I was going to point out the difference between encrypting transport versus encrypting email, but I was beat by the first post.
If the ISP or email provider host the domain that your email is at, is it really that much of a problem?
When that "ISP" is in the business of indexing content and selling data to third parties, I think it is reasonable to believe there is a problem.
As for "a full page notice", just how will this be sent, and just how is Google intercepting web browsing going to a non-Google site? Why, they'll have to insert a redirect through their servers into any links embedded in your email. They'll have to modify the content of your email messages to do that. You can't intercept a web request to "a.bad.site.com" in an email unless the link is modified to come back through google.com first. All my browser knows is that it is a link in a web page, not that it is a special gmail web page with email on it.
I'm not trying to be insulting, I just didn't see any of that information in your post..
Yes, you are trying to be insulting, and you would have assumed I contacted Amazon because I wouldn't just keep the phone and be out the $450 had you not been.
My personal experience has been pretty good customer service from Amazon,
Customer service from Amazon is fine. I didn't say otherwise. (Well, except for the problem of them promising "second day delivery" as part of Prime membership and then stuff not arriving until day three or four -- because it's "by 8PM" delivery to a commercial address, and they include "arrived at the local post office by 8PM" when it's a USPS delivery). The phone went back the same day it got here and Amazon has issued credit.
It's their failure to dump bad vendors that is the issue. A vendor who I found later had many similar complaints. A vendor who is busy trying to bypass the Amazon sales process by instructing unhappy customers to not use the Amazon return process. If Amazon allows this kind of vendor to continue, why would anyone imagine that they'd care if Comcast gets poor ratings?
Complete strawman. I never said you could get a taxrate everybody is happy with or full agreement on which services are essential
Yes, that was your claim. You don't understand that is what you claimed because you think the US tax system is a simple process of economic theory.
It isn't. The US tax system has been primarily a social tool for the last umpteen years. Tax breaks for buying electric cars or installing solar systems, or mortgage deductions, or thousand of other things. They're all social engineering, not pure economic theory applied to a human population.
Given that surprise revelation, you can now see that the system is not a zero sum game consisting only of equations writ on chalkboards, it has everything to do with who thinks what levels of maintenance and services are necessary. Your "perfectly possible" solution is quite impossible to achieve in reality.
Do you not realize how much of the load those people are already carrying?
Almost nothing. With all the loopholes they can take care off - very often it's *actually* nothing.
What absolute malarky. The top 1% of income tax filers in 2013 paid more than 37% of the total income tax. When you're talking about who is paying their fair share, this information certainly is relevant. And it shows that the top earners certainly are not paying nothing.
What matters is what percentage of their own income they pay -
And that rate is highly progressive. with the top earners paying increasing marginal rates as they make more. The top federal tax bracket is almost 40%. Someone making $500000 in taxable income pays almost 31% of their income in federal taxes, and they pay 40% of every dollar over that amount in taxes. That's just federal. Someone making $50,000 pays just 17%. So ten times the amount of money being taxed, twice the rate, that makes it 20 times as much in real money. So yeah, they're paying a higher percentage of their income in tax as well as paying a disproportionate amount of the total taxes overall. If that's truly all that matters, then good, the problem is solved.
Because this appears to be a story of "I bought through Amazon, had an issue with a vendor, and never contacted Amazon...
Oh, for heaven's sake. Of course I contacted Amazon. I did the return through them. Did you imagine that I was going to just keep the stolen phone and not get my money back? I told them what was going on. And their response? Nothing.
How can I know what Amazon calls that unless I told them about it? Stop being insulting.
No, actually, it is not. What is "just right" or "too low" for you, because you aren't paying it, or because you just don't think you deserve to make that much money, will be "too much" for others who do pay it, or who do think they earn their wages. Or the debate will be over how much maintenance a bridge needs. Does it need to be kept in like-new shape forever, with new paint every year, or can we allow it to deteriorate a bit from new while still being safe?
And the big one, of course, is "broadband" a necessary infrastructure item that government must provide and be at least 100 Mbps to be of any value, or is 5 Mbps good enough for most people, or should it be a personal decision if paying for broadband is worth it? You will NEVER get a "perfectly possible" answer to that.
Higher taxes only equals economic decline if they are excessive, and excessive nearly 50 times what the wealthy in America pay on average,
Oh my God. You think that it is excessive only when taxes go up to FIFTY TIMES what the rich are already paying? Do you not realize how much of the load those people are already carrying? Look at the tax numbers and you'll see that the top few percent pay a hugely disproportionate amount of the total. Fifty times?
Slashdot, will you FIX whatever it is that keeps logging me out when I click "preview"? It's fucking annoying. And now it is logging me out when I "submit", which prevents me from posting. Broken.
How long will Comcast be willing to suffer the terrible ratings that Amazon customers will inevitably give to Xfinity signup? Hundreds of thousands of one star ratings and incendiary customer complaints?
Why would they care? You don't think Amazon will do anything, do you?
I just bought a new, unlocked cell phone through Amazon, and the first vendor sent me a refurb, test unit phone that still had the manufacturer usage collection software installed on it -- and it could not be turned off because it was a test unit belonging to the manufacturer.
The vendor told me to send the phone back to them at their address. At my expense. Without telling Amazon. And hope I got my money back.
It is not fundamentally hypocritical to follow the rules as they exist and simultaneously advocate that the rules be changed.
It is fundamentally hypocritical to follow the rules to avoid paying taxes, and then say that they, and everyone else like them, are not paying enough.
It's like calling someone a hypocrite if they advocate for pot legalization, but don't smoke up.
Nope. It's like calling for the criminalization of pot because it is bad for everyone yet continuing to smoke themselves. Or calling for higher taxes on cigarette users because it is bad for everyone and continuing to smoke.
It would not be hypocritical for a 1%er to say that he thinks his taxes are too low and to voluntarily pay more. It would be ethically neutral for him to say his taxes are too low and take no actions that would lower them.
It is hypocritical for him to say his taxes are too low and then take all possible means to reduce his own payments. And outrageously hypocritical for him to say his taxes, and the taxes of everyone like him, are too low and ought to be increased, while he is actively using tax reduction methods.
I'm fascinated to hear that the 1% of income earners in NY state consists of just over 40 people. And they are just millionaires, not billionaires.
... force Uber to comply with the same laws and regulations as taxis, which is what Uber is.
I agree, and this announcement is significant because it signals that Uber is abandoning the claim that their drivers are just contractors. They are not only admitting that their drivers are employees but that they are also going to be providing the cars. This puts them in exactly the same status as taxis, except they're still trying to avoid the laws that cover taxi service.
and questions about liability
In this case, there would be no question as to the liability. Not only would the manufacturer be sued, so would Uber. There would be no innocent party (driver/owner) who was depending on the over-hyped hyper-reliability of autonomous vehicles.
