Sure. But the barriers to entry for the broadband market are tremendously high
Yes, mostly due to government regulations, planning departments, and other governmental gatekeepers.
which is why most locations have only one major provider.
Actually, the majority of Americans have two or more wired providers, plus two or more wireless providers. That's in addition to satellite Internet and various local options based on microwave links.
The fact that Comcast could lower prices in itself is a disincentive for others to enter the market, which basically means that Comcast doesn't have to lower prices.
If Company X can offer the same service as Comcast but more efficiently, then it is rational for Company X to enter the market. What Comcast currently charges makes no difference.
That's true in the sense that you can choose not to have broadband Internet access at all while skipping out on running water or trash collection is not really a good option for most people.
Skipping out on running water or trash collection is a perfectly reasonable choice for many people, since there are excellent and cheaper alternatives than municipal monopolies.
The restrictions applied by DARPA applied to all internet users.
No, that's incorrect. For quite some time, the DARPA-based Internet and the commercial Internet existed side-by-side. Both DARPA and many ISPs had all sorts of restrictions in their TOS.
Then "super star" services came along, upsetting the balance of traffic. So, the providers on the receiving side of the "data deluge" decided they wanted to be paid for the imbalance.
Your history is fiction. Once DARPA allowed more general usage, people immediately negotiated all sorts of arrangements to hook up to the Internet.
For many things, such as food, government regulation means that I know to some extent what I'm getting, and that it satisfies certain quality standards. Without the regs, we wouldn't know what was in our food, or that it was safe.
Private, voluntary certification seems to work just fine.
There are such things as natural monopolies.
Are there?
It would be prohibitively expensive to set everybody up with multiple water and sewer services, so if these were not regulated (or outright government-controlled) one company would control the water in your house; take it or leave it.
Not at all. Wells and septic systems are available per property, or you can get together with neighbors to get one. You might also do something very ecologically responsible, namely reduce your water consumption and choose tank-based water delivery and composting. All those options are closed in many cities because public utilities have a monopoly and they force you to use their inefficient and overpriced services, whether you want to or not.
A company that dumps its toxic waste into the river is cheaper to run than one that handles it safely. Lawsuits are not an answer, since it means that one or more individuals have to prove that a particular company hurt them bad enough to make it worth filing a lawsuit
That's because there is this weird intermediary between polluter and victim, namely "the river", some weird communal property without clearly defined property rights. So what happens is that government doles out favors to big corporations by allowing them to pollute, just not so much that it bothers voters. The solution is to make rivers private property; in that case, dumping anything into the river becomes a property rights violation; polluters have to pay the property owner for permission to dump stuff into the river ("the property owner" would likely be a public corporation or some kind of association).
Regulation is pretty much the only way to account for externalities.
True, but "externalities" only exist because there is communal property that isn't subject to property rights. If you privatize that communal property, the problem of externalities disappears, as we saw in the example of the river.
"Hey, Comcast, this is Netflix. We have tons of exclusive content and 50 million subscribers. All of these subscribers will want an ISP that can provide access to our content. How much is it worth to you that we let you stream our content over your network?"
"Hi, Comcast. This is John Smith. I'm interested in Internet service. I've heard that connectivity to many services, like Netflix, is kind of spotty. Oh, that's your policy? Thanks, but I don't think I'm interested in your service."
Broadband already is basically a monopoly and hugely overpriced.
Not where I'm living.
If Comcast is your only viable option, you're already dealing with a provider that acts more or less like a government department, just one with higher profit margins.
Well, no, not at all. Even in markets where Comcast has a monopoly, it has to keep its prices low enough and its product up to date enough to make it unprofitable for other players to enter. Comcast isn't subsidized by taxes, subject to political pressures, or public sector unions. And you have a choice whether you buy Comcast's product, a choice you don't get with many public utilities.
The NHS isn't perfect, and I'm sure if you're a paying customer at a private hospital you get quicker service, but the bottom line is that if you get ill here, you don't have to worry about bankrupting yourself to pay for a new body part.
No, you don't have to "worry about it" because it's completely out of your hands. You pay for it whether you ever would want it or not, and other people make the decision of whether you can and should get it.
Some of us quite like that comfort blanket.
No doubt. But you could have that safety blanket with simple private insurance, without imposing your choices on everybody else.
That said restaurants not subject to a health code would probably be much more dangerous to the public.
Is there any evidence for that? Keep in mind that the choice isn't government-vs-nothing; there are tons of rating agencies. Would you rather eat at a restaurant that was denied health department certification because the French chef used his bare hands, or at one where the Michelin guide said that the kitchen was disgusting?
How about the truth in advertising laws, though they are rather weak.
I'm not sure what you think they protect you from. Do you buy things based on what advertising says or what the specs and reviews say?
