And the law should be used to enforce against people who operate a device. Not because the device exists.
It is much more efficient to enforce laws against illegal devices on the limited number of manufacturers and not on the billions of potential users.
I.e., if a device cannot legally be used, then stop before it is sold when you can get thousands of them at one time, instead of doing it one by one after tracking down the users.
Suppose the manufacturer in this case was a Chinese company making a cheap radio that emitted signals that interfered with the radio stations you wanted to listen to? Would you rather the FCC stop the manufacturer from making and selling such a piece of interfering garbage, or would it be better for you to have to call the FCC to have someone come out to track down the source and deal with it then? And then you have to call them again in a week because another neighbor bought the same piece of crap radio. And then again a week later...
Yes, I think you're right. Let the market be flooded with crap that creates interference for you all day, every day, and you can deal with tracking it down one by one by one...
A movie theatre or restaurant should have the right to block all cell phone signals on their premise with proper testing
to make sure it stays within it's property lines and with proper signs stating that they do so.
Why? What makes you think that a free-for-all radio frequency spectrum is in anyone's best interest?
I'm guessing from your selfish attitude that you've never been an emergency services volunteer who donates a large amount of his free time to training how to save the lives of other people and might want to be able to go to a movie or a restaurant every so often and not be unable to get the notification that someone needs help. That's just one kind of person who needs to have cell service while in a movie theater or restaurant.
I could think of plenty of other "fair use" reasons that buying and using a cell jammer should be legal.
I doubt it. You can think of reasons why you think you are important enough that nobody should ever interfere with your personal pleasure, but that attitude ignores the fact that other people have the same rights. You cannot produce one argument that shows that my cell phone in my pocket at a restaurant interferes with you in any way, shape or form, yet you'd happily jam it so I can't get messages or calls just because you want to.
I think the best use of a jammer would have been to block the call to your Mom's ob/gyn when she went into a difficult labor with you. Why don't you go upstairs and ask her?
Gas tax increases are a good pricing signal to increase fuel efficiency (better than CAFE standards or cash for clunkers).
There are two philosophies behind taxation.
One says that taxes are a necessary evil in order to pay for the things that government does. This is what the founding fathers felt. This is the reason for gas taxes in the first place: to pay for roads built by the government.
The other says that taxation is necessary for the reduction of evil, for whatever some group currently defines as evil. You believe that the use of fossil fuels is evil, therefore the taxes should be consistently increased to force a decline in use. This is not what the gas tax was instituted for. Some people think that simple "wealth" is evil, and thus there needs to be a tax to reduce that evil.
If we had started a decade ago today we'd have an extra 50c per gallon incentive to buy a more efficient vehicle and the insolvency of the highway trust fund would be another decade plus in the future.
Some people in both camps are always surprised to learn that taxation is not a zero sum game, despite repeated demonstrations of that effect over the years. Simply doubling a tax does not double revenues from that tax. For example, the states that thought they'd pay for their health care systems by increasing the taxes on cigarettes have learned that increased price per pack has resulted in a decrease in revenue as more people stop smoking. Increasing the gas taxes will cause less use and less tax revenue, so it will be harder to pay for the things the gas tax is intended to pay for. Part of the decrease will be from people who buy electric cars that pay NOTHING for road use. And some of the decrease will be from people who simply stop driving, which makes the idea of a tax credit for the poor people just another way to redistribute the wealth. (Yes, that is exactly what a credit to reimburse someone for paying a regressive tax when they didn't pay that tax to begin with, is.)
Those in the "eliminate evil" camp should realize that "Stop smoking" would be one result, since that was their goal in supporting that tax increase. And yet it is a surprise when revenues go down when fewer people pay such taxes.
The same thing is happening with the gasoline tax. The higher the price of gas, the less of it people buy, and more electric vehicles. The less gas people buy, the less revenue from gas taxes. It is a self-defeating game, and is dishonest to start with. Usurping a tax into a social engineering tax once it is established as a "pay for services" tax is dishonest. "We need a tax to pay for..." "Ok, now you agreed to pay for X, we should increase the tax to convince people to behave the way I want them to..."
The correct response to "highway funding is down because of lower use of gasoline" is not "increase the tax", it is "find a way to get the other users of the roads etc. to pay for their use." A milage tax on electric vehicles, for example, and a mandatory registration fee for bicycles, perhaps. But to continually increase the costs for a dwindling fraction of the users of a service is not the right answer, nor the fair answer.
US government is generally a republic and not direct democracy.
This would be relevant except for two critical things. 1) We're talking about a local municipality, not the US government. 2) I was replying directly to a comment that said, explicitly, that the rates would be set "by the voters". I pointed out that this does NOT happen with current municipal "utilities", so there is no reason to believe it would happen with municipal-run internet services. Therefore, any argument that relies on this happening is specious.
So, in effect, you have voted for sewer and water rates but you just don't know it.
Please stop trying to lecture me about the representative form of government. I don't know if you're trying to be insulting, but you are. I know how the local government works. That's why I said that the rates have NEVER been set by the voters. That item has never been on a ballot, and additionally, not one candidate in any city election here has ever been elected because of their position on utility rates. For the most part, there is no real vote on our city council people, they almost always run unopposed.
which is why you never vote on it or even vote for a candidate with any kind of public opinion on it.
In other words, you are now admitting that the rates are not set by the voters in any way. Thanks for the lecture on what I already knew.