Where did you get the idea that this was a negatively charged article?
The use of the word "overkill" is a dead giveaway.
This is no more "overkill" than the repeated letters Comcast sent me telling me I needed to upgrade my cable modem to "take advantage" of faster speeds. I think they said that in billing inserts, too, but they sent me at least a half a dozen letters over a six month period with that information.
Of course I haven't upgraded my modem and nothing has stopped working, so we see how well that push campaign worked.
Again, you're assuming that they can't be commercial successes on their own.
That's a pretty much demonstrated fact. Were such systems to be commercially viable, someone would be doing them. Even if it were just the incumbents. But we must have government do it because nobody else will. There's a pretty telling bit of evidence about the commercial viability of such systems.
Also, consider what AT&T and Comcast are doing. You're implying that they're competing against AT&T & Comcast by running their own 'gigabit service'. This implies that the commercial companies have gigabit service
No, that implies that AT&T and Comcast have internet service which customers will abandon when the government offers them cheap gigabit service. If you doubt that is a fact, then there is little hope of this discussion being productive. They may change providers because of the technical advantages, or they may change just to give the finger to the big companies they hate, but they are the intended customers for any government gigabit service.
Here's the truths: if gigabit internet is such a critical service to so many people, someone would be selling it to them. If gigabit service is so critical to a specific customer and nobody exists to sell it to them, they'll be buying the next best thing. That would be broadband from an incumbent.
This is a part of the reason people are pissed at them.
This is alot of the reason people are taught to be pissed at them. They are taught that they need gigabit service, when the fact is that most people can get by with 100Mbps or even half that. The vast majority of residential service, for example, wouldn't consume 100Mbps on their best days. It doesn't take even 100Mbps to do email and stream video or surf the web. But gigabit is a handy hook to hang your hatred of the megacorporate incumbent providers on. We hates the nasty Comcasts because we think they overcharge and they don't have good customer service and they encrypt all their channels and they cooks their fishes. And now we can hate them because they don't have cheap gigabit service. It's not a true need (for most people), it's just a prop.
Hmm... You are aware that there are over 5,000 'local governments', right?
I am as aware that there are a huge number of local governments as are the people who make the claims that they are all being bought off by Comcast or AT&T or TW or whichever cable company they've given the sweetheart exclusive monopolies to, yes. You should be asking them, since I'm just parroting the claims about the inept and fraudulent backgrounds of any local government that has ever given a franchise to a cable company.
You cannot have it both ways. You cannot claim that the local government is corrupt for allowing Comcast into town in the first place, and then claim you trust them to be honest in their intent of creating municipal broadband to compete with Comcast.
I could run for local office and have a decent chance of making it...
And then you would becomes just another one of the greedy corrupt bastards who is kissing the feet of Comcast or AT&T because Comcast or AT&T has been granted a franchise to rape the local residents with overpriced and underperforming service. You'd like to think that you can avoid those claims by being special and honest an different, but you'll be just another one of "them" to those who know that it takes corruption to create a cable franchise.
Define "sucking up all the money from Comcast".
Accepting the bribes from the company seeking the franchise, whether that's actual money or perks or whatever. It isn't always money. But you'd be better off asking the people who regularly make the claims that such corruption exist. They'd have the answer to what they mean by that.
As for the rest, the actual issue is that the market doesn't really support entry unless you do have that exclusive.
Then explain the existence of cable systems in so many places where there is no exclusive franchise. You cannot. You refuse to point to one exclusive franchisee, despite claiming that you know so many that are.
The truth is that the market doesn't support multiple players in a fixed boundary market system like cable. The repeated claim is that Internet access is such an integral part of life, and yet you can't get anywhere close to 100% saturation in a market, and there simply aren't enough people who want the gigabit version of the Internet that it is a viable market for the incumbents to serve.
That's the cause for the defacto monopoly, not your fictional exclusive franchise system (which even you admit is against the law). And when government decides to become a player, they're unfairly competing against the incumbents who are already trying to get by with the limited market they have.
Were the government gigabit systems intended to serve an entirely different set of customers, that would be one thing. But they aren't. They're intended to draw away the existing customers from the existing broadband systems. And they're intended to do it cheaper because they can avoid some of the fixed costs the incumbents cannot avoid, like being profitable (or even breaking even). That's why it is unfair competition, and we have laws against such things when a private company tries to do it (dumping, for example). But we (for a very limited set of "we") don't care if the government acts that way, and we (for a very limited set of "we" again) trust the government to do just what it promised and nothing more and nothing less when it comes to this.
Yes, isn't it wonderful when the government does for us the things we would have paid more for, because it saves us money.
As for your ad hominem regarding tinfoil and moon cheese, you are demonstrating your debate style very well, thank you.
Okay, fine. I'll broaden my scope: Competition is good. Companies are not guaranteed a profit, are not to be granted a guarantee that they will break even. Survival of the fittest.
Yes, and the "fittest" does not include a taxpayer subsidized, non-profit government department trying to take customers away from existing companies. If the government didn't have the taxpayer funds to prop them up, they wouldn't succeed, and so they cannot be "the fittest" in any sense of the word.
It's also a matter of fairness, not just fitness.
I did specify a vote, remember?
And I already discussed the numbers when it comes to most bond measure votes. Twelve percent of the voters are "voluntary", which makes 82% of them involuntary, as will be anyone who moves into the area.
True, but said private companies have to identify target locations, gather funds of their own, be able to expect a reasonable profit, and all that.
Yes, and the fact that none, or at best very few, have done that tells us all that there is no burning need for the service that will pay the costs of providing it. Thus the government has to do it -- and you pointed out I assume it will be at a loss, because of this very reason.
If a private company comes in, provides competition, superior service than the incumbent, then the proposals to set up a municipal system tend to die on the vine.
And we know why they won't come in, and they have even less reason to try when they know the government is competing against them.
You're neglecting other possible sources: Increased fees, borrowing more money(attached to the company, not the government),
We're talking about government provided gigabit broadband. The government (and the taxpayers, all of them) ARE the company. How can you claim that another bond measure would not attach to the government?
selling stock or assets,
How many fire trucks should a city sell off to get the money to pay for gigabit broadband for the relative few who use it?
You think I have 'unlimited trust in government'?
You deliberately left off the modifier in that statement. "To spend tax money the way they promised to." That's a pretty significant limit in the grand picture of things, but it is a trust that is interestingly present when someone wants something "for free" from the government but ubiquitously absent when it comes to trust about things like use of drones or GPS tracking.
