Bear in mind that my argument was not there was a government-granted monopoly. Rather, I argued that there is a natural monopoly on broadband,
You read nothing I wrote, did you? It's economics, not goverment, that results in cable TV having a natural monopoly. But that does NOT apply to ISPs. There are simply too many ISPs to ever claim there is any monopoly at all.
When the Colorado town decided to create its own municipal broadband because there was a "monopoly" they needed to destroy, I did some simple research. Guess what? Instead of a monopoly on ISP services, there were actually at least 8 residential broadband providers in that town, and at least 8 commercial, and they weren't the same 8. Not a monopoly. But because the only CABLE TV service was a monopoly, and it was also an ISP, they claimed there was a monopoly on ISP services. And stupid people believed it. One of the commercial ISPs was Level 3. Are you going to claim that Level 3 is not an ISP?
which means precisely that only one company can viably deliver the level of service that qualifies as broadband for a price that customers are willing to pay.
And THAT is a perfect description of the argument I said you were making. Only one provider of the service at the speed you want at the price you think you should be required to pay. That's not how a monopoly is defined, sir. Monopoly means one provider period. There are lots of ISPs, and there are ISPs who will provide the speeds and service you want for more than you think you ought to pay for it. Level 3, for just one, surely finds customers who will pay what it asks. How do they stay in business otherwise?
If you think that qualifies as "monopoly", then let me talk about the monopoly that Subaru has on the US automobile market, since only Subaru makes a vehicle that I like at a price I think is reasonable. Now, ignore all the other car manufacturers that sell cars to everyone else, Subaru is an evil monopoly because I said it was. Right? Shall we go there?
The crux of my argument was that, based on repeated failures to compete back when there were government-granted monopolies,
There has never been a government-granted monopoly to an ISP ever. At least not in the US. I challenged you to name just one, and you were not able to do so. The problem is that you consistently and repeatedly confuse "ISP" and "cable company", freely switching between the two, non-synonymous things, to try to prove there is some monopoly for ISPs. Yeah, two cable companies don't survive in one place. That's not because either one or neither one or both of them are ISPs, it's because there is a limited number of subs for their services and they can't both profit from cable TV if they compete. But ISPs, gosh, they're a different thing.
It's not that I deny that it exists. It is that if it were actually financially competitive, someone would have done it already in any given area.
I quoted you as saying it doesn't exist, and yet, it exists here. It must be financially competitive, they've been in business for a very long time. In other words, someone has done it already, at least here. I can't speak for technical issues that prevent it from being done in other places, but then, technical issues are not based on government-granted monopoly status, either now or "way back when" there wasn't a government-granted monopoly.
The fact that I could find more than 8 broadband providers in just the one town that claimed it was victim of an evil monopoly and needed to use taxpayer dollars to create competition is pretty clear evidence that, despite your personal limitations in accepting what being an ISP means, there are enough people who will pay what the other competitors ask for the service they provide. And that means there is no monopoly, and certainly not a government-granted one like the person claimed that started this discussion.
In the UK, several thousand people a year die when a car driver hits them with their vehicle.
Well, the best answer is to find that guy and take away his car.
Speed is a factor in 20 or 30% of those cases.
Speed is obviously a factor in all of those cases. A car going 0 MPH kills nobody. At any other speed death is possible. Even at 1 MPH, if a car runs over your head you're dead.
That points out how specious the "if it saves even one life" argument actually is. Applied rigorously it means banning planes, trains and automobiles. Bicycles, roller skates, skate boards, surf boards; all banned. Food, water, air, all gone. Each of those things, at some point, has cost someone their life. (And you must be an anti-vaxxer, since certainly some vaccine has cost someone their life, so if saving even one life is justification...)
Life is a risk. Everyone dies. Some die sooner than others. I'm sorry, but that's, well, life. Everything we do has some risk involved, either to oneself or to others.
No, it doesn't. There are only three real ways of delivering broadband currently:
And now you are making the argument that there exists a government-granted monopoly on ISP services because there exists just one means of delivering the speed of service for the price you're willing to pay. There are a lot of ways of delivering ISP services, and "cable TV" isn't the only one. The fact that "cable TV" no longer has a government-granted monopoly seems to be irrelevant to you, and the topic is about government-granted monopolies to an ISP. The context of the comment of mine you quoted was government-granted monopolies and ISPs.
