how much for just internet?" the price often turns out to be as high, or, inexplicably, even higher if you refuse the other two services. because, capitalism free markets MURICA.
I don't know the details anymore, because I'm lucky enough to live in an area serviced by Verizon FIOS, and haven't had cable internet in a while. For me, I get 6MB and I pay about $120/month for internet, cable and phone. Hoever, most people don't live in a area where they have a choice of more than one service, so I imagine that drives the price up for them.
I've learned that they're worthless, so I don't read AC comments anymore.
and youre projecting again.
the liar and fool is you, as nothing you just stated is factual.
most europeans do not have lower incomes than the US. they have higher, and they have a higher purchasing power parity.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
the state never has to answer to the market
1) the service is run like a utility, you pay for services through monthly bill, not through taxes
2) you dont have to sign up for the service
3) the state is only unaccoutnable if you choose not to particpate in this thing we have called democracy.
4) News flash: Comcast exists right now in market that is NOT controlled by the state.
you are an ignorant fool who didnt say one factual thing.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Cut spending, Stop showing up on trendy shows, back off on policing the world, and learn to live in a fricking budget!
Here, here. We need to cut Military spending by 75%. That will save a lot of money that is wasted. Close all of those foreign military bases, so the money does not get spent overseas. Let's all champion this cause!!!
I suspect the culprit is more along the lines of what you exemplify: people were easily misled, probably by slickly packaged marketing of long-disproved right wing ideas.
Kythe
Put your money where your mouth is, and stop hiding.
"the state never has to answer to the market" The parallels between a free market of companies, and a free market of candidates in a liberal democracy, are actually quite strong. When the former contaminates the latter, however (also known as "right wing utopia"), you can have serious problems.
Kythe
Bull.
Conservatives do not care and have never cared about restricting monopolies.
Only one side of the spectrum has taken the position that restricting monoplies in order to promote competition is "punishing success".
Protecting the interests of entrenched corporations is a conservative position, regardless of the party doing it.
Breaking up monpolies to promote the concept that "anyone can make it in the land of opportunity" by fostering competition and breaking up monpolies has always been and will always be a progressive position.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Taxes are at historical lows, especially among those most able to pay (the wealthiest, who have seen their wealth skyrocket while incomes of pretty much everyone else languishes).
Also, inflation is generally responsive to unemployment rates, rather than tax rates.
Kythe
Yep, my total cost of healthcare here went up by about 40% but not as a result of the ACA. My employer's raised it but not because their costs went up my 40%. They raised it because they could. We are a Fortune 500 company & are self-insured. Their costs did not rise by anything close to 40%. OH, the HR asshole brought up the ACA, hinting around about reasons why we got such a huge increase, but when I brought up current healthcare inflation, he had no straight answer.
SLOWER TRAFFIC KEEP RIGHT
Given that all a lack of the FCC being involved has got you is a Comcast/Time Warner monopoly
Wow you do realize that last mile has been regulated for a long time? The only place that's not heavily regulated is backhaul and tier3, which surprise has a healthy, competetive market
somewhere, on a Big Red Sign:
if(color==blue){speed--;}
I wish that were the problem.
From what I can see, conservatives mostly don't like FCC involved because Obama is for net neutrality.
Otherwise, your comment is excellent.
Kythe
Because all states are vulnerable to cronyism and corruption. Including democracy.
somewhere, on a Big Red Sign:
if(color==blue){speed--;}
... I feel like you're not reading anything I've said but that I made a shoe analogy. Which is very frustrating.
*takes a deep breath*
*breaths out slowly*
The thesis I presented was that through greater competition these net neutrality issues would go away. Which means you're not just buying from one company but rather lots and lots of them. So my analogy holds. Please re-read/read for the first time my arguments above. I don't know if I can contain an outburst if you do that again.
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Your blind zealotry is counter productive and renders you incompetent in this or any other policy discussion.
Try again with less koolaid.
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lines discontinued, government subsidizes the whole thing still.
So you switched from nationalisation of certain industries to taxpayer-funded cronyism? Thats a huge step backwards in the eyes of every libertarian, ancap, capitalist, anarchist everywhere, ever
You make good points. I agree with all of them. But I'm an ancap, and I could have told you that trying state-subsidized cronyism would be far worse than anything you had before. In fact, croyism is the biggest talking point for ancaps and libertarians. Not socialism and nationalization.
somewhere, on a Big Red Sign:
if(color==blue){speed--;}
thats not even a valid logical argument. after you talked about last mile, he also talked about last mile, specifically the from the box to the house, and then you accuesed him of being stupid by talking about NOT-last mile cable laying and some stupid failed car analogy. JFC you are stupid. his whole point is that it make no sense to redo the cabling anytime you switch proviers, no more than it makes sense to dig up your driveway and connect to a "different" road if libertarians ever got their "private/subscription road market" fantasies fulfilled. its simply another area that is best served by a single entity because it makes for a natural monopoly and the costs to consumers of trying to create a "market" for them are out of proportion to any benefit recieved from doing so.
but since you want to talk about that: barring the invention of teleportation there pretty much is only one way to put things in the ground, and it involves digging a hole.
They already use conduit in many places, and horizontal drilling and cable pulling, buts its limited in practicality because of the magnitude of force needed to pull/push cable over long distance would break the cable. which means the access points cant be very far apart. and they have to route around other underground infrastructure. they cant just go in straight lines for long distances. and you cant push/pull around corners (again: breaks the cable).
Idiots like you shouldn't enter speculative discussions.
Take thine own advice knave.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
so far as i know burning man is made up of hippies not libertarians.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
the self contained irony and idiocy is astounding.
Energy companies - privatized. Prices have gone up, service is still good mostly because of government regulations, the market is now largely dominated by less than 5 big energy companies. Only recently thanks to renewable energy have smaller, local players re-emerged.
Freaking out over Fukushima couldn't have helped with your energy prices, I imagine. I (also) very highly doubt that privatization is beneficial to energy/utilities and telecom, but I admit there are always other factors to consider. For example, in the Greater Phoenix area in Arizona, my water, sewer, trash, and electricity were served by private companies, and bills were sky high and rising. In Alabama, despite being an equally conservative state, I have public utilities and pay way less, despite having a larger house and two more members in my family. However, the former is desert, and in the latter I live a stone's throw away from a big river. Anyway, great post!
Competition does not exist in a vacuum.
It requires regulation to promote it.
Regulation like net neutrality.
Start with 5 companies, start with 1000, it makes no difference: the nature of the un regulated market is to consume itself and reduce competition to zero, until you end up with monopolistic corporations in charge of their regional fiefdoms.
there arent going to be any mom and pop ISPs.
hundreds of thousands of dollars is a very big deal.
what reality do you live in where it isnt?
thats the start of your ignorance.
the barrier to entry costs are simply too high.
Google isnt entering cities with its fiber out of a desire to corner the market or because of market forces, or through the goodness of their heart to force competition.
Theyre doing it because they can, because they too are a mega corp with lots of money, and it gives them a chance to get a further lock on their primary business model: ad revenue.
you are so bloody ignorant of reality its not even funny.
The right wing doesn't have a monopoly on slick packaging.
Taxes are lower for the wealthy and for the poor, almost 50% pay no federal income tax. The tax burden is solely rested on the upper and middle class.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
It's cute that you think 70k population doesn't even make a "large town" :)
The last solution is by design not possible for everybody. The solution no1 does not always work. State on the other hand is the only force that helps capitalism kind of work. Without state there is only tribal warfare like in Somalia. It is of course true that the state in its different forms failed us many more times that it helped - sometimes because design was flawed, sometimes because bigger state invaded (US has a good record at invading, Russia for instance much less rosy). Some state/societies managed to destroy basis on which their livelihoods were based. All modern functioning states, over their and their predecessors history, had the state intervention as a basis for their success. This intervention was usually not complete, not as overwhelming as in the case of say NK but it was there.