Actually they're NOT the same local governments. Some local governments are in the pockets, some are not.
It is the SAME government that was in the pockets of Comcast execs and sucking up all the money from Comcast that is now trying to increase the size of government and fees and taxes by running their own gigabit broadband service. Same one. Had they not been in the pockets of Comcast, Comcast wouldn't be there. At least that's the standard refrain when anyone talks about the corrupt cable monopoly and the fiendish government syncophants who let them rape the residents.
I don't believe YOU because despite your claim that the vast majority of franchises are exclusive, you cannot provide a specific reference to even one. All you can point to is "my county", and you don't even know where I live. I've looked at franchises for 30 years now, and not even the first ones I saw were exclusive. Believe me, when we were working on franchises for my city, we looked at what other people had done as a starting point.
But at least now you admit that they are not exclusive today, and today is when any new competitors would show up. If the markets would support two competitors, then the government doesn't need to be either one of them. If it won't, then the government shouldn't be one in the first place.
Thank you for the pointer. In researching the franchise for this city, I find this. It appears that Florida has actually decided to remove cable franchising from the local municipalities and taken it on as a state function. One thing I do note is that there is no statement that the franchises issued by the state of Florida are exclusive, and lacking that provision, they are not.
What is interesting in light of the previous cited law, is this municipal code. It clearly states that the franchise shall be non-exclusive. Most of this code appears to have a 2003 origination date, but a part of it was updated in 2011. Clearly, Jacksonville thinks they still issue franchises. In any case, as of 2003 franchises were, indeed, non-exclusive.
As to "cable broadband", there is nothing in the Jacksonville Municipal Code that I can find regarding issuing franchises for that service, but section 710.124 does require any cable franchisee to provide:
(b) High speed "Internet" access service to Duval County public schools.
and includes a provision that should the incumbent franchisee fail to provide adequate service the city can require "an additional Franchisee" to do so.
If there can be additional Franchisees providing the same service, then the original franchise is clearly non-exclusive.
If you find the reference to the monopoly that the PUC was asked to remove for cable internet, please pass that along. I know of no franchising authority for ISPs, and clearly with the proliferation of them over the years, any such franchise would have to be non-exclusive, were it to exist. Or were you referring to the monopoly that telcos do have as exclusive franchisees and not to Comcast?
The problem is that most of those exclusive agreements were made illegal some time ago,
No, the problem is that most of those exclusive agreements do not exist.
If you actually want to see one, try your local county seat.
Nice try at pushing the problem of citing one example back on me. No, I won't waste time trying to find something I know does not exist. I know the franchise here, and it is one of many non-exclusive ones.
1. The local government isn't "moving into the area". It's already there.
They are moving into a new venture, which makes them a new competitor. The "moving into the area" part of the "dumping" issue is irrelevant. I'm sorry you fixated on that.
Also, in this case the "taxpayer's general fund" is coming out of the investor's pockets,
Involuntary investors.
2. If, like I said, you manage to piss off the locals enough that they willingly vote for a bond issuance to fund the startup of a competing cooperative, that means that you done screwed up(to put it politely)
Most bond measures pass with a plurality that consists of a minority of the voters. Getting one more than half of a 25% turnout means that you only had approval from 12% of the registered voters, and since there are people who are not registered you've got a lot less than 12% of the taxpayers.
That's if there's a bond measure to start with.
And if there are that many pissed off subscribers (not just voters in general), that area is ripe for competition -- from private companies.
and I have no sympathy for you.
And, it appears, no sympathy for any potential private companies that might come in to provide the competition you seek. A government competing with private ventures competes with them all, not just the incumbent. If it is really hard to get a second private company to come compete with the incumbent when the government isn't trying to put the incumbent out of business, imagine how much harder it is when the newcomer would be the third competitor, and the government is trying to put both of you in the dumpster.
3. Most of the time it's not structured to come out of the general fund,
Perhaps at the beginning. But when the costs exceed income, it has to come from somewhere. How many things do local governments fund from the general fund because the special funding isn't enough, or additional taxes are created to fill the gaps? The answer is "a lot". It is a lot easier to draw from the general fund than to run another bond measure to make up the difference. And how many "special funds" have been diverted into other uses? Also "a lot".
Here's a trivial example from our own local government. We had a section of five lane road in town that the contractor did a crappy job on, and the legal issues went on for a very long time. Finally, to pay for fixing it, since the contractor wasn't going to, we got a new tax applied to our water bill. (A tax on water to pay for a road!) It was earmarked specifically for that fix. That part of road was fixed. Did the tax go away? Of course not. It was money, it was already being collected, so let's use it for other things. I don't expect it will ever go away. And because the city realized how easy it was to add taxes to the water bill, we now have taxes on the water bill to pay for sidewalk repairs and tree trimming and free bus service.
It's amazing to see the dichotomy between those who have absolutely zero trust in government, and those who have unlimited trust in government to spend tax money the way they promised to. It's almost like "I don't trust the government to not do what I don't like, but I trust them to do what I want them to." And when you consider that these are the same local governments who have allegedly been bought off and giving megacorporate cable companies dejure monopolies, to suddenly trust them with a bottomless bucket of money to do the same thing... it boggles the mind.
Practically every cable TV operation has or had an exclusive franchise.
You are one of the people I've repeatedly asked to provide a specific link to one such exclusive franchise, but you have yet to do so. I've googled many times and not found one. No, a scad of people saying that "X has an exclusive franchise" means nothing unless there is actually an exclusive franchise in place. Finding references to you repeating "every cable company has one" doesn't prove they actually are. Do you have a link to an actual franchise ordinance that is exclusive?
I have never seen an area that actually had a choice of cable provider.
You repeatedly refuse to understand the difference between a government-granted monopoly (an exclusive franchise) and an economic monopoly. I've never said you would see any areas with multiple cable companies, but I've explained several times that the reason is not due to an exclusive franchise. In fact, I think I've explained yet again the economic cause elsewhere in this discussion.
I have heard of a few rare places where there was no mandated exclusivity, but there was still no competition,
Every city I've lived in or researched the franchise ordinance for has been non-exclusive. The rarity of such is "not very". It's pretty easy to understand why. Small governments love to copy what other people have done instead of paying lawyers to come up with something new and original, and the templates used have been non-exclusive.
even in border areas where the provider's cables were equidistant from a home.
Sigh. Franchises are granted on a geographic area, and the "distance from a home" is not relevant. No, unless there is a franchise agreement that allows the company to provide service to an area, they cannot. Even if they are closer to a certain home than the other company. That does not change the non-exclusive franchise into a dejure monopoly. There could be fifty franchisees on the other side of the border and just one on this side, and still those fifty could not provide service.
access to utility poles and a sweetheart monopoly franchise deal while building out.