Roads are a pretty decent analogy --
Not really. Every installation of a road requires acquisition of new rights of way, installing another cable on an existing right of way does not. Roads (excepting toll roads) have no "customers" paying for the use. (No, taxes are not a use fee, they are a tax.) They are, in fact, a perfect example of a government service that needs no customers at all because it will be supported by tax dollars. And not every ISP needs a "road" to provide their service to start with.
The government does provide some basic services like mass transit and the mail, but these are clearly not squelching any private competition in the delivery or transport industries.
Private companies are, by law, prohibited from handling standard first class mail unless the USPS postage is paid in addition to the fees of the carrier. That is a clear and unambiguous "squelching" of private mail carriers. Legally, FedEx cannot charge less than the USPS for the same letter service, therefore the US Government has guaranteed that their rates will be lower.
The existing express services have grown because of services outside the standard USPS product. FedEx is "express" because that's their niche. UPS is "parcel" because that's their niche. (Yes, I know they are almost indistinguishable from each other -- and DHL and others -- but I'm using their names as the demonstration of why they aren't just "postal service".) Using "mail" as proof that a government monopoly doesn't limit private company competition is a bit odd, since it does, truly prohibit competition in the area in which there is a dejure monopoly. And it proves that a private company can never compete on price with the government. You would never expect to take a letter into a FedEx office and expect them to deliver it anywhere for just 47 cents. Or 49 cents. Or whatever current first class postage is. The cheapest rate for 0.05 pound going halfway across the US is the four business day rate of $15. USPS will do that for 1/30th the price.
Now, a government-run internet service may get competition from niche providers, but they will have to charge more (their costs are covered only by customers while the government-run service cost overruns are taxpayer covered) and they will have to find a niche that people will pay extra for and not just demand that the government system do. What would those niches be? Well, I can't think of any, because I've see
You appear to be talking about the HDHomeRun Prime, which has coax and CableCARD in and Ethernet out. It'll work with a "smart TV", not a dumb TV.
You're right. I had to add a small PC to run the TV in my living room. Better than a smart TV because it's more expandable and does more than the "smart TV" it is connected to. I tried to get the "smart TV" to talk to the HomeRun box but could never figure out how.
In exchange, though, I can watch HD on any computer in the house. And it is a consumer cable device which is what you were bemoaning the lack of.
Sorry, but physical provision of wired services is a natural monopoly.
"ISP" isn't necessarily a wired service, and gosh if the presence of multiple wires on the poles outside my house don't prove you wrong anyway. It's a COSTLY service that creates an economic barrier to entry, but Google in Portland is proving that there is still enough incentive for some to try. The fact that Time Warner never considered it worth the expense to try to overbuild a Comcast system doesn't mean they were legally prevented from trying or that there was a "natural" limitation to them doing so, other than the natural limitation that there are only so many customers that live in an area and if splitting them with another company means you can't make a profit, you don't try splitting them.
I'd really rather not have ANY monopolies, but that's just not practical.
And yet, in every place I've ever been, it has been quite practical for there to be no monopoly on internet service. I can come up with four different ISPs in this town alone without even having to look in the phone book to see what else is there. And there used to be more but some of the smaller ones merged.
And private-run internet doesn't need to provide internet,
Uhh, yeah, it kinda does. Otherwise it would have no subscribers and would not be profitable, and another company would come in and provide the service and get all the customers. It may not have to provide internet service to the standards YOU would like, but that's a different thing. You're not the only customer.
If they aren't providing internet according to their franchise agreement, then when the franchise is renewed it should be given to someone else who will.
That is called a "monopoly" or an "oligopoly" and it is what a surprising number of us live under.
It is what a surprising number of people THINK they live under but really don't. There may be a defacto monopoly only because there is little competition, but not a dejure one that actually keeps competition out. And if there is a dejure monopoly situation then you need to blame your local city or county government that granted that because it isn't a standard operating practice and it's not smart.
I have a feeling there are a lot of people who were surprised as hell to find out that Comcast doesn't have a monopoly in Portland Oregon. Well, that's how things work in every city I've been in. Maybe your city is different and your local government did screw you, I don't know where you live. If they did, then is it really the best solution to let the same government that proved they didn't care about your best interests when it came to Internet become the true dejure monopoly Internet provider for you?
So what you're saying is that we can have a monopoly of greedy corporate bastards,
No, I'm saying nothing of the sort. I favor NO monopoly and NO predatory pricing. I thought that would be clear from what I said.
or we can have a government-run monopoly that charges a price that's regulated by voters.
In my city, we have a government-run monopoly on sewer and water supply. We have not had a public vote on rates ever in the more than twenty years I've lived here. It is ridiculous to assume that any other government-run service will have voter-set prices. Even were they to be voted on, you'd wind up with the situation easily predicted -- the voters who want free stuff will outnumber the fiscally responsible ones who actually pay the bills and there will be NO possibility of competition because you can't sell cheaper than "free".
And out of these two choices, you are selecting the former,
No. I am selecting competition and leaving the taxpayers off the hook.
because boo-hoo, the voters will set the price at cost,
Right. The voters will have no say, and if they do, they'll choose "free". The "cost" will be paid by everyone, even those who want different service or no service at all. If I want internet, I don't think I have a right to demand that my neighbor pay for it. Why do you?
Not bloody likely. States are already busy shutting down competition for the incumbent ISPs.
The article you linked to talked about preventing unfair competition from government-run internet, not all competition. You want to run an ISP where you don't like the service from the existing one? Do it. It will cost you a lot of money and won't be profitable, but that's why there aren't more people doing it now.
Government-run internet doesn't need to be profitable or even have any subscribers -- it will simply spend tax dollars. In the corporate world, that's called "unfair competition" and "predatory pricing".