You can of course argue that EU and its drive for power is sick and makes us all sick. I can buy this argument albeit I disagree that this is the only effect of EU on our lives and economy - there are also positive ones. I think however if not EU our arses would be as painful as they are now.
75MB symmetric, with all movie channels plus the junk that never gets watched but can't be declined, $230/month on Verizon FiOS in Dallas.
Plus still paying ~ 30% of income in taxes when income tax, property tax, sales tax, use fees, etc. are all considered.
"Unheard of means only it's undreamed of yet,
Impossible means not yet done." ~~ Julia Ecklar
I can put you in touch with 3 people that I can think of off the top of my head who's insurance went up by over 100% due to Obamacare. They're business owners who buy their own insurance. Once again the Democrats figured out a way to screw small business.
Do you have ESP?
So you switched from nationalisation of certain industries to taxpayer-funded cronyism? Thats a huge step backwards in the eyes of every libertarian, ancap, capitalist, anarchist everywhere, ever
That's an assumption. There could be multiple reasons behind this and you and I do not live through the changes (or in the country). I wouldn't assume that is cronyism because that is a huge jump. Anyway, the GP hits the nail in the head.
How will they curb the abuse? Please, do tell. SPELL IT OUT. If you can't, you're the one full of shit...not the people against it. Keep in mind, though, anything wherein they have the power to "curb" they have the power to censor, etc. just like China tries (and manages...sometimes...) to do. A government powerful enough to give you what you're looking for is a government that is also powerful enough to take a hell of a lot more away.
A hint: If they were so easily "duped", they weren't happy like you're implying. But...that doesn't validate what you feel to be the truth...even though there's a truth there you're quite simply denying.
Considering that what you're talking to is Socialism, perhaps you should be aware of it as well. Nothing good has ever really came of it. The reasons they were privatized and the like was that the other wasn't sustainable - but again, like so many others, that doesn't validate what you feel to be the truth, never mind that what you feel to be so doesn't any better map to the truth of things than any other Marxist/Socialist's notions. You should listen to your philosophy teacher and wise up. You missed a detail and you need to back up and re-think ALL of it, without your preconcieved notions about what was "working" and the like.
Obligational 1940's video:
Prophetic Cartoon Warning of -isms
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
No, Government sanctioned monoplies are not a result of a "lack" of FCC regulation. Don't be stupid. The fact that government CREATED these monopolies is reason enough to keep the FCC out of the fucking internet. The only reason the "other side of the atlantic" is ahead in terms of bandwidth and market penetration (the latter being the SIZE of those countries) is either massive government subsidies (no strings there) or a stunning realization that government IMPEDES progress, not the other way around (very rare insight, if you look at Europe and Asia.)
The FCC is known to fuck up anything it touches (see Television) and you want the government to regulate the Internet MORE?
How this got modded insightful is beyond me.
Typical. "I'll pay more if someone else worries about it." Your fetish with "right wingers" is cute. The reason the "free Market" is being tried in your socialist utopia is THE UNSUSTAINABLE COST of your little paradise. Don't be sot naive to think that the "holy free market" is a bad thing when you're not even qualified to know what it is, much less how it works.
Just ask EVERY SINGLE nation of Europe how they're going to continue to siphon money from your pocket so you don't have to worry if a $25 doctor visit is "covered" by your national health insurance.
Slashdot has become the last bastion of stupid Progressives. You'd think after 100 years of total failure, the Progtards would find a new shtick.
If a party promises (before elections) to keep things as they are and to defend the good things and people vote for that party based on those promises, the voters clearly signal that they are happy with things as they are. If said party turns around a 180 degrees after elections, their voters are duped.
If the voters had been a bit smarter they could have seen it coming but said party *had* a lot of traditional voters. It is now (rightfully) going down the drain. Alas, the party will probably have two more years to go to demolish our formerly so nice country.
What person will donate an airborne act of love?
Been there, done that... the Wall St. Bailout. Sadly the difference of power between the rich and poor is too big in America. (I'm counting the middle-class and below as poor.) Sadly, I think I am starting to join the tin foil hat crowd/bunker people. I think the only way it's going to change is with civil unrest or a major decline in America's world status (which is already in progress). Basically America has to lose face and fail so badly they can't cling to the 'merica is #1 crap. Then and only then will things change.
The invisible hand happens to be in your wallet, removing Euros...
That's the point. Yes. Thank you, that's the entire point he's trying to make. He's opening up the hood of the telecom company business and showing you how it could run so much better for everyone. But that's not going to happen without the FCC enforcing some network neutrality. But you don't start there. That turns off people who reflexively shut down any mental activity once they hear about expanding government power.
...Says the AC...
It's not 'I'll pay more if someone else worries about it', It is 'we all CARE about each other and we all contribute to each other's wellbeing'. But that concept is apparently totally strange to right-wingers, who have only one thought: ME, ME, ME! and their only concern is about Me, Myself and I.
What person will donate an airborne act of love?
I don't want the FCC to administer the internet. That is evil and ludicrous That is what people are calling "net-neutrality".
So Obama should remain for it for another few weeks, but once the new Congress is in session, be opposed to it. He should also be against Obamacare and against immigration. Republicans won't know what to do.
I see the Koch brothers are well represented here too. Isn't there any way to stop the ball busting bastards? How rich does one need to be? World domination anyone? Lobbiests should be outlawed and another channel open to our congress. So we can be our own representatives. You know, like the internet?
How will they curb the abuse?
I have no idea what the GP is thinking, but one major thing the FCC could do to improve competition would be to separate the ownership and maintenance of physical medium (ie, Comcast's wires) from the transmission of data along those wires (ie: ISP). This works with twisted pair: companies like Earthlink survive by providing DSL services through AT&T's wires, apparently without causing the collapse of the local phone providers. Why can't it work with fiber or coax?
I get 6MB and I pay about $120/month for internet, cable and phone.
Good lord, that's awful. In Atlanta, Comcast is $45 for 20MB+basic cable. It goes up to $55 if you decline cable. Ooma is $4/month for phone, so I never even consider 3-way bundles
You can't even be bothered to do minimal fact checking:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M...
The only European countries with higher median household incomes than the US are Luxembourg, Norway, and Switzerland. And taken as a whole, Europe or the EU are dismal. You can reach similar conclusions by looking at individual disposable incomes, or GDP per capita, or any number of other measures.
That statement doesn't even make basic economic sense.
As you just demonstrated again: you live in a fact-free fantasy world and are economically illiterate.
Um, "Rick in China" you are a privileged Westerner living the life of the urban elite in a third world country. Your Internet is effectively subsidized on the backs of a few hundred million Chinese peasants.
Of course, that's what you want for the US too: you want to be a member of an educated, well connected urban elite, and screw the rest of the country. I'd call you a "communist shill", but I doubt you're even smart enough for that. You're just greedy, privileged, and ignorant.
This American is tired of the rightards false equivalences.
You're the one making the "rightard" equivalence between lowering spending and raising taxes.
You may be too young to remember, but this "Congress has to learn to live within a budget" drumbeat has been going on since at least 1980. Most of the tax cuts we have had, including Reagan's, were intended to force congress to cut spending. The only three out of the past 40 year that federal spending has decreased year-over-year are 2010, 2012, and 2013, most of which can be attributed to expiration of the massive bailout/stimulus programs. (If you do the math in inflation-adjusted dollars, then you can find another couple of years in the early 90s where spending declines)
So, the "right" appears to be very good at reducing taxes, but not very good at reducing spending. The "left" is not very good at reducing spending, but at least they seem to realize that income has to rise to meet spending.