The goal of those regulations should be to strike a balance between public and personal safety, barriers to entry, the environment, profitability, and a slew of other things I can't think of just now
Even if we assume that such regulations were ever beneficial, how are you going to accomplish that? In the end, the reality is that for, say, net neutrality regulation, a few corporations face billions in profits or losses due to the regulation, while for consumers, the difference is probably less than a dollar a month. Who do you think is going to bother influencing that regulation?
Regulation can very obviously be bad and just as obviously good
I can't think of any "obviously good" regulation, in the sense that in every case I can think of, alternatives based on private property and voluntary agreements seem to give the same or better benefit without the risk of regulatory capture.
Net Neutrality certainly wasn't how the Internet was run from day 1: plenty of providers restricted what you could do on their networks, foremost DARPA itself.
It remains to be seen if the resulting regulatory action will be detrimental.
No, we will never see that, because most of the cost of regulation is opportunity cost: it's all the products, services, and competitors that don't get created.
Broadband prices will continue to rise after this, and the same people who pushed net neutrality will just keep on whining about the evil broadband providers, never acknowledging that their regulations actually contributed to the problem. Next thing, they are going to push for making Internet service a public utility and monopoly. Like other public utilities, it will be hugely overpriced and redistributive.
there is no fair game of capitalism. players cheat
Really? Can you give actual examples of how "players cheat" in the absence of government regulation?
truly fair government regulation: the only way capitalism can work.
So, how exactly to you propose to bring this "fair regulation" about? Voting doesn't seem to have done it.
There unfortunately persists this quasireligious faith based economic illiteracy in the USA
Yes, and you just demonstrated your "quasi-religious faith and economic illiteracy", because you still cling to the basic economic ideology of progressivism.
I'm also concerned partially because at its root, the problem with broadband in this country is a lack of local choice.
Why would anybody want to invest large bucks in broadband if the FCC can just come around and kick over your business model at any time through regulation?
I believe competition (such as Google Fiber) going up against the phone company and the cable company would help lower prices
Well, so why do the federal government and local government conspire to create huge barriers to entry?
In fact, I am for almost anything that makes AT&T/Verizon/Comcast (the 3 evils) nervous!
I don't see net neutrality making them nervous. Why would it? They just adjust their prices accordingly. If they want to offer proprietary services, they can just go back to proprietary protocols.
What would make those companies nervous is more competition, opening up of bandwidth, and deregulation; that's the opposite of where the administration has been moving.
This sounds good-- but I wonder just what form that regulation will take, and what level of regulatory capture will emerge.
I can answer that for you: ISPs will simply raise everybody's prices in order to make up for the extra costs imposed by net neutrality, whatever they may be. They'll also be happy about the extra barriers to entry it creates.
The republicans gave up too easily. Look how long and drawn out their battle against Obamacare was.
And what good has it done them? Obamacare is still the law of the land, it is still failing, and the president is going to veto any legislation that tries to limit his overreach.
Furthermore, the Republican core constituencies don't care much: they weren't asking for this and it isn't going to hurt them much. The people hurt by this are going to be techies, but they are also asking for this and they mostly vote Democratic, so why should Republicans give a f*ck?
Brits here on Slashdot keep telling us how wonderful their single payer system is and how backwards the US is for not having it adopted long ago.
Are the stories of long wait times and poor service in the UK true after all? Do the Brits perhaps just manage to live a long life because they know their health care system is sh*t and they therefore avoid getting sick in the first place?
which symmetries are you referring to, and how do they change things?
Simple translational and rotational symmetries of spacetime, the basis of SR. How do they change things? You already know: short traversable wormholes in GR don't generally violate causality, but they break those symmetries. They don't allow FTL travel relative to the local spacetime, but that's only a fine point that particles traveling down the wormhole are concerned with. To you, as an outside observer, a particle traveling down a tiny, internally short traversable wormhole between here an alpha Centauri is indistinguishable from a particle that was accelerated past light speed and then slowed down again at the end of the journey.
If you concluded that such an FTL signal was impossible based on SR, it's simply because you looked at the space between here and alpha Centauri and said "looks pretty flat to me, so SR is approximately right." But when talking about FTL signaling, the magnitude of the violations of SR's assumptions doesn't matter; a tiny wormhole (or even a wormhole-like quantum effect) will do just as well as a gigantic one.
Just because some FTL communications are causality violating doesn't mean all are. SR is not a good guide to tease apart which FTL communications are causality violating and which are not because SR assumes the wrong symmetries for our universe. It's a nice approximation and starting point for GR, but nothing else.
The Milky Way, however, is not very large: only about 100000 light years. If a civilization arose a couple of billions of years ago, there is no reason why it wouldn't have colonized the entire galaxy by now.