However, they should be equal across all providers, so to not hit them all with it equally means that you're favoring one over another, and as these agreements typically span 10-15 years, odds are there's one out there that has it.
PEG fees apply to cable TV providers because PEG channels are on the cable TV. Google fiber isn't cable TV, it's Internet. You might have an argument for Internet infrastructure providers to pay a fee to support PEG web services, but that's not part of the existing franchise structure and so would be something new specifically to ding Google (and their customers). If you apply it to Google, then to be fair you'd have to apply it to the internet side of Comcast, too.
As a taxpayer, I'd prefer that the companies who want to make a profit using city resources pay the costs of maintenance and upkeep and installation of those resources. That's what a franchise fee is.
They aren't paying a PEG fee because they aren't a cable TV provider. PEG stands for "public, education, and government" and is what pays for the information channels on the cable that deal with public access, schools, and government.
Since both of those fees are passed directly on to the consumer, it is ludicrous to claim that they are restricting competition. Any company that wants to compete can do so, and the franchise fee is not going to stop them. This kinda proves that, doesn't it? How can a fee that they don't pay (the customer does) and doesn't come out of their profits prevent them from entering the market?
And complaints that this is paying off the pals of the council, huh? It goes into the general fund, not someone's pocket.
No, it will just let you skip an intro course and fill the hours requirement for your major for something a little less dull.
I took enough courses in the community college I went to that I had 3/4 of the bachelor degree credits when I transferred to the big university. They still required me to take two full years of classes, and I wound up taking classes like "African Politics" and "Cobol" just to get the credits. And "Linguistics". Not "less dull".
I'm fascinated by an article that claims that average students aren't getting AP. "Average" and "Advanced" are kinda orthogonal concepts.
The land is already taxed, typically at the local level as a property tax. And that tax is paid REGARDLESS of any offsetting debts. That's the situation now.
Yes, it is. A specific kind of tax on a limited resource which pays for the services provided. A tax on "wealth" would be a generic tax on people that would apply to many who are being frugal and saving their money instead of spending it.
So it's really irrelevant what is being taxed.
That is patently not true. Sales taxes quite often differentiate between what is and is not taxable. That's just one example. And yes, it is unfair to tax people on the money left over from their income after taxing them on their income, which is what a wealth tax amounts to.
Since that's the case, it makes more sense for the very wealthy to ensure that their assets are PRODUCTIVE.
It's already beneficial for them to have productive assets, and having a wealth tax makes it less beneficial. If they have to sell off assets to pay a tax because they have that asset, then they are much better off keeping that in cash so they don't have to sell at a loss when the time comes to pay and the profits won't cover the tax.
It actually accelerates growth,
Taxes never accelerate growth. They are a drain on the economy, funneling money from where people can use it productively and hindering growth and expansion. You can't tax your way out of economic woes.
Yeah. Thanks to Citizens United Cantor was able to outspend Brat 26:1 and keep his seat.
And thanks to CU these folks can spend a lot of money for their political purposes. Corporations don't have rights, unless they're campaigning for the right causes. And data mining for privacy invasion is bad, unless it's done for the right causes.
THIS. Why won't the political class ever touch the idea of a wealth tax?
Because it is a horrible idea that serves only to make those with class envy feel better. "Wealth" isn't just money that is sitting in a box or buried in the back yard, it's money that is actively working in loans to businesses and people, and in running companies and feeding jobs.
When J. Throckmorton Richguy builds a company and is reported with a "wealth" of 100 million dollars he's not got that 100 million dollars sitting around in cash. That 100 million is land and plant and equipment and inventory and other assets like billable sales. If you tax him at 5% of his "wealth", he's got to come up with 5 million in cash to pay it. That's five million he has to pull out of the company somehow. That's five million in growth of the company that doesn't happen that year. If the economy is in a slump and his company isn't profitable, he's still got to come up with that 5 million from somewhere.
If you tax him 5% on his INCOME, that's a completely different matter. But it becomes an issue when you tax him on his income and then on the increase in wealth because you let him keep some of the money he earned. Money he probably spends or puts in the bank or other investments so someone else can use it.
Of course that particular government could be a bit smarter and alter the contract so that Google only provides wholesale fibre to retail ISPs and if they want to provide a separate retail ISP service.
I don't understand your incomplete sentence. "if they want to provide" then what? But it doesn't matter. The government cannot unilaterally change the contract, so if they want something Google doesn't, Google can walk.
less resistance from existing small and medium ISPs
Existing ISPs have very little to say over who else joins the party. The cable/telco people do because they're infrastructure providers who have had to negotiate franchises and expect equal treatment.
and ensures the fibre becomes and remains essential infrastructure.
Except it isn't. Fiber is one of many different kinds of transport for data. It is not, in and of itself, essential.
Just like they've already passed laws in 30 states banning municipal broadband.
This isn't municipal broadband. It is a company following the rules for obtaining a franchise.
It's a demonstration that the "government monopoly" that is allegedly granted by means of a franchise agreement isn't as much of a dejure monopoly as is claimed.
Well, the modern day scope is software-upgradable, so you buy what you need
No, I buy the product as it is shown to me. Saying I only "buy what I need" is like buying a Ferrari and then three months later it will no longer go faster than 30MPH because I "didn't need" all that extra speed for the city driving I was doing.
When a salesman shows me all the great stuff his product will do and tells me the price, I assume, correctly, that when I buy that product at that price it will do all the great stuff he showed me.