Where do you live? I'm paying $140/month after taxes and all that other jazz that gets taxed on for basic cable, phone, and 150mbps symmetrical on Verizon FiOS. I live in a decent sized town, but its mostly old people that aren't paying for the service.
Yet, the UK generally ranks slightly below the US in average connection speeds.
http://www.netindex.com/downlo...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...
So, you got lucky, and other people apparently got unlucky.
Even if we look at your individual situation, the question is: what's your salary relative to what you would be making in the US, what taxes do you pay, what other fees do you pay (e.g., TV licensing fees), etc.? And is the UK really an example of a highly regulated system, or is it more like the US and your service is due to competition?
I've paid $60/month for 60 Mbps in Silicon Valley, and $30/month for 50 Mbps in a smaller town, and I always take Internet-only.
Perhaps you need to do a bit more shopping. Because "capitalism free markets MURICA".
Sure there is: you don't give them your money.
The only corporations that actively "suck you dry" are the corporations that the government gives artificial monopolies to.
Somalia: anarchy.
Capitalism: state guarantees free markets, equality before the law, and freedom from physical violence, and the rest is up to you.
Your/EU vision: state forces people to do things and buy things "for the good of the people" and for the good of corporations in bed with the state.
Without the EU, Europeans would be killing each other again by the millions. That makes the EU a tremendous advance over what Europe used to be like historically. It doesn't make the EU a good steward of democracy or the economy.
Premiums went up because the insurance companies felt like they could get away with it by blaming Obamacare. People like you helped make that a reality.
Look at your shoes. Did they need to pass regulations to make your shoes not terrible?
Yes
You don't buy the ones that are bad.
People will happily buy terrible shoes. Quality has nothing to do with economic success.
Pointing out that the government has regulations on everything is not evidence that those regulations are required.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
As to regulation being required for competition... yes, but the regulation required is that companies do not literally commit acts of violence, contracts are honored, and advertizing is reasonably faithful to the actual product.
Which is something we have for every company already.
The issue with ISPs is not lack of regulation but too much regulation. Again, at the local level. It is almost impossible to lay last mile cable.
That is the issue.
Make that easy from a regulatory stand point and this issue will go away.
You cannot justify regulation because we have too much regulation.
That just creates a feedback loop of stupidity.
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Baseless insults by anonymous cowards... You wound me, sir.
If you presume to judge me, then actually form a falsifiable argument and do me the small courtesy of using your real FAKE name. I'm not asking for your actual name on your driver's license. But your handle on this board would be the least you can offer given I am offering that myself.
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Who said anything about redoing the cabling every time you change providers you complete fucking retard? That is a CFR by the way. :D
The only cabling that would need to be redone would be at your house where in one cable was unplugged and another was plugged in instead. OH NOES! It might take all of 10 minutes! RUN AND HIDE!!! THE HUMANITY!!! AAAAHHHH!!!
Seriously though... what the fuck do you think you're talking about. If I have a bundle of cables going through a street conduit or over on a pole... and I need to switch from one cable to another... why are you presuming any of this would be hard, time consuming, or messy?
I'll give a simple example of an office building. There is a utility room in most office buildings where most of these things are routed. Often they'll have more then one but lets just go with a simple example of one utility room. In that room, you have communications and power lines coming into the room and then those have to be routed to specific rooms or even jacks. All of this is labeled on the panel. Changing from one provider to another would require moving some of these wires around. Which is precisely what they do already when you add a service or change a service. Nothing here is really changing from a wiring perspective.
Going through the streets, you have a similar situation. ISPs already play with the cable as it is... they'll continue to do that. It doesn't need to be relaid every time you change service. I never implied that, never suggested that, and that is not my argument.
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I'm afraid that is just the cognitive dissonce talking.
Obama likes to say that people only disagree with him because he's black or something equally offensive. But if anyone else were in his position doing what he's doing then the same political factions would be opposing him.
Republicans for example has been opposing moves like Obamacare for well over 60 years. Yet Obama suggests that republicans are only taking this position out of racism. It is intellectually unsupportable.
The same is true of the FCC actions.
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I'd love to see Obama do that... the shock of all the republicans suddenly giving him everything he wants would be pretty priceless.
Republicans aren't opposing obama because he is obama... they are opposing him because they do not like his policies.
Suggesting otherwise ignores that republican policies on these matters haven't changed remarkably in decades which is long before Obama was even alive much less in politics.
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According to the Sunlight Foundation's analysis of recent comment submissions to the FCC regarding Net Neutrality, the majority (56.5%) were submitted by a single organization called American Commitment, which has "shadowy" ties to the Koch brothers' network
This should be counted as a single comment against, but of course it won't be.
Health care initially skyrocketed when the insurance agencies started going from NPO to For Profit. If all healthcare was NPO (as would be the case with a socialist medical system), you wouldn't be having this problem. The issue is that Obama Care is basically the middle ground between free market and socialist, getting the worst of both worlds.
Or long-disproved ideas. Sure, welfare is great! Everyone can just take money from this wonderful system forever and no one ever has to pay any more for it.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Fortune 500 Company employs me, and YES, my insurance has gone up
The reason the "free Market" is being tried in your socialist utopia is THE UNSUSTAINABLE COST of your little paradise
You know, if something works for 60-80 years, maybe it's worth dropping the "unsustainable" tag.
...Says the AC...
It's not 'I'll pay more if someone else worries about it', It is 'we all CARE about each other and we all contribute to each other's wellbeing'. But that concept is apparently totally strange to right-wingers, who have only one thought: ME, ME, ME! and their only concern is about Me, Myself and I.
Now be generous, they're just operating out of Enlightened Self-Interest.
The government gave Comcast/Time Warner a monopoly. Clearly we need more government to fix this.
In a way, you must, because it's an area where it is impossible to have a free market. You can't just have any mom-and-pop tearing up the street and peoples' to lay -their- cables which aren't really different from the competition's cables. We're talking about access to public and private property to lay utilities. By definition, that has to be limited.
It's a particularly-failed analogy, as the roads required to let the cars go back and forth.... once again, require some form of local government.
You know what people who don't pay much income tax pay? FICA taxes. Add the deceptively named employer's contribution (it still comes out of the employer's payroll funds, but with a bit of sleight of hand people don't notice) to the amount on the pay stub and they're paying about 15% in Federal taxes. (This goes down some as income goes up, because half of that isn't subject to income tax, but if people don't owe income tax they get no relief there.) Warren Buffet has paid less of his income than that in Federal taxes.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Except that we really can't make laying last-mile connectivity easy from a regulatory standpoint.
Every new cable or fiber requires either space on utility poles, which are limited and not present everywhere, or digging up the neighborhood, which isn't something we want just anybody to be able to do. You likely don't want people to dig up your street or your lawn because they just got a bank loan, or watch low-cost workers careless enough to damage power and telephone lines or gas, water, and sewer pipes.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
I haven't been paying attention, but I've never heard Obama mention racism as a reason for opposition to his policies. Got a cite? Some people do blame racism, and I think some opposition is probably racist in nature (although I can't tell which is and which isn't). Also, Republicans have been pushing things like Obamacare for a long time. It's similar to Romneycare, for example, and 1970s Republicans had similar ideas. Now that it exists, and was pushed through by Democrats, Republicans are attacking it mostly because it's a Democratic initiative.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
I've read a number of stories about healthcare premiums going up for people who previously had health insurance through an employer. Health insurance got lumped in with employment back during a watime wage freeze at which point employers needed some way to compensate valuable employees. I wonder if we're seeing the start of health insurance being broken off of employment...
