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How Comcast is Shortchanging Customers In Vermont (wired.com)
New submitter mirandakatz writes: Comcast is suing Vermont's Public Utility Commission, claiming -- among many other things -- that its First Amendment rights have been violated. But as Susan Crawford argues at Backchannel, there are far too many holes in that argument. Crawford writes that 'Comcast, which Wall Street knows is essentially an unregulated public utility for high-speed internet access in the areas it covers, has unlimited resources to fight off this public-spirited regulator...[And] although there are many efforts in Vermont to provide fiber (including ECFiber), they're still small: Comcast isn't feeling any pressure to upgrade its lines to fiber. And, as [Craig] Moffett has reported, Comcast from now on will be growing through price hikes, not through building new lines. It's done with building new lines. The whole thing is dispiriting.'
ALL infrastructure: roads, bridges, water, sewer, telephone, electric, Internet, etc. need to be publicly owned.
Why stop there?
How about all the above, plus the entire medical industry, including especially the pharmaceautical industry, be mandated as not-for-profit? Take greed out of the equation for everything that is classified as a necessity, and you come closer to the Star Trek vision of a post-scarcity, utopian society.
Of course the main problem is getting the rest of the world to go along with this, and getting rich conservative types, who would much rather we return the world to monarchies and feudalism, to not go around waving their arms screaming "Socialism!!!" and spending their considerable monetary and political resources shutting it down and permanently discrediting anyone who supported it.
This is one of the worst Slashdot summaries I've ever seen. It provides almost no information as to what the case is about while slamming the company and complimenting the regulators. What the heck is his about and why is it relevant tech news? What the heck does the first amendment have to do with it?
which Wall Street knows is essentially an unregulated public utility
This statement is simply false, it is a regulated public utility.
Mostly rural, so the lines are long, and low density so subscribers per mile are pretty low outside of the metro areas of Burlington/Montpelier.
The business 'climate' is somewhat less than friendly, though Comcast can make any business climate hostile. Anywhere.
The topology is downright hostile to telecom, with north-south ridges through out the state, making long-haul cabling a serious challenge, and expensive when traversing those ridges. This is not a new problem.
Comcast has plenty of excuses to gouge their Vermont customers. And Vermont will probably just try to legislate the costs out of the equation. Good luck with that.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
So you're saying that greed is the only thing to live for?
I postulate that avarice is bred into people. It was not bred, trained, conditioned, etc., into me, maybe to a fault considering our current "society" and how much greed you need to achieve success.
The Star Trek society had other motivations. Money and greed were rarely discussed.
I'm motivated by technology (I'm a design engineer) and the awesome things it can do to improve life, society, etc. I think most great designers and inventors were motivated by the thing, and making it happen. Many of them were poor, and never really received much money for their work, but usually some greedy businessman found a way to get rich off of their ideas and work.
How about music and art: musicians and artists are motivated by what they create. I personally know many. They don't think about money- they just have to create the thing they create. A lot of great art never gets recognized, or maybe long after its creation and the artist/musician is dead. Most artists and musicians are very poor, unless they 1) are favored by the wealthy industry, 2) got very lucky, such as a Justin Bieber, and / or 3) make money some other way.
Try, for a minute, to think beyond our current reality, please? The 'way things are and always have been' doesn't need to define us unless we let it.