Access to utility poles comes with a franchise and associated franchise fees. And in more than thirty years of experience with cable franchises, I've yet to see an exclusive franchise (a "sweetheart monopoly"), and despite repeated requests for a link to any, nobody has been able to show me one. Every time someone has claimed a certain municipality has given their cable company a monopoly, when I track down the franchise ordinance it has been non-exclusive.
What "non-exclusive" means is that if you want to follow the same rules, you can get one, too. Nobody does because of the economics involved. It is hard to get a return on investment when you have to split a fixed customer base, especially when the franchise rules often include a mandate to provide service to areas that are not profitable to start with. Being a government doesn't change the underlying economic truths, but it does allow for mitigation through large-scale fees -- called taxes -- and exemptions from things like paying franchise fees or serving the really unprofitable areas. And, of course, no requirement to ever show a profit, which is a cost that a private company has the government gets to bypass.
It's one thing to drive a competitor bankrupt via being better at it. It's quite another to use regulations to ban competition at all.
And what is it when a government can drive a private company bankrupt by cutting prices for equivalent service, because the government has the taxpayer's general fund to absorb any temporary (or long term) losses and no need to make a profit to pay back the investors?
In business-land, large companies who move into an area and drive their competition out of business by charging below cost are guilty of dumping. Should government be allowed to that?
It can also wreak havoc for people or businesses that operate in multiple places in a single state,
Oregon just passed a higher minimum wage law that is different depending on where you are in the state. This is already raising the question of what a state university that has employees spread out around the state will have to do. Does everyone doing the same job at today's minimum wage get paid the same new minimum wage (the highest one) no matter where they live, or can they have different wages? How will the unions respond to that?
And then, how do the differing minimums apply to any proportional raises given to people who were making above minimum?
But, they won't give control over to the even smaller local governments,
Of course they've given control over to the local governments. Local governments are the ones who create the franchise rules they expect private companies to live by. What local governments aren't being allowed to do is create rules for private companies that they themselves can simply ignore to the detriment of the companies.
Local governments should have the right to compete with overpriced ISPs.
Why? Shouldn't the right to compete belong to a company that isn't overpriced, instead of shutting out all other competition by running the service with taxpayer dollars? And why is there some limit to just competing with "overpriced ISPs?" Extending your claim further, shouldn't local governments be competing with overpriced restaurants, plumbers, lawyers, doctors, insurance companies, auto mechanics, car dealers, florists, landscapers, house painters, television repairmen, hotels, grocery stores,... Why shouldn't we just say 'give everything you have to the government', and the government will give you what you need in return? Is that the society you want? Oh, before you answer, remember that it won't be your decision about what you need, it will be the government that decides.
To be fair, a large portion of a company's telco infrastructure was originally given to them through tax dollars,
Comcast was not a telco when it built out the cable infrastructure.
Plus as 'public utilities', these services are used universally by society, so if its paid for by government or companies, its essentially all taxpayers that are paying for it.
If I am not a Comcast customer I am not paying Comcast anything. In fact, the cash flow is the opposite direction since Comcast subscribers are indirectly paying the government for the franchise. If the government competes with Comcast and I am a Comcast customer, then I am paying the government in taxes for them to provide service to others, paying the government for the franchise rights (which the government doesn't pay) and paying Comcast, too.
This is the same situation that has led to the push for school vouchers, so that people who wish to use private schools and not consume the public school resources are not double-charged for the same service.
Speaking of USPS, why does the US have USPS and not shutter that as well and leave it to private enterprise?
Because USPS has, by law, a monopoly on first class mail. No private company can compete. And the government is a large user of USPS for mandatory notices, so service to every individual is a necessity. Much more than gigabit internet is.
We should liquidate the army and make everything private contractors.
There is no reason not to in modern times, other than the ability to operate and enforce enlistment contracts under the UCMJ instead of civil law and courts.
We should liquidate the free-way infrastructure
You know, if cable internet was being provided to everyone who transited an area with no charge, and there were no significant physical limits to the existence of highways, then there would be an argument (and an analogy to public streets) to be made for government provided "free" internet. One cannot run four different freeways going from point A to point B without consuming a huge amount of land; four internet providers can easily co-exist on the public rights-of-way already being used.
Lastly, unless government actively passes laws to cause advantage to themselves, how does government participation weaken free market commerce assuming its not a loss leading business unit?
Your assumption is not valid, since were the service able to be self-supporting a private company would be doing it. This fact is also pointed out by the other response that admitted that it is not being done already because it is not economically viable.
Additionally, even were the service not a "loss leader" today, it could easily become so without any negative consequences to the local government providing it. The government won't "go out of business" if the internet business loses money. They'll just dip into the general fund to pay the bills. Or, as our local government does, simply increase the taxes or fees levied on all of the residents to cover the increased costs, even if many of those residents never use the service. (Does the publicy-funded bus system need more money? Increase the "bus service fee" on the water bill!)
And finally, because the government will be running the business ostensibly for no profit, any for-profit company providing exactly the same service cannot survive if they charge the same amount. They are at an unfair disadvantage because their prices must be higher. Either higher prices or less service -- why would someone buy from them when the gov'mint will do it for less money? And customers who do buy privately will not be part of the customer base for the government system, thus increasing the percentage of fixed costs that have to be passed on to the taxpayers.
You ask a lot of questions about why we don't get rid of government this or government that. Why don't we just have government do everything we need and undercut every private company? Is there a reason why government isn't the provider of all goods and services in a free society?
Uhhh, yeah, the idea behind small government is not expanding government to provide every little thing the people might want to have, like broadband internet, especially when it can be provided by a commercial operation.
It is perfectly consistent to object to expanding local governments to compete with private enterprise, which by those who want larger governments (and higher taxes to pay for them) will be branded as "being in the corporate pockets." Anything that supports private enterprise is "in the corporate pockets", so that epithet isn't as negative as some people try to make it sound.
The correct answer to "lets make another government agency to do X" is "if enough people want X, then create a company to provide it." If there were enough people in this community that want gigabit broadband to make it viable, some company would do it. That way the people who want it will pay, and those who do not won't have to.
Of course, a company would have to pump in the cash to create the infrastructure, and that cash would come only from customers, while a government-created infrastructure would be built using tax money. That's one reason why it is unfair for government to try competing against private companies. And unfair competition includes applying laxer standards for the newcomer than are being applied to the incumbent. Like fewer restrictions and expectations when issuing a franchise.
Slashdot Mirror
Not true if one utilizes end to end encryption (pgp/gpg, s/mime, etc).