But even when you try to limit the delivery of broadband to three media, that still shows there is no government monopoly. You deny that wireless fixed broadband exists because it doesn't work for you. Sorry, we have that where I live. It's not a densely populated area. It doesn't take a lot of unsightly equipment that is prohibited. It's not the most popular system, but they clearly exist and count. And trying to claim that because some parts of the country aren't suitable for wireless fixed service doesn't create a government-granted monopoly in those areas, either.
It isn't that I'm ignoring other types of ISPs.
Yeah, it's just that you deny they exist. "In other words, this might as well not exist." You don't get to deny something that clearly exists does exist so you can prove there is some government monopoly system for ISPs.
I think you kind of misunderstood that statement. The construct "X can do Y all it wants to, Z" does not actually imply that X has the right to do Y.
You say it can do something it cannot. I say it cannot. You correct me by telling me that it cannot, so what's the problem?
It should be noted that only local-level franchising laws were banned in 1992. State-level franchising laws are still allowed.
Nobody said that franchising laws are not allowed. Federal law allows franchises, but specifically states that exclusive franchises are prohibited, and failure to grant additional franchises are allowed only for certain reasons. That applies to city, county, and STATE franchising authorities, because the law does not differentiate when it make the prohibition. In fact, federal law does NOT prohibit "local-level" franchises. It is states that have acted to centralize the franchise authority, and even then, they are subject to the prohibitions found in federal law.
But still, it doesn't matter,
Of course it matters. It's dejure proof that government-granted monopolies for cable television services are PROHIBITED. It's black letter law. And there has never been an exclusive franchise or "government-granted monopoly" for any ISP. I've had a standing challenge for people to name one, but nobody has yet been able to. Can you?
Payroll doesn't set my number of withholdings, I do
And they will give you advice on what the best number is.
but yes if they do a good job educating me then I get a minimal refund.
If they do a good job you will get no refund. Why do you believe it is better for the government to borrow your money at zero interest instead of you having it where you can use it? The best withholding is what leaves you paying some amount when you file, but less than what would trigger a penalty.
You apparently lack any reading comprehension skills, or are so infatuated with your ability to jump down someone elses throat for what you can't understand that you didn't bother reading what you replied to.
In just this example, the OP has three hospitals within one mile. I have one that is half a mile away. That's difference. He would get ambulances from all three hospitals. I would get one from a fire station even further away than the hospital. His ambulances would contain "real doctors". Mine would not. These are all differences. Denying they exist is moronic.
It is always faster and safer to call the emergency and get an ambulance to YOUR place
It may be safer, but it is not always faster, and it is not always best for the patient. If, for example, all four ambulances of the fire department are out on other calls when I need one, they may be hours away from being able to help. Hours. And I can make a five minute drive. Compare the time. Five minutes, on planet Earth, is shorter than "hours". Maybe different on the planet where you live.
But that's irrelevant. The comment I replied to compared driving to the hospital against HELICOPTER services. Very specific, and it doesn't include ambulances at all. You didn't bother to read or comprehend that, so now you think you've won some magic token.
You still don't grasp the grand parents mistake, he thinks a car that is throttled down can not be used to save his mother,
That's rich, you telling me what I didn't grasp when it was you who missed completely the comparison between driving and flying. And no, the person you are referring to didn't say it cannot be used.
when the right thing is to get a doctor ASAP to his place
How is it the right thing to wait hours or days to get a doctor to come make a house call instead of driving the patient to the doctor-house? How is it the right thing to try to get an appointment to get a doctor to come to your house, or to drag a doctor away from the emergency room, to deal with one person? Fact: it isn't. It's the wrong thing.
and not hurry around in a car to SOME place.
No, nit, not SOME place, to a HOSPITAL. That's A place where there are lots of doctors and nurses and equipment an medicines, but most of all, doctors. A specific place.
And it will ALWAYS be faster to drive five minutes straight to the hospital instead of waiting for a helicopter to be dispatched, take off, fly to the closest landing pad, and drive to the landing pad so the helo can pick up the patient -- who still needs to be transported to the hospital after all of that. Always.
You don't literally call a helo. You call emergency, and they decide if they sent a helo.