The upshot is you'll get a scope that'll function as a scope with the specs you bought
If the student has a bit larger budget, then the Rigol DS1052E or the newer DS1074Z is a really hard to beat value.
Be careful here. I've seen these at hamfests being sold by dealers, and the small print is that when you "buy" the scope that does all these wonderful things for $1499 (or whatever price) you're getting a six month license for the software that does all those wonderful things. One morning not too long after you buy your magic device you will turn it on to do something important and it will tell you that your demo license has expired and you need to send more money to Rigol.
I think that kind of marketing is dishonest and despicable. When someone says "your price for what you are seeing is X", then that's what you should get for X, not a demo system that's going to stop working unless you pay a bundle more.
Here is my problem with that argument. You're making a moral judgment, and certainly not the only possible one.
No, it is not a moral judgement. You currently have no right to vote for representatives in other states and districts. And based on the design of the system, no such right is justified on any grounds.
If you believe that the best system of governance is one where local constituencies vote for representatives who exclusively represent them and then you live with however those votes come out then of course you're going to object to meddling in somebody else's district.
I am talking about the current system in the US. Whether that is the best or not is a moral judgement that you want to make.
Now, you can try to argue that the Constitution doesn't establish a proportional democracy with a national election,
I can not only try to argue that, were I wishing to, it is trivially provable by the fact that the Constitution does not establish a national public election of any kind. The election of state representation is left to the states, and the Presidential election is specified by an electoral college whose members are selected by the states.
The Constitution also doesn't establish a representative democracy where you aren't allowed by law to tamper with elections in other districts.
The US Constitution does not specify how states elect their representation, but the state constitutions do, and the US Constitution does not override them. Keep trying. Maybe someone will change the system so you folks in large populous states can get rid of all the pesky rural folks and do everything the way you want it done. Not today.
I don't really buy the argument that less populous states get disenfranchised in a proportional system. Each man still gets one vote.
So the voters in California get to elect the senators from California, and the senators from Wyoming, and from South Dakota, and Utah and North Dakota, and all the House members from those states, because the 13 million voters in California vastly vastly vastly outnumber the voters in those states. That's not disenfranchisement? Right.
Californians, by themselves, were 10% of the total votes cast in 2012. Add 8.5 mil for Florida, 5 mil for Illinois, 7 mil for NY, 5.5 mil for OH, 3.5 for NJ, 4.8 for MI, and you've got a very large number of voters who could all vote for people who will do what THEY want instead of doing what the people in the states they allegedly represent want. And this is what you'd call a better system?
knowing the crime rate in my area, I would prefer to accept the risk of criminal intrusion than the violation of privacy.
The police weren't interested in "criminal intrusion", they were doing what is called a welfare check. Your neighbor saw something odd, something you'd never do normally, and called the cops to come check on you.
There are stories every so often of a reclusive person being found dead, one I recall was after six months, in their house. They die and nobody notices that there isn't any activity. You could have opened the door, gone back inside to get something you forgot, and then had a stroke.
Suppose a person in such a situation posted a sign on the door from the garage to the house that said, "Notice By Owner: I do not consent to any searches of these premises for any reason."
Exigent circumstances, and they might not be able to use anything they find in court against you, but that wasn't why they were there in the first place.
If you were going to attempt to solve the issue,
Why is it an issue that your neighbors care enough about you to call the cops when they see something highly unusual taking place and want someone to check on your welfare?
The US agricultural economy -- and a lot of the service economy -- is built on a steady influx of sub-minimum-wage labor, and only survives because of undocumented immigrants. Take it away, and large swaths of the economy collapse.
A better argument against the minimum wage laws would be hard to come up with. Wouldn't it be nice if we allowed legal residents the choice of working at a job paying what the job is worth instead of relying on people here illegally to do it? And if large swaths (in this case, anything that deals with food) of the economy would collapse if minimum wage laws were enforced, that's a condemnation of minimum wage laws if ever there was one.
Just because I live in California does not mean that I do not have a real and valid interest on who the people of Utah send to DC.
The question really isn't do you care what they do, the question is do you have any right to help them select the people that they send to congress to represent THEIR interests. To that, that answer is a clear and resounding NO, you do not.
If you believe you do, then you should realize that your system would allow every voter in the country to vote on every senate and house race, and the Senate would become a body representing only the most populous areas of the country and not every state as it was intended to do. And the House would be the same. The voters in less populous states would effectively be disenfranchised. That's great if you live in and have the same views as the majority of people in the larger states.
Thinking otherwise is simplistic and wrong.
The simplistic and wrong thinking is to believe that because the people elected to represent others can vote on matters that impact your life that you should get to vote on those representatives, too. They represent other people; you get to elect the ones who represent you. Having one national election for the Senate and House would result in a stultifying homogeneity of ideas in a place that should have a plethora of views available.
And before you say "but but but the Koch brothers...", you need to realize the difference between campaign contributions and actual voting. As human beings, the Koch brothers have the same free speech rights that you do, and if you feel that you have the right to comment on elections in other parts of the country, then they have those rights, too. What they (and you) do not have the right to do is vote in other states or districts, and voting is how people get elected.
The idea of "open primaries" is based in large part on this demonstrated lack of understanding of this "fairness", and in large part on the dishonesty of wanting to "help" the other political party select a "better" candidate. The truth of the latter is that such voters are either trying to select a candidate for the other party who is "in name only" and is really one of their own philosophically, or select an unelectable candidate so their party's offering will have no real opposition. Both are dishonest and both are why open primaries should be abolished.
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And the law should be used to enforce against people who operate a device. Not because the device exists.
