The situation in Spain seems even worse than in the US — whereas we have multiple locally-dominating behemoths, they have a single giant formerly state-owned one.
they were since bought up by a larger ISP and no longer allow you to reshare/resell your bandwidth.
Yes, and they refuse your money, when you say you wish to use them for uplink, right...
Local governments, you must mean those things made up of the people in the community joined together ( in theory) for the common good? A sort of co-op like thingy?
I mean the city hall, however you want to spin it.
probably would've gotten the state legislature to outlaw it.
False. What telecoms — correctly — object to, are efforts by local governments to compete with them. Private businesses, individuals, or non-profits are fine...
Countries like this — and even worse ones, where citizens' access is already tightly controlled or where "hate speech" is illegal — will now have more say over how the Network is run.
(If you were going to reply pointing out, FBI's attempt to unlock a dead terrorist's iPhone is "just as bad" — don't...)
If MediaMatters calls the circumstances of the crimes "identical", you can rest assured, the Right's "crime" is nothing but jaywalking compared to the Left's aggravated murder. Indeed, those Minutemen were "guilty" of:
recording people in a public place;
asking them, whether they are eligible to vote;
possessing a weapon (one pistol for three men)
. Sorry, but there is just "no there there". No weapon was ever pointed at anyone, and no derogatory remarks about anybody's race were said.
Ah, and your link cites a bona-fide lie too:
the decision not to pursue charges amounted to "career people disagreeing with career people," which Perez said "happens very often."
Well, Ok, in May 2010, when the article you linked to was written, it was not yet known to be a lie. But in September-October of the same year the truth was already known. That MM keeps that blog-post unammended is further evidence of their bias.
History has shown us, starving people WILL rob & kill the wealthy to survive.
Has it shown us this? Citations?
But stipulating for a second it has... Your idea is to stave off such murders and robberies by paying off all of the potential robbers in advance? Is that, how you you'd advise all blackmail victims to react?.. What was that about surrendering an important liberty for the sake of temporary security — and losing both and deserving neither?.. Do you recall?
But, fine, since you are — refreshingly as well as commendably — not wrapping yourself in the flag of fake charity, let's discuss the hard cold numbers. Since waging the "War on Poverty" over 50 years ago, we've spent well over $20 trillion tax-dollars (inflation-adjusted) on various poverty-fighting programs. That's well over $400 billion per year on average in today's dollars. We are also losing about $200 billion each year to crime and crime-fighting.
Now, how much of a crime-increase will the complete abolition of the government's anti-poverty efforts cause? Even if it flat-out doubles the crime-rate — thus doubling the crime-related costs — we'll still save about $200 billion every year. But, of course, the crime will not "double" — just as it did not halve, when we started this ill-fated "war". If anything, it increased back then...
Which society do you want to live in?
I want a society, where criminals are harshly prosecuted and the innocents aren't compelled to pay them off, thanks for asking.
Of course next time you book wirh Airbnb and the "palace with ocean view" turns out to be a shithole and the hosts asks for an extra $200 cash
If this ever actually happened, you'd have included a link... But, hey, it could — and the "real" hotel you booked may also disappoint and overcharge. No obvious differences on this front — except it is easier for you to warn others via Yelp, AirBNB's feedback and similar channels, than trying to complain to a local government official.
There's been great success stories with deregulation and the free market, such as energy (Enron), investment banking (Lehman Brothers and others), airlines and more.
The cases you are alluding to have nothing to do with the actual deregulation itself.
All big wins for customers - except of course all those people who lost their 401(k)
Putting all of your retirement money into one stock is stupid. No one else has suffered a loss of their 401(k).
or who had to pay obscene power bills
California screwed up privatization. This does not mean, the goal itself was wrong.
wait for hours in suffocating planes parked on the runways
This happens because of government regulations. The planes can not easily return to the gate — often due to "arcane regulations". It is happening now — you aren't showing, how deregulation would make it worse.
Ever since the Federal Income Tax placed vast amounts of money at the Federal Government's disposal about 100 years ago, the ideas of how to spend it expanded far beyond the original few applications.