You know, if something works for 60-80 years, maybe it's worth dropping the "unsustainable" tag.
While you're at it, I'd say, given how much less the per capita debt of the nations in question have risen compared to American debt (presumably the bastion of the "free Market" the AC was referring to), maybe it's worth dropping the "cost" tag too.
But really, you shouldn't be responding to the obviously deranged. Arbitrary capitalization of words, arbitrary scare quotes everywhere, and spamming all caps words? Deranged.
You just described the current political situation in Australia perfectly, right down to the two years to go...(sigh)...
Why is it that I'm the only person that knows how to use google?
Like... seriously. I typed this into google:
obama says race
And I got this:
âoeThereâ(TM)s no doubt that thereâ(TM)s some folks who just really dislike me because they donâ(TM)t like the idea of a black President,â Obama said.
http://www.newyorker.com/magaz...
The implication from the article is that obama's poll numbers are falling because he's black. Which is weird because the demographics of the country didn't shift that much during his administration. Which means somehow when white people vote for Obama it just people voting their conscience. But when they vote against him the only explanation is racism.
I can also cite Eric Holder making the same claim... and of course endless numbers of leftwing pundits which have been trying to sell this narrative for years.
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Sorry if that quote from the new yorker is a bit garbled. they were using some odd characters.
This should be sanitized:
âoeThereâ(TM)s no doubt that thereâ(TM)s some folks who just really dislike me because they donâ(TM)t like the idea of a black President,â Obama said.
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Again, you're exaggerating the disruption and it isn't helping your argument.
There is plenty of room for fiber to be run on the poles. And in any area where more people want to run fiber then there is space on the poles, then upgrade to a conduit system.
Until that happens, you can just bid the space on the poll out the same way you bid anything else out. How does the sandwich shop guy get commercial space in the mall? He contacts the land lord and inquires as to the price of a lease.
Do the same thing with the polls and the conduits. Lease the space out.
When the polls have hit maximum occupancy... then you say "sorry, that poll can't handle anyone else."
But at the same time, your city is now getting extra money because of all those poll lease fees it is getting. And that money can be put to digging a conduit system under the streets with greater capacity.
None of this is rocket science. We'd still be in the trees or whatever if we gave up as easily as you suggest we give up.
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I live in the Netherlands. In your opinion a far left, almost commie country if I read your comment well.
He didn't say "left", "far left", "commie" (or communist), and didn't mention the "Netherlands". Fuck off and die you piece of shit. What you are is a liar and an asshole unwilling to engage in honest debate.
There isn't a single term from that post you quoted. All the terms you used in jest - and ignorance - "Free Market and its Invisible Hand" were also absent in that post.
The post was a clear statement against regulatory capture. If you can have - or had lol (if you had it, why did YOU lose it?) - freedom, regulation and no abuses of power (like locality-blessed monopolies or "franchises"), then great. Share the secret formula. Don't be a cocksucker.
How did you manage to type "if I read your comment well", you piece of shit motherfucker?
and third time's the charm...
"There's no doubt that there are some folks who just really dislike me because they don't like the idea of a black President," Obama said.
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Ah, yes, this is obvious to us in Europe, who have lived privatisation of public services. Here's an anecdote to illustrate how these things go:
I used to live on a small country lane outside London. The roads, water pipes etc are supposed to be maintained by the local council. In the past, the work was carried out by people who were employed by the council, but then, along came privatisation with the golden promise of cost savings. Now the work is all carried out by private companies. Strangely, though, the water mains seem to burst at least 3 - 4 times a year now, where it was almost unheard of before. Why can that be? My theory is that since the council always give the job to the same company, and they profit every time they carry out this work, they deliberately do it poorly, so they can come back and do it again. Thus, the council may save some 10% for the work each time it is carried out, but they pay 4 times as often. How much did the tax-payer save on that, then?
It no doubt works the same way with health care, which is why I think we would be better off with public health care, as well as state owned medical companies.
Right, because there is no other possible way to lay cable then the way they've always laid cable.
If you actually could re-invent the cable-putting industry, you'd not be posting in /., you'd be busy making your first billion. (you'd already have your first million)
Any place that had frequent changes to the cabling would either have an accessible conduit system or run the cables on poles.
You'd have to install the conduits first, which means digging up all the streets. A hunch tells me that is even less likely to happen in the near future.
Poles are not really practical in the places that the majority of the population in the west lives in. These places are called "cities". Cities are where the money is in telecommunications, so if your solution can't work in cities, it's dead in the water.
Disclaimer: I've actually worked in the telecommunications industry for 10 years.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Who said anything about redoing the cabling every time you change providers you complete fucking retard?
I did, because that's what your ignorant argument would lead to.
Situation now, in almost all homes: There is one cable going to the nearest street node. This is the famous "last mile".
You want that cable owned by the ISP, which means for every home where the inhabitants are not customers of the current cable owner, either the new ISP needs to buy the cable, or put down a new one, since these are the only two ways in which he can be owner of the last mile.
If they switch ISP again, this repeats.
If a new ISP company wants to enter the market, suddenly the barriers to entry are much, much higher than they are now. Goodbye free market.
And let's talk about multi-story houses with a dozen or a hundred flats, and lots of different ISPs serving different flats...
Instead of admitting your argument was stupid, let's insult people around you who put you straight.
Going through the streets, you have a similar situation.
Not at all. The office building example is at the other end of the last mile. We're talking about the cable connecting the (office or whatever) building to the telco network in the street. Completely different things.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
You may be too young to remember, but this "Congress has to learn to live within a budget" drumbeat has been going on since at least 1980.
This sort of thing has been going on at least since the dawn of the US. For example, the earliest period consisted of paying down the debt from two wars, the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812 (both were fights with the UK).
So, the "right" appears to be very good at reducing taxes, but not very good at reducing spending. The "left" is not very good at reducing spending, but at least they seem to realize that income has to rise to meet spending.
Except if we increase income, then they'll realize once again in a few years that income has to rise to meet spending. There's this destructive pattern of behavior.
The reasons they were privatized and the like was that the other wasn't sustainable
Get a clue before you enter a discussion. Many of the companies that were privatized were doing as good or even better than the private companies that replace them today. That doesn't always mean they are or were profitable - for some things such as public transport or universities or garbage collection maybe the benefit to society should be the important factor and not ROI and shareholder value.
You are repeating the ignorant blabbering of typical right-wing americans who think that anything that's not cut-throat capitalism is automatically communism. The thought that a world inbetween the extremes could exist has never crossed your mind, has it?
The strange truth is that the very america that had McCarthyism was very interested in and actively promoting the social market economy model of western europe, because they realized that if they had attempted to install the no-hold-barred brutality of pure US capitalism, most of post-WW2 europe would have become communist by free choice.
That economic model was the synthesis (to use philosophy terms) between the two equally wrong extremes. It gave us all the advantages of free markets, free choice of jobs, private companies and competition while at the same time protecting those areas where pure capitalism does more harm than good, like health care, public transportation or natural monopolies.
Sadly, the two competing extremes didn't fail at the same time to the same degree, so we've now been janked towards the "winner", and all the advantages are slowly evaporating in favor of higher stock prices and an economy based on bubbles and bullshit.
I'm not in favour of communism at all - had capitalism failed first, the same would have happened in the other direction and we'd be equally bad of. But on almost every metric you choose, western Europe was in a better condition 30 years ago.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
So you switched from nationalisation of certain industries to taxpayer-funded cronyism?
I don't know all the details, but basically, yes.
The Deutsche Bahn was a state-owned monopolist for long-distance rail transport (both goods and people). During the privatization craze of the 90s or so, the government decided to turn it into Deutsche Bahn AG - a private company, listed at the stock exchange.