Using gmail, one cannot encrypt the header. This includes the source and destination addresses, as well as the trace information.
One can tell a lot from a traffic analysis, even if you can't read the specific words in a messages.
If the ISP or email provider host the domain that your email is at, is it really that much of a problem?
When that "ISP" is in the business of indexing content and selling data to third parties, I think it is reasonable to believe there is a problem.
As for "a full page notice", just how will this be sent, and just how is Google intercepting web browsing going to a non-Google site? Why, they'll have to insert a redirect through their servers into any links embedded in your email. They'll have to modify the content of your email messages to do that. You can't intercept a web request to "a.bad.site.com" in an email unless the link is modified to come back through google.com first. All my browser knows is that it is a link in a web page, not that it is a special gmail web page with email on it.
I'm not trying to be insulting, I just didn't see any of that information in your post..
Yes, you are trying to be insulting, and you would have assumed I contacted Amazon because I wouldn't just keep the phone and be out the $450 had you not been.
My personal experience has been pretty good customer service from Amazon,
Customer service from Amazon is fine. I didn't say otherwise. (Well, except for the problem of them promising "second day delivery" as part of Prime membership and then stuff not arriving until day three or four -- because it's "by 8PM" delivery to a commercial address, and they include "arrived at the local post office by 8PM" when it's a USPS delivery). The phone went back the same day it got here and Amazon has issued credit.
It's their failure to dump bad vendors that is the issue. A vendor who I found later had many similar complaints. A vendor who is busy trying to bypass the Amazon sales process by instructing unhappy customers to not use the Amazon return process. If Amazon allows this kind of vendor to continue, why would anyone imagine that they'd care if Comcast gets poor ratings?
Complete strawman. I never said you could get a taxrate everybody is happy with or full agreement on which services are essential
Yes, that was your claim. You don't understand that is what you claimed because you think the US tax system is a simple process of economic theory.
It isn't. The US tax system has been primarily a social tool for the last umpteen years. Tax breaks for buying electric cars or installing solar systems, or mortgage deductions, or thousand of other things. They're all social engineering, not pure economic theory applied to a human population.
Given that surprise revelation, you can now see that the system is not a zero sum game consisting only of equations writ on chalkboards, it has everything to do with who thinks what levels of maintenance and services are necessary. Your "perfectly possible" solution is quite impossible to achieve in reality.
Do you not realize how much of the load those people are already carrying?
Almost nothing. With all the loopholes they can take care off - very often it's *actually* nothing.
What absolute malarky. The top 1% of income tax filers in 2013 paid more than 37% of the total income tax. When you're talking about who is paying their fair share, this information certainly is relevant. And it shows that the top earners certainly are not paying nothing.
What matters is what percentage of their own income they pay -
And that rate is highly progressive. with the top earners paying increasing marginal rates as they make more. The top federal tax bracket is almost 40%. Someone making $500000 in taxable income pays almost 31% of their income in federal taxes, and they pay 40% of every dollar over that amount in taxes. That's just federal. Someone making $50,000 pays just 17%. So ten times the amount of money being taxed, twice the rate, that makes it 20 times as much in real money. So yeah, they're paying a higher percentage of their income in tax as well as paying a disproportionate amount of the total taxes overall. If that's truly all that matters, then good, the problem is solved.
Because this appears to be a story of "I bought through Amazon, had an issue with a vendor, and never contacted Amazon...
Oh, for heaven's sake. Of course I contacted Amazon. I did the return through them. Did you imagine that I was going to just keep the stolen phone and not get my money back? I told them what was going on. And their response? Nothing.
How can I know what Amazon calls that unless I told them about it? Stop being insulting.
It's perfectly possible to find that balance.
No, actually, it is not. What is "just right" or "too low" for you, because you aren't paying it, or because you just don't think you deserve to make that much money, will be "too much" for others who do pay it, or who do think they earn their wages. Or the debate will be over how much maintenance a bridge needs. Does it need to be kept in like-new shape forever, with new paint every year, or can we allow it to deteriorate a bit from new while still being safe?
And the big one, of course, is "broadband" a necessary infrastructure item that government must provide and be at least 100 Mbps to be of any value, or is 5 Mbps good enough for most people, or should it be a personal decision if paying for broadband is worth it? You will NEVER get a "perfectly possible" answer to that.
Higher taxes only equals economic decline if they are excessive, and excessive nearly 50 times what the wealthy in America pay on average,
Oh my God. You think that it is excessive only when taxes go up to FIFTY TIMES what the rich are already paying? Do you not realize how much of the load those people are already carrying? Look at the tax numbers and you'll see that the top few percent pay a hugely disproportionate amount of the total. Fifty times?
Slashdot, will you FIX whatever it is that keeps logging me out when I click "preview"? It's fucking annoying. And now it is logging me out when I "submit", which prevents me from posting. Broken.
How long will Comcast be willing to suffer the terrible ratings that Amazon customers will inevitably give to Xfinity signup? Hundreds of thousands of one star ratings and incendiary customer complaints?
Why would they care? You don't think Amazon will do anything, do you?
I just bought a new, unlocked cell phone through Amazon, and the first vendor sent me a refurb, test unit phone that still had the manufacturer usage collection software installed on it -- and it could not be turned off because it was a test unit belonging to the manufacturer.
The vendor told me to send the phone back to them at their address. At my expense. Without telling Amazon. And hope I got my money back.
I'd call that fraud. Amazon calls that "ho hum".
So what if it's hypocritical. It's also correct.
For some of them, perhaps. They don't have the right to speak this way for others.
and it will be good for the economy, not bad.
Yes, it has been a long proven fact that we can tax ourselves into a thriving economy.
So, all these guys are saying is that when they're forced to help pay for it along with everybody else, they won't mind it.
No, that isn't all they said.
And they think you shouldn't mind it, either -
That's where their right to free speech ends. They don't get to speak for me.
It is not fundamentally hypocritical to follow the rules as they exist and simultaneously advocate that the rules be changed.
It is fundamentally hypocritical to follow the rules to avoid paying taxes, and then say that they, and everyone else like them, are not paying enough.
It's like calling someone a hypocrite if they advocate for pot legalization, but don't smoke up.
Nope. It's like calling for the criminalization of pot because it is bad for everyone yet continuing to smoke themselves. Or calling for higher taxes on cigarette users because it is bad for everyone and continuing to smoke.
It would not be hypocritical for a 1%er to say that he thinks his taxes are too low and to voluntarily pay more. It would be ethically neutral for him to say his taxes are too low and take no actions that would lower them.
It is hypocritical for him to say his taxes are too low and then take all possible means to reduce his own payments. And outrageously hypocritical for him to say his taxes, and the taxes of everyone like him, are too low and ought to be increased, while he is actively using tax reduction methods.