I'm not going to discuss, how counter-productive this is, but rather how this confiscation of money — and spending it on stuff we would not have spent it on ourselves — robs us. Literally...
First, on "valid" taxes: think of a city facing imminent assault by some barbarians... They need to build defenses, equip and train defenders, procure weapons. In that case confiscating money and materiel from the city's residents, as well as conscripting some of them into service and/or work is appropriate — if you don't do it, the entire city (including them!) will be no more...
There may be other examples, but "charity" is decidedly not among them. Not only by definition — it is not a charity, if it is mandatory — but also because the struggling poor do not materially affect the rest. Those of us affected mentally can always donate to a real, voluntary, charity of their choice — but not a dime of monies confiscated by the government at gun-point (which is how all taxes are collected), should be spent on that.
That we are even discussing the possibility of this new compulsory "spreading the wealth around" is the sign of how the mission of taxation has crept over the years. The creep must be stopped — and beaten back. So the healing can begin...
Let's get the government regulations out of the way
You got it!
and rely on Yelp reviews and Facebook likes
The reviewing and certification agencies will themselves compete with each other. Some people may prefer Yelp, others — Consumer Reports, or Angie's List, or Good Housekeeping, or whoever else decides to enter this market.
If there is demand for certification, there will be supply. And if there is not, then the rent-seeking bureaucrats should not exist.
There may still be work to do in insurance and banking, but in local transportation and temporary residence markets the problem is solved.
CDC estimates that each year roughly 1 in 6 Americans (or 48 million people) get sick, 128,000 are hospitalized, and 3,000 die of foodborne diseases.
And this happens despite all the efforts to monitor food supply and food-preparing establishments by the government.
You now need to demonstrate, that it happens more often in places like AirBNB apartments (the tiny minority of them, that may be offering the "breakfast" part of the BnB).
But that's all besides the point — people wishing to stay only in the government-vetted places can continue to do so. The very article, however, seems to suggest, there aren't enough such people. For whatever reason, consumers prefer taking their risks in exchange for (much) lower prices. And any attempts to force them into paying for "better" service is dictatorial and tyrannical.
Presuming the ratings are honest - which I do not trust them to be.
You, then, have my permission to stay at the hotels certified by the loving, caring, and benevolent officials of the local government. The government, over which you — a visitor from afar — have no control whatsoever.
I'll take my chances with AirBNB or someone like them, whose business model is based on the integrity of the ratings (similar to Uber and, to a large extent, Amazon).
Ah, you'll say, but my way is killing your way! Yes, I agree — which means simply, that your way does not have enough adherents to make sense.
Oh, no, not just to me — Attorney General Lynch seems to concur. Otherwise, she would've been prosecuting those cases, would she not have? I mean, if she is actively complaining about being unable to send monitors to certain places, the issue of voting irregularities must be high on her list of priorities.
And yet, she is not prosecuting anything you (and that "stop Trump" site you linked to) rather indignantly list as manifestations of same.
Yeah, yeah, we all know it's only evil when the *scary black man* does it.
It is always evil, but no one other than Black men have done it in recent memory.
your peeps are much more effective at this kind of thing
Unsupported and unsubstantiated accusations. Most of it boils down to fighting attempts to verify voter-eligibility — equating that with voter-intimidation is laughable. Ha-ha...
Be it Uber or AirBNB, the pattern is the same — the old way of doing things is struggling against the technology-enabled new way.
We lived through this, when automobiles replaced horse-drawn transport, we are witnessing it now...
creating an unsafe and unfair market for consumers as well as hoteliers
It is decidedly no less "safe" than the overpriced "real" hotels/motels. And it is only unfair because of the costs of government-regulations, which those "real" establishments have always passed on to their customers.
With the immediately-available customer ratings offered by the new companies, the government regulators are simply no longer necessary. If "fairness" is a concern, the hotels should be left alone — and unregulated — too.