It is much more efficient to enforce laws against illegal devices on the limited number of manufacturers and not on the billions of potential users.
I.e., if a device cannot legally be used, then stop before it is sold when you can get thousands of them at one time, instead of doing it one by one after tracking down the users.
Suppose the manufacturer in this case was a Chinese company making a cheap radio that emitted signals that interfered with the radio stations you wanted to listen to? Would you rather the FCC stop the manufacturer from making and selling such a piece of interfering garbage, or would it be better for you to have to call the FCC to have someone come out to track down the source and deal with it then? And then you have to call them again in a week because another neighbor bought the same piece of crap radio. And then again a week later...
Yes, I think you're right. Let the market be flooded with crap that creates interference for you all day, every day, and you can deal with tracking it down one by one by one ...
A movie theatre or restaurant should have the right to block all cell phone signals on their premise with proper testing to make sure it stays within it's property lines and with proper signs stating that they do so.
Why? What makes you think that a free-for-all radio frequency spectrum is in anyone's best interest?
I'm guessing from your selfish attitude that you've never been an emergency services volunteer who donates a large amount of his free time to training how to save the lives of other people and might want to be able to go to a movie or a restaurant every so often and not be unable to get the notification that someone needs help. That's just one kind of person who needs to have cell service while in a movie theater or restaurant.
I could think of plenty of other "fair use" reasons that buying and using a cell jammer should be legal.
I doubt it. You can think of reasons why you think you are important enough that nobody should ever interfere with your personal pleasure, but that attitude ignores the fact that other people have the same rights. You cannot produce one argument that shows that my cell phone in my pocket at a restaurant interferes with you in any way, shape or form, yet you'd happily jam it so I can't get messages or calls just because you want to.
I think the best use of a jammer would have been to block the call to your Mom's ob/gyn when she went into a difficult labor with you. Why don't you go upstairs and ask her?
Gas tax increases are a good pricing signal to increase fuel efficiency (better than CAFE standards or cash for clunkers).
There are two philosophies behind taxation.
One says that taxes are a necessary evil in order to pay for the things that government does. This is what the founding fathers felt. This is the reason for gas taxes in the first place: to pay for roads built by the government.
The other says that taxation is necessary for the reduction of evil, for whatever some group currently defines as evil. You believe that the use of fossil fuels is evil, therefore the taxes should be consistently increased to force a decline in use. This is not what the gas tax was instituted for. Some people think that simple "wealth" is evil, and thus there needs to be a tax to reduce that evil.
If we had started a decade ago today we'd have an extra 50c per gallon incentive to buy a more efficient vehicle and the insolvency of the highway trust fund would be another decade plus in the future.
Some people in both camps are always surprised to learn that taxation is not a zero sum game, despite repeated demonstrations of that effect over the years. Simply doubling a tax does not double revenues from that tax. For example, the states that thought they'd pay for their health care systems by increasing the taxes on cigarettes have learned that increased price per pack has resulted in a decrease in revenue as more people stop smoking. Increasing the gas taxes will cause less use and less tax revenue, so it will be harder to pay for the things the gas tax is intended to pay for. Part of the decrease will be from people who buy electric cars that pay NOTHING for road use. And some of the decrease will be from people who simply stop driving, which makes the idea of a tax credit for the poor people just another way to redistribute the wealth. (Yes, that is exactly what a credit to reimburse someone for paying a regressive tax when they didn't pay that tax to begin with, is.)
Those in the "eliminate evil" camp should realize that "Stop smoking" would be one result, since that was their goal in supporting that tax increase. And yet it is a surprise when revenues go down when fewer people pay such taxes.
The same thing is happening with the gasoline tax. The higher the price of gas, the less of it people buy, and more electric vehicles. The less gas people buy, the less revenue from gas taxes. It is a self-defeating game, and is dishonest to start with. Usurping a tax into a social engineering tax once it is established as a "pay for services" tax is dishonest. "We need a tax to pay for ..." "Ok, now you agreed to pay for X, we should increase the tax to convince people to behave the way I want them to..."
The correct response to "highway funding is down because of lower use of gasoline" is not "increase the tax", it is "find a way to get the other users of the roads etc. to pay for their use." A milage tax on electric vehicles, for example, and a mandatory registration fee for bicycles, perhaps. But to continually increase the costs for a dwindling fraction of the users of a service is not the right answer, nor the fair answer.
US government is generally a republic and not direct democracy.
This would be relevant except for two critical things. 1) We're talking about a local municipality, not the US government. 2) I was replying directly to a comment that said, explicitly, that the rates would be set "by the voters". I pointed out that this does NOT happen with current municipal "utilities", so there is no reason to believe it would happen with municipal-run internet services. Therefore, any argument that relies on this happening is specious.
So, in effect, you have voted for sewer and water rates but you just don't know it.
Please stop trying to lecture me about the representative form of government. I don't know if you're trying to be insulting, but you are. I know how the local government works. That's why I said that the rates have NEVER been set by the voters. That item has never been on a ballot, and additionally, not one candidate in any city election here has ever been elected because of their position on utility rates. For the most part, there is no real vote on our city council people, they almost always run unopposed.
which is why you never vote on it or even vote for a candidate with any kind of public opinion on it.
In other words, you are now admitting that the rates are not set by the voters in any way. Thanks for the lecture on what I already knew.