After a short transition, the C level started to think and act like C levels do, and - with a little help of big consulting companies - decided that public transport isn't all that interesting and profitable and that they would simply use it as leverage to become a huge, global, logistics company. You can already see where it all went wrong.
In order to raise capital, the government planned to sell its shares. But to make it interesting to buyers, the company first had to become profitable. So all that I've described happened. People in small towns suddenly found out that they were not using the train enough, so train service was discontinued and the station closed. Of course, now they had to use cars more which meant more traffic, roads maintainence costs increased, more roads had to be built - as a singular entity, the government before had included all those factors and decided that train service to this town was the right decision, even if the ticket sales by themselves didn't cover costs - but if you figure in the costs of not having a train service, suddenly it does make sense. As a private company, the Deutsche Bahn AG only considered the side of the equation it owned, and that didn't show a profit.
This happened to hundreds of train lines and stations.
Total damage to the german economy - unknown. Some estimates I've read are in the billions.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Thanks, but he's entirely correct in that (there's a lot of racists in this country), and in that quote he's not blaming opposition to his policies on racism.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
I'm not saying it can't be done. I'm saying it can't be done easily, and that we need to regulate every physical connection that's last-mile.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
I use this logical fallacy poster all the time, it has "black or white" listed as "presenting two alternative states as the only possibilities, when in fact more possibilities exist." I really enjoy using it on Fox "News" supporters, quickly pointing out the light of fallacies after every Bill O'reilly show. That man is the MASTER of logical fallacies.
the only thing that would have helped Fukushima was to not build it there and to have used better construction materials. It does appear that the construction was influenced by severe cronyism and resulted in sub-par materials though.
probably because we've had to "bail out" said allies TWICE in 100 years now. When our "allies" spend more on their military they have this tendency to start World Wars. At least we only invade small countries and don't take the entire planet into war with us. GERMANY I'M TALKING TO YOU lol. See Germany, isn't it easier to win an economic war and rule the EU via the Central Bank? Far less bloodshed that way, and you still get to control Greece!
the Koch Brothers are the second-highest donors that are listed to my Oklahoma GOP Representatives, and that's only recorded in the non obfuscated PACs. I feel like I live in an American version of the Taliban's world...especially with the recent Hobby Lobby "my corp has a soul and it was SAVED BY JEEESSUUS" ruling. Thus why I'm trying to get transferred by my current job to another state lol.
I feel for you man, good luck with the transfer. Their reach is far and wide, though, so you'd better hope the transfer lands you in another area of the world :D
That doesn't mean we should quit resisting the trend towards total state ownership.
Yeah great, until those trusted with the collected output of the citizens become too legally disconnected from them. Then it becomes easier and easier to build a plutocracy that justifies using that resource for other agendas. The USA has this problem already, but the EU is also a prime example, esp with the layers of immunity between the average european citizen and one of these EU unelected committees. The well-meaning leftist reaction to this is to grow the size of the state to regulate the rich, but what ends up happening is that the rich use the expanded powers against the rights of the citizens who lobbied for the expansion. People are starting to wake up to this and are forming parties like UKIP.
ALL democratic systems require a population that isn't too willing to have it shoved up their asses, but unfortunately, the current cultural trend is towards accepting this as the new normal. It's what you're calling 'solidarity.' I'd rather let them have their million dollar villas than have their million dollar villas AND use an expanded state to enslave me financially at my own expense.
We have skyrocketing costs everywhere due to inflation from excess federal borrowing and increasing tax that has flattened economic growth. I'm talking about what the healthcare act did on its own. The fact is, my coverage was quite reasonable for the cost until the new system took effect.
Like you, I was speaking anecdotally. The likely reason you've haven't seen any raise in costs is that you and your buddies are insured by your employers. Eventually your future paychecks will feel the hikes, but those of us who have our own plans saw them almost immediately when the new rules took effect. We got notices in the mail that the old plans are to expire by the end of this year. The new ones are 2x the price with almost half the benefits. While I cannot offer proof (and I never claimed to), the correlation between that event and obamacare is pretty damned high. After all, the additional costs for the new rules you mentioned have to be made up somewhere.
I would use some critical thinking and not just depend on 'argument-from-authority' driven 'fact check' sites. They are magnets for corruption. I am not implying that factcheck.org is wrong, but you shouldn't take them at face value either.
leftists blame the insurance companies and rightists blame the government. Who to believe, who to believe.. Meanwhile, we all get fucked by a government that caters to the rich.
Why do we need to regulate anything beyond the poles/conduits?
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No. Cable between the street and the house might have be redone. But the cabling otherwise shouldn't need to be changed much.
What is more, the cabling between the house and the street might be owned by the home owner.
We could set up a junction box at the street that links into the home's network. All the ISP at the street would have to do is link into it. The key to it might be provided by the home owner.
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Your experience has clearly made myopic and unable to think creatively about the issue.
In any area with high density, there are already conduits. They exist in NYC and London already. How do you not know this mr expert?
As to places that aren't cities and have poles... as you just acknowledged... my point holds.
I am so tired of people making dumb arguments and then claiming to be experts.
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There are no more racists in this country then any other. The issue is very over blown. Again, not saying no racists... just nothing special. We in fact have a quite a few less then most.
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You won't find me in favour of the European Union in its current form, rather the contrary. The EU as it is now, is totally in favour of Big Business, with 'Teh Holey EconoME' as an excuse to break down the excellent systems many of the individual countries had in place, to enable poorer and thouroughly corrupt states like Italy and some former East block states to partake in the system, making it possible to play out workers against each other and sucking funds from richer countries.
I am for European coöperation, but not in its current form, which threatens to go the way you describe in your last paragraph.
What person will donate an airborne act of love?
Absolutely no reason at all. We need to regulate the poles and conduits, that's all.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
The US is pretty tolerant by world standards, but there are still significant numbers of racists. I don't expect racism to go away as a significant force in my lifetime.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
The problem with most claims of racism is that they're non-falsifiable. You're not saying anything that can be argued against or proven wrong. It isn't an argument that can be logically challenged.
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Okay, to what extent and for what purpose?
For example, I'd be happy to lease the polls out to a third party. Say a local business or construction firm that was willing to maintain them etc.
You could put the contracts up for bid every so often. The poles and conduits would be owned by the city but I don't see why we'd need actual city workers to do it. Just lease the space out to the lowest bidder in a public bid and then put clauses in the lease that say they pay a fine and lose the contract if they don't do a good job.
My primary issue here is that the city workers are often a problem in construction projects. I'd prefer a more flexible and controllable situation where people could be fired for being bad a their jobs. City workers are in practical terms impossible to fire. They're also a lot more expensive.
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Your experience has clearly made myopic and unable to think creatively about the issue.
Of course. If you disagree with someone, it must be that the someone is an idiot. It's not possible that maybe you are wrong.
There's no point having a discussion on this level. People who have arguments don't need to use personal insults.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Cable between the street and the house might have be redone.
Yes. But the cable doesn't connect to the street, that's just how we say it. It connects to that grey box on the corner, which means after the garden it runs underneath the street and/or sidewalk for typically a few hundred meters.
What is more, the cabling between the house and the street might be owned by the home owner.
Can't say for other countries, in my country almost never.
We could set up a junction box at the street that links into the home's network./quote
We not only could, this is what we do right now. But those boxes serve an entire block, not one house. Theoretically we could change the whole network layout and install such a box at the edge of every property and terminate there, but there are reasons why the system is the way it is, and changing it would require changes in the system, maybe even a partial redesign of the local loop.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
As to where the cables feed into some sort of switch or router, then have the cables on that portion of the system owned by the house or by the city and identified as belonging to the house. Then you can have multiple providers all in the same larger gray box etc. And then switching from one provider to another would mean going to the gray box and unplugging a wire from provider "A" and plugging it into the box for provider "B".
this is not insurmountable. You're trying to prove me wrong instead of trying to understand the issue. It isn't helpful.