Yeah, go figure, nobody came forward to complain that they were intimidated
I invite you to imagine, David Duke and friends standing in front of a polling place somewhere, pointing a weapon at non-White would-be voters and telling them: "You are about to be ruled by a White man." This is precisely, what happened in Philadelphia.
making the case difficult to impossible
False. Says Wikipedia:
In April 2009 Bartle Bull, a former civil rights lawyer who was serving as a poll watcher at the polling station where the incident occurred, submitted an affidavit at the Department of Justice's request supporting the lawsuit, stating that he considered it to have been the most severe instance of voter intimidation he had ever encountered
The Justice Department has won their case already — and then asked the court to dismiss the default judgment in their favor. Whatever the problem was, it was not the difficulty of actual prosecution.
Meanwhile, others examples of actual voter suppression do exist
Ah, and here we go redefining terms — as if asking for a proof of eligibility is "suppressive". Nice try, but fail...
well as death threats about a Mosque being used as a polling station in Florida.
Attorney General Loretta Lynch said on Friday the Justice Department's ability to deploy election observers had been "severely curtailed"
Funny, how Obama's Justice Department dropped the only voter-intimidation/suppression case documented in recent history — as if that was curtailed by something too...
I mean, anti-porn zealots mentioned in the write-up:
Anti-pornography groups have succeeded in their efforts to get Starbucks and McDonald's to block porn on the chains' Wi-Fi networks
That's the party of Trump, by the way.
More of the anti-porn zealots may be among Trump supporters, but the even worse danger is from the freaks, who'd criminalize (what they deem to be) "hate speech". These are mostly in Hillary's camp — are you comfortbable in that company?
Neither group should be allowed to prevail and the best way to achieve this is by keeping as much stuff as possible out of government's control to begin with.
So, what you're saying is, "As goes McDonalds, so goes the local government"?
You're afraid that government's going to be run like one of the most successful businesses in US history?
McDonalds didn't do it on their own — they were pressured by "anti-porn" zealots. Such zealots will (already do!) have even more sway over elected officials — town libraries were filtering the Internet since at least 2000! Therefor, the fewer things such officials are allowed to control, the better.
It is the general principle of Libertarianism, and this case is is just another illustration of its wisdom.
There is a litany of other countries with massive problems with human rights
Yep, and they should all have more of a say in how the Internet is run. Just as soon as the US surrenders control. The more progressive companies are already there — actively policing "hate speech" on their own.
And that last link takes us right back to the religion of peace... Quite unintentionally...
Slashdot Mirror
The situation in Spain seems even worse than in the US — whereas we have multiple locally-dominating behemoths, they have a single giant formerly state-owned one.
Yes, and they refuse your money, when you say you wish to use them for uplink, right...
I mean the city hall, however you want to spin it.
And, before you ask, it is those pillars of the community you suddenly love and respect so much, who are responsible for shortage of Internet-service options in most locales in the US, where competing providers want your money.
False. What telecoms — correctly — object to, are efforts by local governments to compete with them. Private businesses, individuals, or non-profits are fine...
Just a reminder, that the US seems on track to surrender its control of the Internet to an "International Body" — despite some lawmakers trying to prevent the Administration from doing it.
Countries like this — and even worse ones, where citizens' access is already tightly controlled or where "hate speech" is illegal — will now have more say over how the Network is run.
(If you were going to reply pointing out, FBI's attempt to unlock a dead terrorist's iPhone is "just as bad" — don't...)
If MediaMatters calls the circumstances of the crimes "identical", you can rest assured, the Right's "crime" is nothing but jaywalking compared to the Left's aggravated murder. Indeed, those Minutemen were "guilty" of:
. Sorry, but there is just "no there there". No weapon was ever pointed at anyone, and no derogatory remarks about anybody's race were said.
Ah, and your link cites a bona-fide lie too:
Well, Ok, in May 2010, when the article you linked to was written, it was not yet known to be a lie. But in September-October of the same year the truth was already known. That MM keeps that blog-post unammended is further evidence of their bias.
Please, don't hate.
False dilemma. We are importing hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants today, because — we are told — we must fill jobs, that Americans, allegedly, "just will not do"... Am I supposed to sympathize with your hypothetical "starving unemployed", who'd rather rob me, than take an honest job, which an illegal immigrant is happy to take?