Roads are a pretty decent analogy --
Not really. Every installation of a road requires acquisition of new rights of way, installing another cable on an existing right of way does not. Roads (excepting toll roads) have no "customers" paying for the use. (No, taxes are not a use fee, they are a tax.) They are, in fact, a perfect example of a government service that needs no customers at all because it will be supported by tax dollars. And not every ISP needs a "road" to provide their service to start with.
The government does provide some basic services like mass transit and the mail, but these are clearly not squelching any private competition in the delivery or transport industries.
Private companies are, by law, prohibited from handling standard first class mail unless the USPS postage is paid in addition to the fees of the carrier. That is a clear and unambiguous "squelching" of private mail carriers. Legally, FedEx cannot charge less than the USPS for the same letter service, therefore the US Government has guaranteed that their rates will be lower.
The existing express services have grown because of services outside the standard USPS product. FedEx is "express" because that's their niche. UPS is "parcel" because that's their niche. (Yes, I know they are almost indistinguishable from each other -- and DHL and others -- but I'm using their names as the demonstration of why they aren't just "postal service".) Using "mail" as proof that a government monopoly doesn't limit private company competition is a bit odd, since it does, truly prohibit competition in the area in which there is a dejure monopoly. And it proves that a private company can never compete on price with the government. You would never expect to take a letter into a FedEx office and expect them to deliver it anywhere for just 47 cents. Or 49 cents. Or whatever current first class postage is. The cheapest rate for 0.05 pound going halfway across the US is the four business day rate of $15. USPS will do that for 1/30th the price.
Now, a government-run internet service may get competition from niche providers, but they will have to charge more (their costs are covered only by customers while the government-run service cost overruns are taxpayer covered) and they will have to find a niche that people will pay extra for and not just demand that the government system do. What would those niches be? Well, I can't think of any, because I've see
You appear to be talking about the HDHomeRun Prime, which has coax and CableCARD in and Ethernet out. It'll work with a "smart TV", not a dumb TV.
You're right. I had to add a small PC to run the TV in my living room. Better than a smart TV because it's more expandable and does more than the "smart TV" it is connected to. I tried to get the "smart TV" to talk to the HomeRun box but could never figure out how.
In exchange, though, I can watch HD on any computer in the house. And it is a consumer cable device which is what you were bemoaning the lack of.
Sorry, but physical provision of wired services is a natural monopoly.
"ISP" isn't necessarily a wired service, and gosh if the presence of multiple wires on the poles outside my house don't prove you wrong anyway. It's a COSTLY service that creates an economic barrier to entry, but Google in Portland is proving that there is still enough incentive for some to try. The fact that Time Warner never considered it worth the expense to try to overbuild a Comcast system doesn't mean they were legally prevented from trying or that there was a "natural" limitation to them doing so, other than the natural limitation that there are only so many customers that live in an area and if splitting them with another company means you can't make a profit, you don't try splitting them.
I'd really rather not have ANY monopolies, but that's just not practical.
And yet, in every place I've ever been, it has been quite practical for there to be no monopoly on internet service. I can come up with four different ISPs in this town alone without even having to look in the phone book to see what else is there. And there used to be more but some of the smaller ones merged.
And private-run internet doesn't need to provide internet,
Uhh, yeah, it kinda does. Otherwise it would have no subscribers and would not be profitable, and another company would come in and provide the service and get all the customers. It may not have to provide internet service to the standards YOU would like, but that's a different thing. You're not the only customer.
If they aren't providing internet according to their franchise agreement, then when the franchise is renewed it should be given to someone else who will.
That is called a "monopoly" or an "oligopoly" and it is what a surprising number of us live under.
It is what a surprising number of people THINK they live under but really don't. There may be a defacto monopoly only because there is little competition, but not a dejure one that actually keeps competition out. And if there is a dejure monopoly situation then you need to blame your local city or county government that granted that because it isn't a standard operating practice and it's not smart.
I have a feeling there are a lot of people who were surprised as hell to find out that Comcast doesn't have a monopoly in Portland Oregon. Well, that's how things work in every city I've been in. Maybe your city is different and your local government did screw you, I don't know where you live. If they did, then is it really the best solution to let the same government that proved they didn't care about your best interests when it came to Internet become the true dejure monopoly Internet provider for you?
So what you're saying is that we can have a monopoly of greedy corporate bastards,
No, I'm saying nothing of the sort. I favor NO monopoly and NO predatory pricing. I thought that would be clear from what I said.
or we can have a government-run monopoly that charges a price that's regulated by voters.
In my city, we have a government-run monopoly on sewer and water supply. We have not had a public vote on rates ever in the more than twenty years I've lived here. It is ridiculous to assume that any other government-run service will have voter-set prices. Even were they to be voted on, you'd wind up with the situation easily predicted -- the voters who want free stuff will outnumber the fiscally responsible ones who actually pay the bills and there will be NO possibility of competition because you can't sell cheaper than "free".
And out of these two choices, you are selecting the former,
No. I am selecting competition and leaving the taxpayers off the hook.
because boo-hoo, the voters will set the price at cost,
Right. The voters will have no say, and if they do, they'll choose "free". The "cost" will be paid by everyone, even those who want different service or no service at all. If I want internet, I don't think I have a right to demand that my neighbor pay for it. Why do you?
Not bloody likely. States are already busy shutting down competition for the incumbent ISPs.
The article you linked to talked about preventing unfair competition from government-run internet, not all competition. You want to run an ISP where you don't like the service from the existing one? Do it. It will cost you a lot of money and won't be profitable, but that's why there aren't more people doing it now.
Government-run internet doesn't need to be profitable or even have any subscribers -- it will simply spend tax dollars. In the corporate world, that's called "unfair competition" and "predatory pricing".