I'm fascinated to hear that the 1% of income earners in NY state consists of just over 40 people. And they are just millionaires, not billionaires.
... force Uber to comply with the same laws and regulations as taxis, which is what Uber is.
I agree, and this announcement is significant because it signals that Uber is abandoning the claim that their drivers are just contractors. They are not only admitting that their drivers are employees but that they are also going to be providing the cars. This puts them in exactly the same status as taxis, except they're still trying to avoid the laws that cover taxi service.
and questions about liability
In this case, there would be no question as to the liability. Not only would the manufacturer be sued, so would Uber. There would be no innocent party (driver/owner) who was depending on the over-hyped hyper-reliability of autonomous vehicles.
Where did you get the idea that this was a negatively charged article?
The use of the word "overkill" is a dead giveaway.
This is no more "overkill" than the repeated letters Comcast sent me telling me I needed to upgrade my cable modem to "take advantage" of faster speeds. I think they said that in billing inserts, too, but they sent me at least a half a dozen letters over a six month period with that information.
Of course I haven't upgraded my modem and nothing has stopped working, so we see how well that push campaign worked.
Again, you're assuming that they can't be commercial successes on their own.
That's a pretty much demonstrated fact. Were such systems to be commercially viable, someone would be doing them. Even if it were just the incumbents. But we must have government do it because nobody else will. There's a pretty telling bit of evidence about the commercial viability of such systems.
Also, consider what AT&T and Comcast are doing. You're implying that they're competing against AT&T & Comcast by running their own 'gigabit service'. This implies that the commercial companies have gigabit service
No, that implies that AT&T and Comcast have internet service which customers will abandon when the government offers them cheap gigabit service. If you doubt that is a fact, then there is little hope of this discussion being productive. They may change providers because of the technical advantages, or they may change just to give the finger to the big companies they hate, but they are the intended customers for any government gigabit service.
Here's the truths: if gigabit internet is such a critical service to so many people, someone would be selling it to them. If gigabit service is so critical to a specific customer and nobody exists to sell it to them, they'll be buying the next best thing. That would be broadband from an incumbent.
This is a part of the reason people are pissed at them.
This is alot of the reason people are taught to be pissed at them. They are taught that they need gigabit service, when the fact is that most people can get by with 100Mbps or even half that. The vast majority of residential service, for example, wouldn't consume 100Mbps on their best days. It doesn't take even 100Mbps to do email and stream video or surf the web. But gigabit is a handy hook to hang your hatred of the megacorporate incumbent providers on. We hates the nasty Comcasts because we think they overcharge and they don't have good customer service and they encrypt all their channels and they cooks their fishes. And now we can hate them because they don't have cheap gigabit service. It's not a true need (for most people), it's just a prop.
Hmm... You are aware that there are over 5,000 'local governments', right?
I am as aware that there are a huge number of local governments as are the people who make the claims that they are all being bought off by Comcast or AT&T or TW or whichever cable company they've given the sweetheart exclusive monopolies to, yes. You should be asking them, since I'm just parroting the claims about the inept and fraudulent backgrounds of any local government that has ever given a franchise to a cable company.
You cannot have it both ways. You cannot claim that the local government is corrupt for allowing Comcast into town in the first place, and then claim you trust them to be honest in their intent of creating municipal broadband to compete with Comcast.
I could run for local office and have a decent chance of making it...
And then you would becomes just another one of the greedy corrupt bastards who is kissing the feet of Comcast or AT&T because Comcast or AT&T has been granted a franchise to rape the local residents with overpriced and underperforming service. You'd like to think that you can avoid those claims by being special and honest an different, but you'll be just another one of "them" to those who know that it takes corruption to create a cable franchise.
Define "sucking up all the money from Comcast".
Accepting the bribes from the company seeking the franchise, whether that's actual money or perks or whatever. It isn't always money. But you'd be better off asking the people who regularly make the claims that such corruption exist. They'd have the answer to what they mean by that.
Define how a government s
As for the rest, the actual issue is that the market doesn't really support entry unless you do have that exclusive.
Then explain the existence of cable systems in so many places where there is no exclusive franchise. You cannot. You refuse to point to one exclusive franchisee, despite claiming that you know so many that are.
The truth is that the market doesn't support multiple players in a fixed boundary market system like cable. The repeated claim is that Internet access is such an integral part of life, and yet you can't get anywhere close to 100% saturation in a market, and there simply aren't enough people who want the gigabit version of the Internet that it is a viable market for the incumbents to serve.
That's the cause for the defacto monopoly, not your fictional exclusive franchise system (which even you admit is against the law). And when government decides to become a player, they're unfairly competing against the incumbents who are already trying to get by with the limited market they have.
Were the government gigabit systems intended to serve an entirely different set of customers, that would be one thing. But they aren't. They're intended to draw away the existing customers from the existing broadband systems. And they're intended to do it cheaper because they can avoid some of the fixed costs the incumbents cannot avoid, like being profitable (or even breaking even). That's why it is unfair competition, and we have laws against such things when a private company tries to do it (dumping, for example). But we (for a very limited set of "we") don't care if the government acts that way, and we (for a very limited set of "we" again) trust the government to do just what it promised and nothing more and nothing less when it comes to this.
Yes, isn't it wonderful when the government does for us the things we would have paid more for, because it saves us money.
As for your ad hominem regarding tinfoil and moon cheese, you are demonstrating your debate style very well, thank you.
Okay, fine. I'll broaden my scope: Competition is good. Companies are not guaranteed a profit, are not to be granted a guarantee that they will break even. Survival of the fittest.
Yes, and the "fittest" does not include a taxpayer subsidized, non-profit government department trying to take customers away from existing companies. If the government didn't have the taxpayer funds to prop them up, they wouldn't succeed, and so they cannot be "the fittest" in any sense of the word.
It's also a matter of fairness, not just fitness.
I did specify a vote, remember?
And I already discussed the numbers when it comes to most bond measure votes. Twelve percent of the voters are "voluntary", which makes 82% of them involuntary, as will be anyone who moves into the area.
True, but said private companies have to identify target locations, gather funds of their own, be able to expect a reasonable profit, and all that.
Yes, and the fact that none, or at best very few, have done that tells us all that there is no burning need for the service that will pay the costs of providing it. Thus the government has to do it -- and you pointed out I assume it will be at a loss, because of this very reason.
If a private company comes in, provides competition, superior service than the incumbent, then the proposals to set up a municipal system tend to die on the vine.
And we know why they won't come in, and they have even less reason to try when they know the government is competing against them.