Has it shown us this? Citations?
But stipulating for a second it has... Your idea is to stave off such murders and robberies by paying off all of the potential robbers in advance? Is that, how you you'd advise all blackmail victims to react?.. What was that about surrendering an important liberty for the sake of temporary security — and losing both and deserving neither?.. Do you recall?
But, fine, since you are — refreshingly as well as commendably — not wrapping yourself in the flag of fake charity, let's discuss the hard cold numbers. Since waging the "War on Poverty" over 50 years ago, we've spent well over $20 trillion tax-dollars (inflation-adjusted) on various poverty-fighting programs. That's well over $400 billion per year on average in today's dollars. We are also losing about $200 billion each year to crime and crime-fighting.
Now, how much of a crime-increase will the complete abolition of the government's anti-poverty efforts cause? Even if it flat-out doubles the crime-rate — thus doubling the crime-related costs — we'll still save about $200 billion every year. But, of course, the crime will not "double" — just as it did not halve, when we started this ill-fated "war". If anything, it increased back then...
I want a society, where criminals are harshly prosecuted and the innocents aren't compelled to pay them off, thanks for asking.
Like this you mean?
(Do study, how to embed links in your own Slashdot postings.)
If this ever actually happened, you'd have included a link... But, hey, it could — and the "real" hotel you booked may also disappoint and overcharge. No obvious differences on this front — except it is easier for you to warn others via Yelp, AirBNB's feedback and similar channels, than trying to complain to a local government official.
The cases you are alluding to have nothing to do with the actual deregulation itself.
Putting all of your retirement money into one stock is stupid. No one else has suffered a loss of their 401(k).
California screwed up privatization. This does not mean, the goal itself was wrong.
This happens because of government regulations. The planes can not easily return to the gate — often due to "arcane regulations". It is happening now — you aren't showing, how deregulation would make it worse.
Ever since the Federal Income Tax placed vast amounts of money at the Federal Government's disposal about 100 years ago, the ideas of how to spend it expanded far beyond the original few applications.
I'm not going to discuss, how counter-productive this is, but rather how this confiscation of money — and spending it on stuff we would not have spent it on ourselves — robs us. Literally...
First, on "valid" taxes: think of a city facing imminent assault by some barbarians... They need to build defenses, equip and train defenders, procure weapons. In that case confiscating money and materiel from the city's residents, as well as conscripting some of them into service and/or work is appropriate — if you don't do it, the entire city (including them!) will be no more...
There may be other examples, but "charity" is decidedly not among them. Not only by definition — it is not a charity, if it is mandatory — but also because the struggling poor do not materially affect the rest. Those of us affected mentally can always donate to a real, voluntary, charity of their choice — but not a dime of monies confiscated by the government at gun-point (which is how all taxes are collected), should be spent on that.
That we are even discussing the possibility of this new compulsory "spreading the wealth around" is the sign of how the mission of taxation has crept over the years. The creep must be stopped — and beaten back. So the healing can begin...
You got it!
The reviewing and certification agencies will themselves compete with each other. Some people may prefer Yelp, others — Consumer Reports, or Angie's List, or Good Housekeeping, or whoever else decides to enter this market.
If there is demand for certification, there will be supply. And if there is not, then the rent-seeking bureaucrats should not exist.
There may still be work to do in insurance and banking, but in local transportation and temporary residence markets the problem is solved.
And this happens despite all the efforts to monitor food supply and food-preparing establishments by the government.
You now need to demonstrate, that it happens more often in places like AirBNB apartments (the tiny minority of them, that may be offering the "breakfast" part of the BnB).
But that's all besides the point — people wishing to stay only in the government-vetted places can continue to do so. The very article, however, seems to suggest, there aren't enough such people. For whatever reason, consumers prefer taking their risks in exchange for (much) lower prices. And any attempts to force them into paying for "better" service is dictatorial and tyrannical.
This is incorrect.
You, then, have my permission to stay at the hotels certified by the loving, caring, and benevolent officials of the local government. The government, over which you — a visitor from afar — have no control whatsoever.