Professor Donald Kessler: We know they're extremely advanced technologically, which suggests - very rightfully so - that they're peaceful. An advanced civilization, by definition, is not barbaric.
Special relativity is not a sound theory of causality, it's only a theory of transforming coordinate systems. FTL communication results in sequences of space time coordinates that to an STL observer look like they violate causality, but that doesn't mean they actually do.
FTL travel, or even FTL communication, is forbidden by the laws of physics.
There is nothing in physical law that forbids FTL travel or communication. There is simply no known mechanism to achieve it, and some people choose to add it as a postulate to physical law.
Light speed limitations lead to boring science fiction, so FTL travel is common in sci-fi, where starships travel at the speed of plot.
Numerous science fiction stories are based on STL interstellar travel. It makes for quite interesting science fiction, actually.
The real alien threat is not a giant fleet of starships coming out of hyperspace, but a small probe filled with nanobots.
Once you have that kind of nanotech, you can cross interstellar distances even with STL travel and large fleets, because issues of lifespans become moot.
If physics doesn't allow for it, it doesn't allow for it anywhere. It doesn't matter how large the Universe happens to be.
And you know that physics is the same everywhere... how? The only things we can observe are spectral lines, thermal radiation, and very limited orbital mechanics. And even those don't all quite behave we expect them to over large distances.
If they do exist and can cross interstellar distances, they would grow and spread exponentially. In that case, the odds of being anywhere near here would be almost one.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, mostly due to government regulations, planning departments, and other governmental gatekeepers.
Actually, the majority of Americans have two or more wired providers, plus two or more wireless providers. That's in addition to satellite Internet and various local options based on microwave links.
If Company X can offer the same service as Comcast but more efficiently, then it is rational for Company X to enter the market. What Comcast currently charges makes no difference.
Skipping out on running water or trash collection is a perfectly reasonable choice for many people, since there are excellent and cheaper alternatives than municipal monopolies.
No, that's incorrect. For quite some time, the DARPA-based Internet and the commercial Internet existed side-by-side. Both DARPA and many ISPs had all sorts of restrictions in their TOS.
Your history is fiction. Once DARPA allowed more general usage, people immediately negotiated all sorts of arrangements to hook up to the Internet.
Private, voluntary certification seems to work just fine.
Are there?
Not at all. Wells and septic systems are available per property, or you can get together with neighbors to get one. You might also do something very ecologically responsible, namely reduce your water consumption and choose tank-based water delivery and composting. All those options are closed in many cities because public utilities have a monopoly and they force you to use their inefficient and overpriced services, whether you want to or not.
That's because there is this weird intermediary between polluter and victim, namely "the river", some weird communal property without clearly defined property rights. So what happens is that government doles out favors to big corporations by allowing them to pollute, just not so much that it bothers voters. The solution is to make rivers private property; in that case, dumping anything into the river becomes a property rights violation; polluters have to pay the property owner for permission to dump stuff into the river ("the property owner" would likely be a public corporation or some kind of association).
True, but "externalities" only exist because there is communal property that isn't subject to property rights. If you privatize that communal property, the problem of externalities disappears, as we saw in the example of the river.
"Hey, Comcast, this is Netflix. We have tons of exclusive content and 50 million subscribers. All of these subscribers will want an ISP that can provide access to our content. How much is it worth to you that we let you stream our content over your network?"
"Hi, Comcast. This is John Smith. I'm interested in Internet service. I've heard that connectivity to many services, like Netflix, is kind of spotty. Oh, that's your policy? Thanks, but I don't think I'm interested in your service."
Not where I'm living.
Well, no, not at all. Even in markets where Comcast has a monopoly, it has to keep its prices low enough and its product up to date enough to make it unprofitable for other players to enter. Comcast isn't subsidized by taxes, subject to political pressures, or public sector unions. And you have a choice whether you buy Comcast's product, a choice you don't get with many public utilities.
Obviously, not only is your sarcasm detector broken, you also know sh*t about health care in the US and Europe.
No, you don't have to "worry about it" because it's completely out of your hands. You pay for it whether you ever would want it or not, and other people make the decision of whether you can and should get it.
No doubt. But you could have that safety blanket with simple private insurance, without imposing your choices on everybody else.
Is there any evidence for that? Keep in mind that the choice isn't government-vs-nothing; there are tons of rating agencies. Would you rather eat at a restaurant that was denied health department certification because the French chef used his bare hands, or at one where the Michelin guide said that the kitchen was disgusting?
I'm not sure what you think they protect you from. Do you buy things based on what advertising says or what the specs and reviews say?
Even if we assume that such regulations were ever beneficial, how are you going to accomplish that? In the end, the reality is that for, say, net neutrality regulation, a few corporations face billions in profits or losses due to the regulation, while for consumers, the difference is probably less than a dollar a month. Who do you think is going to bother influencing that regulation?