You're neglecting other possible sources: Increased fees, borrowing more money(attached to the company, not the government),
We're talking about government provided gigabit broadband. The government (and the taxpayers, all of them) ARE the company. How can you claim that another bond measure would not attach to the government?
selling stock or assets,
How many fire trucks should a city sell off to get the money to pay for gigabit broadband for the relative few who use it?
You think I have 'unlimited trust in government'?
You deliberately left off the modifier in that statement. "To spend tax money the way they promised to." That's a pretty significant limit in the grand picture of things, but it is a trust that is interestingly present when someone wants something "for free" from the government but ubiquitously absent when it comes to trust about things like use of drones or GPS tracking.
Actually they're NOT the same local governments. Some local governments are in the pockets, some are not.
It is the SAME government that was in the pockets of Comcast execs and sucking up all the money from Comcast that is now trying to increase the size of government and fees and taxes by running their own gigabit broadband service. Same one. Had they not been in the pockets of Comcast, Comcast wouldn't be there. At least that's the standard refrain when anyone talks about the corrupt cable monopoly and the fiendish government syncophants who let them rape the residents.
But at least now you admit that they are not exclusive today, and today is when any new competitors would show up. If the markets would support two competitors, then the government doesn't need to be either one of them. If it won't, then the government shouldn't be one in the first place.
Jacksonville, FL.
Thank you for the pointer. In researching the franchise for this city, I find this. It appears that Florida has actually decided to remove cable franchising from the local municipalities and taken it on as a state function. One thing I do note is that there is no statement that the franchises issued by the state of Florida are exclusive, and lacking that provision, they are not.
What is interesting in light of the previous cited law, is this municipal code. It clearly states that the franchise shall be non-exclusive. Most of this code appears to have a 2003 origination date, but a part of it was updated in 2011. Clearly, Jacksonville thinks they still issue franchises. In any case, as of 2003 franchises were, indeed, non-exclusive.
As to "cable broadband", there is nothing in the Jacksonville Municipal Code that I can find regarding issuing franchises for that service, but section 710.124 does require any cable franchisee to provide:
and includes a provision that should the incumbent franchisee fail to provide adequate service the city can require "an additional Franchisee" to do so. If there can be additional Franchisees providing the same service, then the original franchise is clearly non-exclusive.
If you find the reference to the monopoly that the PUC was asked to remove for cable internet, please pass that along. I know of no franchising authority for ISPs, and clearly with the proliferation of them over the years, any such franchise would have to be non-exclusive, were it to exist. Or were you referring to the monopoly that telcos do have as exclusive franchisees and not to Comcast?
The problem is that most of those exclusive agreements were made illegal some time ago,
No, the problem is that most of those exclusive agreements do not exist.
If you actually want to see one, try your local county seat.
Nice try at pushing the problem of citing one example back on me. No, I won't waste time trying to find something I know does not exist. I know the franchise here, and it is one of many non-exclusive ones.
1. The local government isn't "moving into the area". It's already there.
They are moving into a new venture, which makes them a new competitor. The "moving into the area" part of the "dumping" issue is irrelevant. I'm sorry you fixated on that.
Also, in this case the "taxpayer's general fund" is coming out of the investor's pockets,
Involuntary investors.
2. If, like I said, you manage to piss off the locals enough that they willingly vote for a bond issuance to fund the startup of a competing cooperative, that means that you done screwed up(to put it politely)
Most bond measures pass with a plurality that consists of a minority of the voters. Getting one more than half of a 25% turnout means that you only had approval from 12% of the registered voters, and since there are people who are not registered you've got a lot less than 12% of the taxpayers.
That's if there's a bond measure to start with.
And if there are that many pissed off subscribers (not just voters in general), that area is ripe for competition -- from private companies.
and I have no sympathy for you.
And, it appears, no sympathy for any potential private companies that might come in to provide the competition you seek. A government competing with private ventures competes with them all, not just the incumbent. If it is really hard to get a second private company to come compete with the incumbent when the government isn't trying to put the incumbent out of business, imagine how much harder it is when the newcomer would be the third competitor, and the government is trying to put both of you in the dumpster.
3. Most of the time it's not structured to come out of the general fund,
Perhaps at the beginning. But when the costs exceed income, it has to come from somewhere. How many things do local governments fund from the general fund because the special funding isn't enough, or additional taxes are created to fill the gaps? The answer is "a lot". It is a lot easier to draw from the general fund than to run another bond measure to make up the difference. And how many "special funds" have been diverted into other uses? Also "a lot".
Here's a trivial example from our own local government. We had a section of five lane road in town that the contractor did a crappy job on, and the legal issues went on for a very long time. Finally, to pay for fixing it, since the contractor wasn't going to, we got a new tax applied to our water bill. (A tax on water to pay for a road!) It was earmarked specifically for that fix. That part of road was fixed. Did the tax go away? Of course not. It was money, it was already being collected, so let's use it for other things. I don't expect it will ever go away. And because the city realized how easy it was to add taxes to the water bill, we now have taxes on the water bill to pay for sidewalk repairs and tree trimming and free bus service.
It's amazing to see the dichotomy between those who have absolutely zero trust in government, and those who have unlimited trust in government to spend tax money the way they promised to. It's almost like "I don't trust the government to not do what I don't like, but I trust them to do what I want them to." And when you consider that these are the same local governments who have allegedly been bought off and giving megacorporate cable companies dejure monopolies, to suddenly trust them with a bottomless bucket of money to do the same thing ... it boggles the mind.
Practically every cable TV operation has or had an exclusive franchise.
You are one of the people I've repeatedly asked to provide a specific link to one such exclusive franchise, but you have yet to do so. I've googled many times and not found one. No, a scad of people saying that "X has an exclusive franchise" means nothing unless there is actually an exclusive franchise in place. Finding references to you repeating "every cable company has one" doesn't prove they actually are. Do you have a link to an actual franchise ordinance that is exclusive?
I have never seen an area that actually had a choice of cable provider.
You repeatedly refuse to understand the difference between a government-granted monopoly (an exclusive franchise) and an economic monopoly. I've never said you would see any areas with multiple cable companies, but I've explained several times that the reason is not due to an exclusive franchise. In fact, I think I've explained yet again the economic cause elsewhere in this discussion.
I have heard of a few rare places where there was no mandated exclusivity, but there was still no competition,
Every city I've lived in or researched the franchise ordinance for has been non-exclusive. The rarity of such is "not very". It's pretty easy to understand why. Small governments love to copy what other people have done instead of paying lawyers to come up with something new and original, and the templates used have been non-exclusive.
even in border areas where the provider's cables were equidistant from a home.