I'll take my chances with AirBNB or someone like them, whose business model is based on the integrity of the ratings (similar to Uber and, to a large extent, Amazon).
Ah, you'll say, but my way is killing your way! Yes, I agree — which means simply, that your way does not have enough adherents to make sense.
Excuses, excuses...
What's with the murderous rhetoric? No, not kill — merely suspect the messenger.
Ad hominem much, hypocrite?
If I don't have fire-retarding carpets where I live, I shall not require them, where I choose to stay for a few days.
If anyone gets food-poisoning, they'll mention it in their review of the place — that's all it merits.
Same thing.
Oh, no, not just to me — Attorney General Lynch seems to concur. Otherwise, she would've been prosecuting those cases, would she not have? I mean, if she is actively complaining about being unable to send monitors to certain places, the issue of voting irregularities must be high on her list of priorities.
And yet, she is not prosecuting anything you (and that "stop Trump" site you linked to) rather indignantly list as manifestations of same.
Fail.
It is always evil, but no one other than Black men have done it in recent memory.
Unsupported and unsubstantiated accusations. Most of it boils down to fighting attempts to verify voter-eligibility — equating that with voter-intimidation is laughable. Ha-ha...
Be it Uber or AirBNB, the pattern is the same — the old way of doing things is struggling against the technology-enabled new way.
We lived through this, when automobiles replaced horse-drawn transport, we are witnessing it now...
It is decidedly no less "safe" than the overpriced "real" hotels/motels. And it is only unfair because of the costs of government-regulations, which those "real" establishments have always passed on to their customers.
With the immediately-available customer ratings offered by the new companies, the government regulators are simply no longer necessary. If "fairness" is a concern, the hotels should be left alone — and unregulated — too.
I invite you to imagine, David Duke and friends standing in front of a polling place somewhere, pointing a weapon at non-White would-be voters and telling them: "You are about to be ruled by a White man." This is precisely, what happened in Philadelphia.
False. Says Wikipedia:
The Justice Department has won their case already — and then asked the court to dismiss the default judgment in their favor. Whatever the problem was, it was not the difficulty of actual prosecution.
Ah, and here we go redefining terms — as if asking for a proof of eligibility is "suppressive". Nice try, but fail...
Completely off-topic.
And don't forget your nightsticks — can't have the crackas voting the wrong way, can you?
Funny, how Obama's Justice Department dropped the only voter-intimidation/suppression case documented in recent history — as if that was curtailed by something too...
I mean, anti-porn zealots mentioned in the write-up:
More of the anti-porn zealots may be among Trump supporters, but the even worse danger is from the freaks, who'd criminalize (what they deem to be) "hate speech". These are mostly in Hillary's camp — are you comfortbable in that company?
Neither group should be allowed to prevail and the best way to achieve this is by keeping as much stuff as possible out of government's control to begin with.
McDonalds didn't do it on their own — they were pressured by "anti-porn" zealots. Such zealots will (already do!) have even more sway over elected officials — town libraries were filtering the Internet since at least 2000! Therefor, the fewer things such officials are allowed to control, the better.
It is the general principle of Libertarianism, and this case is is just another illustration of its wisdom.
All of the celebrated "municipal WiFi" and "community Internet" will do the same before you can say: "Statism".
You have been warned.
VPN? Is that something you'd use to get around our laws, citizen? Well, let's make that illegal too...
Oh, and hate speech should not be allowed to travel over taxpayer-funded networks either, should it be? We like it wholesome in this town.
Yep, and they should all have more of a say in how the Internet is run. Just as soon as the US surrenders control. The more progressive companies are already there — actively policing "hate speech" on their own.
And that last link takes us right back to the religion of peace... Quite unintentionally...
Oh, wait, "Mother" has already been replaced with "Parent 1"... Is there an emoji for that — and is it different from the symbol for "Parent 2"?
Here is the symbol for "family" — and, for one, am triggered by their definition:
Dropbox' software is called "lepton". There is an image-processing library called Leptonica — could someone comment on the relationship, if any?