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Sure, and if anyone disagrees with you, it must be because of some character flaw on their part? Fucking stupid hypocritical fuckards.
Bro, I backed up my position. You backed your end up with "I'm an expert"...
Do better.
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identified as belonging to the house.
This is not how property works in any western country. Someone dug up the street years ago, bought the copper, and paid to have it put into the ground. They own that cable. You cannot just go around and declare someone else is owner of it, without compensating the current owner, and probably even that would be challenged in court as the "give to the house owner" doesn't even fall into eminent domain.
And then switching from one provider to another would mean going to the gray box and unplugging a wire from provider "A" and plugging it into the box for provider "B".
Which would be a step back from the current system, where most provider changes are done by switching, not by mechanically unplugging wires. If someone needs to actually drive to a gray box and change wires every time someone changes ISPs, the costs for doing so would go up considerably.
ou're trying to prove me wrong instead of trying to understand the issue. It isn't helpful.
You're painting a picture of a fantasy world, ignoring the status quo. Yes, in a perfect world, if we would start from scratch on empty fields, maybe it would be better to do it that way this time around. But we don't start, we inherit a world where certain things are the way they are, like it or not. If you want to change something, you can't just paint a fantasy utopia, you need to show how to get there from where we are now.
So you want to change ownership of the last mile? Might be a good idea, show how to do it. Explain how to buy all the cables and grant or sell them to house owners. Come up with solutions for all the situations in the real world, with multi-story houses, houses with multiple outgoing connections, office buildings and private homes. A solution that works both for dense cities and isolated farms. That will not die trying due to resistence by the ISPs, the old cable owners, the house owners or the two dozen laws involved.
It's easy to say "this ought to be so". Everyone can do 10 of those in one minute. Cars ought to be pollution free. Ebola ought to be defeated. World peace should be achieved. Any of these statements just make you one of seven billion people with a vision. Being able to show step-by-step how to actually get there is the hard part.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I am not declaring someone else the owner of the cable. You can own that cable. Congratulations.
However, if another company wants to lay cable on that street... what is the problem? That the whole street has to be dug up every time the cable needs to be maintained? First off, the cable tends to run through a pipe and can be strung through the pipe without digging up the street. So it is basically a conduit system already.
As to poles which is going to be what a lot of people are dealing with... no digging needed.
And when we redo the streets as we must every so often because the pavement wears out... we can run more substantial conduits.
You're basically just saying "this isn't the way we currently do things so we couldn't possibly do things differently in the future"
It is a dumb argument. You should know that.
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However, if another company wants to lay cable on that street... what is the problem?
That tearing up a street is expensive, inconveniences a lot of people and these costs to both the parties involved and those around the event far outweigh the benefits. It's the same reason that we have one publicly owned street and not 20 parallel roads owned by different companies competing for your car to drive on them. It's stupid, that's why.
With telcos, the only reason we have the last mile problem at all was because initially telecommunication was built as a public service, like roads. Then someone decided to make it all private, because free market magic. The proper decision would have been to keep the last mile as public property, but it wasn't made, because idiots.
You're basically just saying
That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that visions are a dime a dozen. Realizing them is the hard part, and it takes more than a few "look, a three-headed monkey" sentences to do that.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
The wires run through pipes. You can rewire or even add wire to the pipes typically without tearing anything up.
What is more, in shifting to this model you wouldn't maintain bad aspects of the old system.
You'd roll it out as it became convenient. Things need to be replaced. And when they are, you can very easily lay a conduit down because you are ALREADY ripping up the street.
Going forward, there would be no need to rip up the street at any inconvenient interval.
As to the notion that the cable between the junction box and the home has to be changed every time. You are correct that that model of wiring is absurd.
So... we wouldn't do that. Because as you point out... its dumb. Please assume I am not stupid. Because... I am not stupid. I am not advocating anything that isn't either economical or logistically manageable. If you see something that isn't reasonable and obvious... then assume I am not doing it that way. If you see something I am implying that is not obvious and not reasonable... then ask me if I would do it that way... while I might not have been aware of the issue, you'll probably find that I would not do it in the way that causes the problem.
Rather I will chose effective alternatives that sidestep the issue.
There are oh so many ways to skin a cat. Assume I'm not going to choose the stupid methods.
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Used to have 100/100 symmetrical fiber, but then I moved out of my service area. Luckily, I have been able to get 105/15 with 999GB limit in Southern IL for $54.95, broadband only - I think we're doing about 600GB a month on average at the moment. I purchased my own DOCSIS 3 modem and a separate router so as to not pay the $5/month for theirs. Netflix and such seems to work fine on whatever resolution we have it set at.
Used to have a dual-play TV/Internet bundle with 50/5mbit/s and a 350GB limit but somehow managed to get a decent price out of them when I told them I hadn't turned on the cable box in months and I wanted it out of my house - I think it was supposed to be $69.95 or so.
A little bit scared to move to another city or state now because of all the horror stories about Comcast et al.
Founder & COO, Hayai India (hayai.in) / USA (hayaibroadband.com)
Somehow I don't think we're living in the same Capitalist America, and that you don't have a clue what a truely free market is. Plus, there most certainly is *not* any of the things you state as far as I've observed over the time I've been here.
It also appears you have never lived in Europe: I had 100/100 way back in late 2005/early 2006 in Helsinki (after an upgrade from 10/10) and internet was and is even easier to find than in the states - you could even plug in via Ethernet if your laptop didn't have wifi at some places since WiFi still meant a PCMCIA card or USB dongle on some laptops, and smartphones weren't really a thing yet (except for the glorious Nokia E-series and later the higher-end N-series).
Of course, if we look at countries like Albania or Montenegro, yes, some of those places leave much to be desired when it comes to Internet access/speeds, much like we would see if we focused only on states like Kentucky and Idaho.
Founder & COO, Hayai India (hayai.in) / USA (hayaibroadband.com)
The insurance companies are still private entities and as part of their fiduciary duty must act in the best interests of their shareholders, but now they are being "forced" to carry policies for high-risk people and so on that they didn't have to before.
So, if we assume a nice round number of $10B profit last year, in order to keep that same $10B level of profit (or higher), they have to raise prices despite all the new customers and whatnot simply because now they have to pay out more, as well - rather than just banking on the fact that when they could pick and choose who they covered, their customer base was - for the most part - pretty healthy, and so didn't cost them much.
Yes, it screws the wrong people, but from their view, the customer doesn't have much of a choice anyway so they still make bank, whereas if they kept the prices the same, their expected financials and forecasts are lowered, share values drop, investors move their money elsewhere for a better return. What company wants that?
The problem with the ACA is, therefore, that it isn't strictly a government-run thing. Yes yes certain groups of people can bitch about how inefficient government run things are BUT since they don't have to maximize shareholder value in the same way that a corporation does, they can offer better/cheaper premiums or worst case scenario, premiums that are the same price as they used to be from the private entities.
That's my view, anyway - until I came to the US, I'd been living in numerous countries, most with national healthcare systems - and I've never had a problem with them. When my mother had an aneurysm several years ago, my folks weren't bankrupted by it even though they weren't particularly well-off at the time. If they'd been living in America... who knows... but she probably wouldn't be insurable under the old system.
Founder & COO, Hayai India (hayai.in) / USA (hayaibroadband.com)
You'd roll it out as it became convenient. Things need to be replaced.
This transition will take several decades, as those cables are not in need of much maintainance. But it could be done.
Who would pay for the change, though? I doubt the ISPs are going to do it, the current system works for them. The house owners won't, for the same reason.