So why aren't companies making cheap direct-to-consumer cable boxes that have coax and CableCARD in and HDMI out?
You mean like these people?
However, they should be equal across all providers, so to not hit them all with it equally means that you're favoring one over another, and as these agreements typically span 10-15 years, odds are there's one out there that has it.
PEG fees apply to cable TV providers because PEG channels are on the cable TV. Google fiber isn't cable TV, it's Internet. You might have an argument for Internet infrastructure providers to pay a fee to support PEG web services, but that's not part of the existing franchise structure and so would be something new specifically to ding Google (and their customers). If you apply it to Google, then to be fair you'd have to apply it to the internet side of Comcast, too.
They aren't paying a PEG fee because they aren't a cable TV provider. PEG stands for "public, education, and government" and is what pays for the information channels on the cable that deal with public access, schools, and government.
Since both of those fees are passed directly on to the consumer, it is ludicrous to claim that they are restricting competition. Any company that wants to compete can do so, and the franchise fee is not going to stop them. This kinda proves that, doesn't it? How can a fee that they don't pay (the customer does) and doesn't come out of their profits prevent them from entering the market?
And complaints that this is paying off the pals of the council, huh? It goes into the general fund, not someone's pocket.
No, it will just let you skip an intro course and fill the hours requirement for your major for something a little less dull.
I took enough courses in the community college I went to that I had 3/4 of the bachelor degree credits when I transferred to the big university. They still required me to take two full years of classes, and I wound up taking classes like "African Politics" and "Cobol" just to get the credits. And "Linguistics". Not "less dull".
I'm fascinated by an article that claims that average students aren't getting AP. "Average" and "Advanced" are kinda orthogonal concepts.
The land is already taxed, typically at the local level as a property tax. And that tax is paid REGARDLESS of any offsetting debts. That's the situation now.
Yes, it is. A specific kind of tax on a limited resource which pays for the services provided. A tax on "wealth" would be a generic tax on people that would apply to many who are being frugal and saving their money instead of spending it.
So it's really irrelevant what is being taxed.
That is patently not true. Sales taxes quite often differentiate between what is and is not taxable. That's just one example. And yes, it is unfair to tax people on the money left over from their income after taxing them on their income, which is what a wealth tax amounts to.
Since that's the case, it makes more sense for the very wealthy to ensure that their assets are PRODUCTIVE.
It's already beneficial for them to have productive assets, and having a wealth tax makes it less beneficial. If they have to sell off assets to pay a tax because they have that asset, then they are much better off keeping that in cash so they don't have to sell at a loss when the time comes to pay and the profits won't cover the tax.
It actually accelerates growth,
Taxes never accelerate growth. They are a drain on the economy, funneling money from where people can use it productively and hindering growth and expansion. You can't tax your way out of economic woes.
Yeah. Thanks to Citizens United Cantor was able to outspend Brat 26:1 and keep his seat.
And thanks to CU these folks can spend a lot of money for their political purposes. Corporations don't have rights, unless they're campaigning for the right causes. And data mining for privacy invasion is bad, unless it's done for the right causes.
THIS. Why won't the political class ever touch the idea of a wealth tax?
Because it is a horrible idea that serves only to make those with class envy feel better. "Wealth" isn't just money that is sitting in a box or buried in the back yard, it's money that is actively working in loans to businesses and people, and in running companies and feeding jobs.
When J. Throckmorton Richguy builds a company and is reported with a "wealth" of 100 million dollars he's not got that 100 million dollars sitting around in cash. That 100 million is land and plant and equipment and inventory and other assets like billable sales. If you tax him at 5% of his "wealth", he's got to come up with 5 million in cash to pay it. That's five million he has to pull out of the company somehow. That's five million in growth of the company that doesn't happen that year. If the economy is in a slump and his company isn't profitable, he's still got to come up with that 5 million from somewhere.
If you tax him 5% on his INCOME, that's a completely different matter. But it becomes an issue when you tax him on his income and then on the increase in wealth because you let him keep some of the money he earned. Money he probably spends or puts in the bank or other investments so someone else can use it.
And your average ... thought Citizen's United was a terrible decision and won't support companies using their money for political purposes.
Of course that particular government could be a bit smarter and alter the contract so that Google only provides wholesale fibre to retail ISPs and if they want to provide a separate retail ISP service.
I don't understand your incomplete sentence. "if they want to provide" then what? But it doesn't matter. The government cannot unilaterally change the contract, so if they want something Google doesn't, Google can walk.
less resistance from existing small and medium ISPs
Existing ISPs have very little to say over who else joins the party. The cable/telco people do because they're infrastructure providers who have had to negotiate franchises and expect equal treatment.
and ensures the fibre becomes and remains essential infrastructure.
Except it isn't. Fiber is one of many different kinds of transport for data. It is not, in and of itself, essential.
Just like they've already passed laws in 30 states banning municipal broadband.
This isn't municipal broadband. It is a company following the rules for obtaining a franchise.
It's a demonstration that the "government monopoly" that is allegedly granted by means of a franchise agreement isn't as much of a dejure monopoly as is claimed.
Well, the modern day scope is software-upgradable, so you buy what you need
No, I buy the product as it is shown to me. Saying I only "buy what I need" is like buying a Ferrari and then three months later it will no longer go faster than 30MPH because I "didn't need" all that extra speed for the city driving I was doing.
When a salesman shows me all the great stuff his product will do and tells me the price, I assume, correctly, that when I buy that product at that price it will do all the great stuff he showed me.