Sigh. Franchises are granted on a geographic area, and the "distance from a home" is not relevant. No, unless there is a franchise agreement that allows the company to provide service to an area, they cannot. Even if they are closer to a certain home than the other company. That does not change the non-exclusive franchise into a dejure monopoly. There could be fifty franchisees on the other side of the border and just one on this side, and still those fifty could not provide service.
access to utility poles and a sweetheart monopoly franchise deal while building out.
Access to utility poles comes with a franchise and associated franchise fees. And in more than thirty years of experience with cable franchises, I've yet to see an exclusive franchise (a "sweetheart monopoly"), and despite repeated requests for a link to any, nobody has been able to show me one. Every time someone has claimed a certain municipality has given their cable company a monopoly, when I track down the franchise ordinance it has been non-exclusive.
What "non-exclusive" means is that if you want to follow the same rules, you can get one, too. Nobody does because of the economics involved. It is hard to get a return on investment when you have to split a fixed customer base, especially when the franchise rules often include a mandate to provide service to areas that are not profitable to start with. Being a government doesn't change the underlying economic truths, but it does allow for mitigation through large-scale fees -- called taxes -- and exemptions from things like paying franchise fees or serving the really unprofitable areas. And, of course, no requirement to ever show a profit, which is a cost that a private company has the government gets to bypass.
It's one thing to drive a competitor bankrupt via being better at it. It's quite another to use regulations to ban competition at all.
And what is it when a government can drive a private company bankrupt by cutting prices for equivalent service, because the government has the taxpayer's general fund to absorb any temporary (or long term) losses and no need to make a profit to pay back the investors?
In business-land, large companies who move into an area and drive their competition out of business by charging below cost are guilty of dumping. Should government be allowed to that?
It can also wreak havoc for people or businesses that operate in multiple places in a single state,
Oregon just passed a higher minimum wage law that is different depending on where you are in the state. This is already raising the question of what a state university that has employees spread out around the state will have to do. Does everyone doing the same job at today's minimum wage get paid the same new minimum wage (the highest one) no matter where they live, or can they have different wages? How will the unions respond to that?
And then, how do the differing minimums apply to any proportional raises given to people who were making above minimum?
But, they won't give control over to the even smaller local governments,
Of course they've given control over to the local governments. Local governments are the ones who create the franchise rules they expect private companies to live by. What local governments aren't being allowed to do is create rules for private companies that they themselves can simply ignore to the detriment of the companies.
Local governments should have the right to compete with overpriced ISPs.
Why? Shouldn't the right to compete belong to a company that isn't overpriced, instead of shutting out all other competition by running the service with taxpayer dollars? And why is there some limit to just competing with "overpriced ISPs?" Extending your claim further, shouldn't local governments be competing with overpriced restaurants, plumbers, lawyers, doctors, insurance companies, auto mechanics, car dealers, florists, landscapers, house painters, television repairmen, hotels, grocery stores, ... Why shouldn't we just say 'give everything you have to the government', and the government will give you what you need in return? Is that the society you want? Oh, before you answer, remember that it won't be your decision about what you need, it will be the government that decides.
To be fair, a large portion of a company's telco infrastructure was originally given to them through tax dollars,
Comcast was not a telco when it built out the cable infrastructure.
Plus as 'public utilities', these services are used universally by society, so if its paid for by government or companies, its essentially all taxpayers that are paying for it.
If I am not a Comcast customer I am not paying Comcast anything. In fact, the cash flow is the opposite direction since Comcast subscribers are indirectly paying the government for the franchise. If the government competes with Comcast and I am a Comcast customer, then I am paying the government in taxes for them to provide service to others, paying the government for the franchise rights (which the government doesn't pay) and paying Comcast, too.
This is the same situation that has led to the push for school vouchers, so that people who wish to use private schools and not consume the public school resources are not double-charged for the same service.
Speaking of USPS, why does the US have USPS and not shutter that as well and leave it to private enterprise?
Because USPS has, by law, a monopoly on first class mail. No private company can compete. And the government is a large user of USPS for mandatory notices, so service to every individual is a necessity. Much more than gigabit internet is.
We should liquidate the army and make everything private contractors.
There is no reason not to in modern times, other than the ability to operate and enforce enlistment contracts under the UCMJ instead of civil law and courts.
We should liquidate the free-way infrastructure
You know, if cable internet was being provided to everyone who transited an area with no charge, and there were no significant physical limits to the existence of highways, then there would be an argument (and an analogy to public streets) to be made for government provided "free" internet. One cannot run four different freeways going from point A to point B without consuming a huge amount of land; four internet providers can easily co-exist on the public rights-of-way already being used.
Lastly, unless government actively passes laws to cause advantage to themselves, how does government participation weaken free market commerce assuming its not a loss leading business unit?
Your assumption is not valid, since were the service able to be self-supporting a private company would be doing it. This fact is also pointed out by the other response that admitted that it is not being done already because it is not economically viable.
Additionally, even were the service not a "loss leader" today, it could easily become so without any negative consequences to the local government providing it. The government won't "go out of business" if the internet business loses money. They'll just dip into the general fund to pay the bills. Or, as our local government does, simply increase the taxes or fees levied on all of the residents to cover the increased costs, even if many of those residents never use the service. (Does the publicy-funded bus system need more money? Increase the "bus service fee" on the water bill!)
And finally, because the government will be running the business ostensibly for no profit, any for-profit company providing exactly the same service cannot survive if they charge the same amount. They are at an unfair disadvantage because their prices must be higher. Either higher prices or less service -- why would someone buy from them when the gov'mint will do it for less money? And customers who do buy privately will not be part of the customer base for the government system, thus increasing the percentage of fixed costs that have to be passed on to the taxpayers.
You ask a lot of questions about why we don't get rid of government this or government that. Why don't we just have government do everything we need and undercut every private company? Is there a reason why government isn't the provider of all goods and services in a free society?
It is perfectly consistent to object to expanding local governments to compete with private enterprise, which by those who want larger governments (and higher taxes to pay for them) will be branded as "being in the corporate pockets." Anything that supports private enterprise is "in the corporate pockets", so that epithet isn't as negative as some people try to make it sound.
The correct answer to "lets make another government agency to do X" is "if enough people want X, then create a company to provide it." If there were enough people in this community that want gigabit broadband to make it viable, some company would do it. That way the people who want it will pay, and those who do not won't have to.
Of course, a company would have to pump in the cash to create the infrastructure, and that cash would come only from customers, while a government-created infrastructure would be built using tax money. That's one reason why it is unfair for government to try competing against private companies. And unfair competition includes applying laxer standards for the newcomer than are being applied to the incumbent. Like fewer restrictions and expectations when issuing a franchise.