Yes, it can be done. I wouldn't bet on it, though. Most likely, by the time this transition is over, all the cables are obsolete. That's one of the reasons nothing like this has happened so far - the players in the field are afraid that their investment will be outdated before it is amortizied.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
The reason this hasn't happened is because it is fucking illegal.
Open your eyes on slashdot. We have stories popping up on a regular basis of the big ISPs shutting smaller ISPs out of the market.
Century link which is backed by Qwest recently complained that comcast is doing everything in its power to block Century link from providing service in areas. They've gone so far as to pressure local city councils to forbid century link to operate in the area.
Google with their Google Fiber have been saying the same thing for years.
So no. Frankly I am just offended that you cited experience before as justification for your argument when you're so ignorant of what is going on.
How fucking dare you.
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The reason this hasn't happened is because it is fucking illegal.
In your stupid backwater country.
They've gone so far as to pressure local city councils to forbid century link to operate in the area.
You elected the fuckers, stop whining.
So no. Frankly I am just offended that you cited experience before as justification for your argument when you're so ignorant of what is going on.
Because armchair politics on /. beats industry experience.
How fucking dare you.
Look, troll. I worked for 10 years in a company that owned a city-wide telecom network and had a couple million phone and Internet customers. The people who do the switching in those grey boxes on the street corner worked one floor below me (I was in IT, not networking). The last mile issue is real and that some corrupt city council in some 3rd world country whose primary industries are advertisement and entertainment pass some silly laws is a tiny drop in the ocean of the telco industry. If you had a solution to solve the last mile problem that is feasable, affordable and legal, you could be rich faster than you can spell out your account number.
But since you've returned to ad hominem attacks after a short interlude of actual arguments, I'll leave you here to celebrate your "victory" all alone. Bye.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
As to my stupid backward country... that would be the United States. And the sophistication of my country is unrivaled. We are a hegemonic power for a reason, monkey boy.
As to your suggestion that one should never complain about politicians being stupid or corrupt... that is such an idiotic statement that I don't know where to go from here. Do you not know how democracy works, twit? Complaining is part of the political process. I thought everyone knew that. I've talked to people living in dictatorships that knew more about democracy then you.
As to your dubious credentials, I think we've established rather soundly that you're a clown. Not a lot more needs to be said on the subject.
Shuffle off and stop pretending to be an expert, shit for brains.
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Sorry but your assumption fo "any area with high density, there are already conduits" just shows your inexperience.
I would have thought that any house built after 1995 would have had conduits for all the wiring too, however after buying my first house, I found out I was wrong. When it comes down to it, the experts generally know when someone's a poser.
You're conflating house wiring with street wiring.
Lets take a city like New York City or if you prefer London. Are you telling me that the wires are run naked in the concrete? That seems unlikely. More likely is that the wires are in some sort of pipe. I can't speak to the width of the pipe but I am quite sure the ISP has the ability to change the wire without changing the pipe or even digging up the street.
Why would you do it in such a way that you'd have to do that? You're not going to save any money. It is just a dumb way to do things. While I acknowledge that it might be done that way in some places, I rather doubt it is standard given that there is no reason to do it that way.
Now your counter argument might be that the pipe is not wide enough to accept additional wires. That might be true. Though all you're saying there is that the existing conduit system is too narrow... not that one does not exist.
Regardless, lets just for the sake of argument say that everything you presume is accurate. That still leaves the poles. If the suburbs start getting fiber and the urban areas are denied it because of this stupidity then it won't be long before they are digging up the streets. Nothing pisses the cities off faster then getting poorer services then what is found in the suburbs. Even though that is frequently the case.
Better schools, better water, better police... I suppose an inferior ballet... but you can't have everything.
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DId I mention America anywhere?
I grew up in Europe and lived half my life there (in different countries).
Helsinki is about as representative of Europe as Loudoun County, VA is of the US.
Living as an American expatriate in Europe is a very positive experience. It isn't representative of what normal Europeans experience.
DId I mention America anywhere?
No, but in the context of the conversation, it would be easy to assume that this was the implication. My bad for assuming, however, the point still stands that none of these things are guaranteed in capitalism. Arguably, in the case of America, it's quite the opposite.
I grew up in Europe and lived half my life there (in different countries).
OK, let me add the word "recently" to that. Having also lived in many parts of Europe, there are a number of aspects that I miss now that I'm in the US.
Helsinki is about as representative of Europe as Loudoun County, VA is of the US.
Fair comment, but keeping within the context of the conversation (regarding Internet proliferation/quality/speed) my friends in France, Netherlands & Sweden weren't far off even back then and are easily as good now. All sorts of countries like Estonia, Romania and Bulgaria are also doing pretty well now. So is Georgia (if you want to count that as part of Europe). Last time I looked, most European countries save for a few of the southern states are doing reasonably well when it comes to the quality of the Internet access.
Living as an American expatriate in Europe is a very positive experience. It isn't representative of what normal Europeans experience.
This sentence was interestingly separated from the first one, but I think I already replied above. In any case, having never lived as an American expatriate anywhere in the world, I wouldn't know what it's like to live as one - I just so happen to hang my hat somewhere in the states at the moment and that's about it. I'm actually from the southern hemisphere, and the point I'm really trying to drive home is that, while Europe wasn't all fun and games and certainly isn't perfect in many aspects, the Internet access was/is far superior in many places compared to what I've seen in other parts of the world, including this part - both then and now.
Founder & COO, Hayai India (hayai.in) / USA (hayaibroadband.com)
Capitalism guarantees you nothing; only totalitarian systems give you any guarantees. What I stated is what a capitalist society requires: free markets, equality before the law, and freedom from physical violence. It's the job of government to provide those things.
Neither the US nor Europe guarantee free markets or equality before the law (both are doing OK on the freedom from physical violence part). That's why both the US and Europe are fairly far from capitalist societies. The US used to be better in these areas, but it has deteriorated to European levels.
Recently, too. Sorry, you really don't have better knowledge of this.
Within the context conversation, what European government support of Internet means is that a lot of people who don't need high speed Internet pay more so that a smaller group of people who really use "100/100" get subsidized because a bunch of government technocrats thought that that would allow them to compete with Silicon Valley. And they don't just subsidize those users, they subsidize them inefficiently, as European governments are in bed with domestic equipment producers, pay off unions, and pay off "copyright holders".
For the purposes of this discussion, you are in the same category as an American expatriate.
Yes, the places educated, cosmopolitan folks like you and your friends happen to frequent, providing the high speeds that you like for your movies, downloads, video chats, and all that. Ditto with the nice tree-lined boulevards you stroll down, the rail system you enjoy, etc. Somebody pays for that, and it's people you never get to meet and it's people who benefit very little from all that stuff. In fact, not having grown up in Europe and not retiring there, you basically get all the benefits and almost none of the sacrifices.
Mind you, there is plenty wrong with the way Internet access and telecoms are handled in the US: it's a corrupt system of corporate cronyism. But adding even more European-style corporate cronyism on top of that doesn't make it better.
We don't want an infinite number of poles, and the poles don't have infinite carrying capacity. There were problems when cable was installed here, as it apparently required a certain separation from power and telephone lines. I don't know the details.
Nobody's going to want to lease space on poles except on a very long-term basis. Since there's limited space, it's possible for it to be taken up by companies doing a half-assed job, but not enough to be evicted. Historically, governments have been very reluctant to oust utilities and utility-like services, and so the decision is likely to be political.
City workers are completely irrelevant to this. Any city services (except, I suppose, policing) can be done by city workers or private workers contracted out.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
As there being limited space, the pole lease fees if they exceed what the poles can pay for can pay for a conduit system to replace it.