The upshot is you'll get a scope that'll function as a scope with the specs you bought
For three months. And then it won't.
If the student has a bit larger budget, then the Rigol DS1052E or the newer DS1074Z is a really hard to beat value.
Be careful here. I've seen these at hamfests being sold by dealers, and the small print is that when you "buy" the scope that does all these wonderful things for $1499 (or whatever price) you're getting a six month license for the software that does all those wonderful things. One morning not too long after you buy your magic device you will turn it on to do something important and it will tell you that your demo license has expired and you need to send more money to Rigol.
I think that kind of marketing is dishonest and despicable. When someone says "your price for what you are seeing is X", then that's what you should get for X, not a demo system that's going to stop working unless you pay a bundle more.
Here is my problem with that argument. You're making a moral judgment, and certainly not the only possible one.
No, it is not a moral judgement. You currently have no right to vote for representatives in other states and districts. And based on the design of the system, no such right is justified on any grounds.
If you believe that the best system of governance is one where local constituencies vote for representatives who exclusively represent them and then you live with however those votes come out then of course you're going to object to meddling in somebody else's district.
I am talking about the current system in the US. Whether that is the best or not is a moral judgement that you want to make.
Now, you can try to argue that the Constitution doesn't establish a proportional democracy with a national election,
I can not only try to argue that, were I wishing to, it is trivially provable by the fact that the Constitution does not establish a national public election of any kind. The election of state representation is left to the states, and the Presidential election is specified by an electoral college whose members are selected by the states.
The Constitution also doesn't establish a representative democracy where you aren't allowed by law to tamper with elections in other districts.
The US Constitution does not specify how states elect their representation, but the state constitutions do, and the US Constitution does not override them. Keep trying. Maybe someone will change the system so you folks in large populous states can get rid of all the pesky rural folks and do everything the way you want it done. Not today.
I don't really buy the argument that less populous states get disenfranchised in a proportional system. Each man still gets one vote.
So the voters in California get to elect the senators from California, and the senators from Wyoming, and from South Dakota, and Utah and North Dakota, and all the House members from those states, because the 13 million voters in California vastly vastly vastly outnumber the voters in those states. That's not disenfranchisement? Right.
Californians, by themselves, were 10% of the total votes cast in 2012. Add 8.5 mil for Florida, 5 mil for Illinois, 7 mil for NY, 5.5 mil for OH, 3.5 for NJ, 4.8 for MI, and you've got a very large number of voters who could all vote for people who will do what THEY want instead of doing what the people in the states they allegedly represent want. And this is what you'd call a better system?
knowing the crime rate in my area, I would prefer to accept the risk of criminal intrusion than the violation of privacy.
The police weren't interested in "criminal intrusion", they were doing what is called a welfare check. Your neighbor saw something odd, something you'd never do normally, and called the cops to come check on you.
There are stories every so often of a reclusive person being found dead, one I recall was after six months, in their house. They die and nobody notices that there isn't any activity. You could have opened the door, gone back inside to get something you forgot, and then had a stroke.
Suppose a person in such a situation posted a sign on the door from the garage to the house that said, "Notice By Owner: I do not consent to any searches of these premises for any reason."
Exigent circumstances, and they might not be able to use anything they find in court against you, but that wasn't why they were there in the first place.
If you were going to attempt to solve the issue,
Why is it an issue that your neighbors care enough about you to call the cops when they see something highly unusual taking place and want someone to check on your welfare?
The US agricultural economy -- and a lot of the service economy -- is built on a steady influx of sub-minimum-wage labor, and only survives because of undocumented immigrants. Take it away, and large swaths of the economy collapse.
A better argument against the minimum wage laws would be hard to come up with. Wouldn't it be nice if we allowed legal residents the choice of working at a job paying what the job is worth instead of relying on people here illegally to do it? And if large swaths (in this case, anything that deals with food) of the economy would collapse if minimum wage laws were enforced, that's a condemnation of minimum wage laws if ever there was one.
Just because I live in California does not mean that I do not have a real and valid interest on who the people of Utah send to DC.
The question really isn't do you care what they do, the question is do you have any right to help them select the people that they send to congress to represent THEIR interests. To that, that answer is a clear and resounding NO, you do not.
If you believe you do, then you should realize that your system would allow every voter in the country to vote on every senate and house race, and the Senate would become a body representing only the most populous areas of the country and not every state as it was intended to do. And the House would be the same. The voters in less populous states would effectively be disenfranchised. That's great if you live in and have the same views as the majority of people in the larger states.
Thinking otherwise is simplistic and wrong.
The simplistic and wrong thinking is to believe that because the people elected to represent others can vote on matters that impact your life that you should get to vote on those representatives, too. They represent other people; you get to elect the ones who represent you. Having one national election for the Senate and House would result in a stultifying homogeneity of ideas in a place that should have a plethora of views available.
And before you say "but but but the Koch brothers...", you need to realize the difference between campaign contributions and actual voting. As human beings, the Koch brothers have the same free speech rights that you do, and if you feel that you have the right to comment on elections in other parts of the country, then they have those rights, too. What they (and you) do not have the right to do is vote in other states or districts, and voting is how people get elected.
The idea of "open primaries" is based in large part on this demonstrated lack of understanding of this "fairness", and in large part on the dishonesty of wanting to "help" the other political party select a "better" candidate. The truth of the latter is that such voters are either trying to select a candidate for the other party who is "in name only" and is really one of their own philosophically, or select an unelectable candidate so their party's offering will have no real opposition. Both are dishonest and both are why open primaries should be abolished.