I can't think of any "obviously good" regulation, in the sense that in every case I can think of, alternatives based on private property and voluntary agreements seem to give the same or better benefit without the risk of regulatory capture.
Oh, please do help me with more "basic education": explain how these strategies can possibly be stable in a free market.
You mean you want to support a PAC that favors big media corporations and lets politicians suppress speech critical of them? Why is that a good thing?
Net Neutrality certainly wasn't how the Internet was run from day 1: plenty of providers restricted what you could do on their networks, foremost DARPA itself.
No, we will never see that, because most of the cost of regulation is opportunity cost: it's all the products, services, and competitors that don't get created.
Broadband prices will continue to rise after this, and the same people who pushed net neutrality will just keep on whining about the evil broadband providers, never acknowledging that their regulations actually contributed to the problem. Next thing, they are going to push for making Internet service a public utility and monopoly. Like other public utilities, it will be hugely overpriced and redistributive.
Really? Can you give actual examples of how "players cheat" in the absence of government regulation?
So, how exactly to you propose to bring this "fair regulation" about? Voting doesn't seem to have done it.
Yes, and you just demonstrated your "quasi-religious faith and economic illiteracy", because you still cling to the basic economic ideology of progressivism.
Why would anybody want to invest large bucks in broadband if the FCC can just come around and kick over your business model at any time through regulation?
Well, so why do the federal government and local government conspire to create huge barriers to entry?
I don't see net neutrality making them nervous. Why would it? They just adjust their prices accordingly. If they want to offer proprietary services, they can just go back to proprietary protocols.
What would make those companies nervous is more competition, opening up of bandwidth, and deregulation; that's the opposite of where the administration has been moving.
I can answer that for you: ISPs will simply raise everybody's prices in order to make up for the extra costs imposed by net neutrality, whatever they may be. They'll also be happy about the extra barriers to entry it creates.
And what good has it done them? Obamacare is still the law of the land, it is still failing, and the president is going to veto any legislation that tries to limit his overreach.
Furthermore, the Republican core constituencies don't care much: they weren't asking for this and it isn't going to hurt them much. The people hurt by this are going to be techies, but they are also asking for this and they mostly vote Democratic, so why should Republicans give a f*ck?
No, it's bad news.
I doubt they will bother, they will just jack up their prices to make up for the extra costs imposed by net neutrality.
Brits here on Slashdot keep telling us how wonderful their single payer system is and how backwards the US is for not having it adopted long ago.
Are the stories of long wait times and poor service in the UK true after all? Do the Brits perhaps just manage to live a long life because they know their health care system is sh*t and they therefore avoid getting sick in the first place?
Simple translational and rotational symmetries of spacetime, the basis of SR. How do they change things? You already know: short traversable wormholes in GR don't generally violate causality, but they break those symmetries. They don't allow FTL travel relative to the local spacetime, but that's only a fine point that particles traveling down the wormhole are concerned with. To you, as an outside observer, a particle traveling down a tiny, internally short traversable wormhole between here an alpha Centauri is indistinguishable from a particle that was accelerated past light speed and then slowed down again at the end of the journey.
If you concluded that such an FTL signal was impossible based on SR, it's simply because you looked at the space between here and alpha Centauri and said "looks pretty flat to me, so SR is approximately right." But when talking about FTL signaling, the magnitude of the violations of SR's assumptions doesn't matter; a tiny wormhole (or even a wormhole-like quantum effect) will do just as well as a gigantic one.
Just because some FTL communications are causality violating doesn't mean all are. SR is not a good guide to tease apart which FTL communications are causality violating and which are not because SR assumes the wrong symmetries for our universe. It's a nice approximation and starting point for GR, but nothing else.
The Milky Way, however, is not very large: only about 100000 light years. If a civilization arose a couple of billions of years ago, there is no reason why it wouldn't have colonized the entire galaxy by now.
Special relativity is not a sound theory of causality, it's only a theory of transforming coordinate systems. FTL communication results in sequences of space time coordinates that to an STL observer look like they violate causality, but that doesn't mean they actually do.
There is nothing in physical law that forbids FTL travel or communication. There is simply no known mechanism to achieve it, and some people choose to add it as a postulate to physical law.
Numerous science fiction stories are based on STL interstellar travel. It makes for quite interesting science fiction, actually.
Once you have that kind of nanotech, you can cross interstellar distances even with STL travel and large fleets, because issues of lifespans become moot.
And you know that physics is the same everywhere... how? The only things we can observe are spectral lines, thermal radiation, and very limited orbital mechanics. And even those don't all quite behave we expect them to over large distances.
If they do exist and can cross interstellar distances, they would grow and spread exponentially. In that case, the odds of being anywhere near here would be almost one.