As to long term based leasing, that is just an admission of the government being lazy and not especially interested in managing the system. Which is an argument for my suggestion of farming it out to a private contractor.
As to private contractors half assing it, that is entirely based on whether the contract is handed to a friend of one of the politicians or whether it is opened up to competition. You don't have to farm the entire network out to one company either. You can break it up on a block by block basis and let smaller companies do it. That way if one of them does a bad job you can just fire them. It is this insistence on too big to fail design that is getting us in so much trouble.
Too big to fail is not only an accident waiting to happen, it is also slow, anti democratic, and anti innovation. It is a dumb way to do things. Lets stop doing it.
As to city workers being irrelevant, I disagree. Anyone that has had to deal with road workers know that they are very relevant.
That is another service that should be farmed out to private contractors. Take a pot hole. What if rather then the government fixing it, they instead put a work order out to fix it. Licensed contractors could go out there, put up some traffic cones during proscribed hours, and then just do it.
Give them a bonus for doing it at night and 100 percent of it will be done at night. You'd never see another pot hole sit there for weeks on end again.
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you really should not make ignorant assertions like this. I lived in China for 6 years, total. In that time I saw the uptake of internet spread across the entire country-- admittedly first to urban center and the rural SW last of all, but then I lived in the rural SW back around 2000-2002 and had the same internet (in my crummy little apartment that was all I could afford on my $375 a month salary as a teacher) as the governor in his mansion. So, don't talk about what you don't know about. Rick is right.
Subversion of spatial scale luxury decoration ideas.
Well, I use Veriscum in Tampa for @$85 a month, internet only: but that is still too expensive considering that my interenet enabled TV has trouble pulling in HULU plus but no problem with Netflix. That is the problem with Internet openness, the cost, the speed the FAIRNESS (especially to the consumer)
Subversion of spatial scale luxury decoration ideas.
Nothing you said contradicts what I said: you are a privileged, educated elite who wants his 100 Mbps Internet subsidized by the masses. My parents don't need 100 Mbps. Heck, I don't need 100 Mbps. Yet, we all are supposed to pay taxes and/or higher Internet fees so you get your cheap high speed Internet. That's the way it works in China, that's the way it works in Europe, and it's increasingly the way it works in the US. And it's wrong. You want 100 Mbps? Pay for it yourself.
Let me say that again, since you don't seem to be getting it: you are proving my point. The fact that you pay so little for very high speed Internet shows that other people are subsidizing you, because most people don't need or use 100 Mbps connections.
. "The fact that you pay so [[much]] for very high speed Internet shows that other people are [not] subsidizing you, because most people don't need or use 100 Mbps connections."
FTFY
(aside: the number of people using/watching Netflix and Hulu are increasing exponentially. more and more of the students and teachers and staff at the 50,000 person university where I work have dropped their landline+cable connection because they can't afford the extra cost. And remember we are the 1% in the world who can't afford that. when I lived in Asia, poor shopkeepers sleeping an entire family ion a single sheet of plywood on the concrete floor of their storefront had internet for pennies a week. That was 15 years ago, they are miles ahead of us now for a tenth the cost we pay. Stop kidding yourself, go abroad to live and discover the truth)
Subversion of spatial scale luxury decoration ideas.
The thing is that I am not getting that 100meg service for the money I pay. My service is being gamed by the corporations that are trying to force me to pay more than ten times what is reasonable for a relatively small service that my tax dollars subsidized in the first place. You may not use as much in your house as we do in our house, but we pay for much more than we receive, and have ever since we came back to the US.
Believe me, the Chinese and the Thai do not get subsidized service in the cities, the corporations that provide the services make a fortuine there: in fact the deposed prime minister of Thailand and his family -- which also includes another recent PM of Thailand-- made their multibillion dollar fortune on providing internet service in Thailand, as well as mobile phone and satellite TV. All for a tenth (or less) of what we pay here.
Don't try to tell me that greedy corporations in Asia are less greedy than they are here, especially when they can afford to buy Premier league soccer teams in England with their ill-gotten gains.
Subversion of spatial scale luxury decoration ideas.
So, you haven't helped your parents to get more reasonable service yet? Why not?
If yoiu could get them the services they need with an ADSL connection and then let them drop the landline and the cable and set them up with a single internet connection that would give them all the services that I have the way I have it for a savings, why don't you?
And then when you find that they are still being robbed by the corporations that provide the service. maybe you can write in and apologize.
Subversion of spatial scale luxury decoration ideas.
Capitalism guarantees you nothing; only totalitarian systems give you any guarantees. What I stated is what a capitalist society requires: free markets, equality before the law, and freedom from physical violence. It's the job of government to provide those things.
The original wording read differently, but alright. I guess we can conclude then that contrary to popular belief, America isn't capitalist (again, using America since the thread is about FCC submissions).
Neither the US nor Europe guarantee free markets or equality before the law (both are doing OK on the freedom from physical violence part). That's why both the US and Europe are fairly far from capitalist societies. The US used to be better in these areas, but it has deteriorated to European levels.
Deteriorated? Not the word I would use. Lately, Europe has been better with things like enforcement of anti-trust laws than the US has been and equality in most of Europe is greater than the US** (arguable, mainly because when you break it down by country the variation can be quite large, however if we did the same thing to US states as we do to EU member states we *might* see similar disparity).
Recently, too. Sorry, you really don't have better knowledge of this.
I think we're talking about different things... I'm talking about the Internet and the proliferation, speed and quality thereof. What are you talking about? (Because it seems like you're just bitching about Europe rather than European Internet)
Within the context conversation, what European government support of Internet means is that a lot of people who don't need high speed Internet pay more so that a smaller group of people who really use "100/100" get subsidized because a bunch of government technocrats thought that that would allow them to compete with Silicon Valley. And they don't just subsidize those users, they subsidize them inefficiently, as European governments are in bed with domestic equipment producers, pay off unions, and pay off "copyright holders".
Maybe there is a lot of government built fiber but this is a good thing. Maybe it was subsidized but so long as they get their money back, so what? This sort of thing goes on in ALL sorts of industries - I'm not saying it's a good thing, but if the result is that I can get 100/100 or better speeds pretty much no matter where I am in the country (even at the mokki), why is that a bad thing? And if they can do that there, why can't they do the same for rural US? Or forget rural - why not even on the outskirts of some US towns, as in, within spitting distance of the sign that says "Welcome to..."
Or what about the countries where there have not been subsidized rollouts, but who still have far superior access? Why is it commercially viable for some of these companies (some of which may even be conglomerates) to offer top-notch access at bargain-basement prices and still be profitable (despite it being claimed by their counterparts in the US that such a thing would be utterly impossible) despite no subsidy being in place, no unions or payoffs of copyright holders? There are situations where an argument like yours above falls flat on it's face.
For the purposes of this discussion, you are in the same category as an American expatriate.
I'm actually insulted. I'm nothing of the sort, than
Founder & COO, Hayai India (hayai.in) / USA (hayaibroadband.com)
Maybe there is a lot of government built fiber but this is a good thing. Maybe it was subsidized but so long as they get their money back, so what? This sort of thing goes on in ALL sorts of industries - I'm not saying it's a good thing, but if the result is that I can get 100/100 or better speeds pretty much no matter where I am in the country (even at the mokki), why is that a bad thing?
I should clarify that I mean this sort of thing goes on in all sorts of industries when it involves large government projects.
In my view, the question that needs to be asked is less about what is spent, but what is gained or returned. If the rate of return is not good enough, then yes, it's a bad inefficient project and if it's not particularly important, should probably have less allocated to it or be scrapped.
Founder & COO, Hayai India (hayai.in) / USA (hayaibroadband.com)