Oh for fuck's sake, now I know you are a troll. I said that very thing. You're being a dick and pretending "call a helo" means I personally called the helo when I already said that that doesn't happen.
You do realize that the text indented with the little vertical line is a quote, right?
Now you are being an arrogant ass who tries to put words in my mouth. I replied to your comment that had no "little vertical line", which you do realize is stuff that YOU said, not me, right?
The closest helicopter base to my house is not even a mile, in case you are interested.
I don't care in the least. I responded to an idiotic blanket statement about the use of helicopter emergency response services based on personal experience.
I think the point you just missed is that different people have different situations to deal with, and blanket statements like yours calling something idiotic based solely on your situation is, itself, idiotic.
But I have three hospitals around me, each about a mile or less than a mile away. Obviously they all would send an ambulance...
Well, here again, you're making statements about your personal situation that don't apply to others. First, why would you expect them all to send an ambulance to deal with one person? That's idiotic to start with. Any sane dispatcher will order out one ambulance to deal with one person. But then, where I live the hospitals don't have ambulances. Ambulance service is a function of the fire department. (Reason: because it is much faster for the dispatcher to tone-out a fire response than to deal with a hospital resource.) The closest fire station is a mile away, the opposite direction. Even if they're not out on a call already, it is still faster for me to drive to the ER.
In your case it is the same,
Uhh, another idiotic statement. I think it is pretty clear our cases are not the same, just from my initial description.
why not call an ambulance (emergency number) with a real doctor inside
Because none of the ambulances I have ever been in have had "a real doctor" inside. The fire department does not even keep "real doctors" on-site. Another example of how "in your case it is the same" is a lie.
and trying to get attention of emergency personell?
It takes no effort to get the attention of ER personnel. You just drive up to the door in most cases. Walk inside otherwise. They're right there.
And hint: a helicopter does not need an hour for 60mile...
I didn't say it did. I said it would take an hour to spool up and cross the mountains. They aren't sitting in a warmed-up already running helo when I call. (I don't even talk to them, I talk to a local dispatcher who has to decide to call them out. That takes time.) Not even the Coast Guard operates that way. There's ground time getting to and preflighting the helo before they can even start flying. Of course, maybe in your magic world where three hospitals all send an ambulance to deal with one person, with a "real doctor" in each one, all the medical helos do sit with rotors turning ready to leap off the ground at the first hint of someone to go get.
can often be IFR/icing
No idea what that means...
Sometimes that means that they can't fly at all. That hour delay turns into a couple of hours as the second closest helo gets activated and dispatched.
So, like I said, I can either drive to the closest spot a helo can pick up my poor, injured mother in five minutes and wait an hour for the helo to show up, or I can drive directly to the ER (right across the road from the helo pad) and save a huge amount of time. Yes, I think the "call a helo" answer is the idiotic one.
Unless you live in a very remote place with very low population, the chance of traffic being light enough to even exceed the normal speed limit is pretty low.
When everyone on the highway is going over the posted speed limit, it's not "traffic being light" that causes it, nor does it require "a very remote place".
Japanese manufacturers have been doing this for decades and it doesn't seem to have hurt them.
Well, of course. Once you get the time it takes to drive from one side of the country to the other down to a minute thirty, it makes no sense to be able to do it in a minute flat.
So if your standard is saving a single life, then artificially limiting the top speed can cost lives too.
It would be a lot more productive to simply prohibit camping or even visiting an active volcanic area. Or a tsunami zone along the ocean. Or a potential hurricane/tornado area. Think of the children who would be saved if no children were anywhere close to Fukashima or any other coastal area.
It is. But in general your rights end where you're endangering others.
Every time you get into a car you endanger someone else.
Every time you cook dinner, you endanger someone else. (Unless you only ever eat alone, of course.)
Every time you open an umbrella, you endanger someone else. (Hey, you just poked me in the eye you bastard!)
At what point do your rights end, again?
Or where things you do are stupid and costly to society
It costs a lot of money for an ambulance to come deal with a choking victim who ate a hotdog the wrong way. At what point does your right to eat a hot dog end?
Honestly, it's hard to argue against it when it's 32 mph faster than the highest posted limit in the countries the car is sold in.
Honestly, it is trivial to argue against it when it is a blanket-restriction that ignores different situations and needs, and tries to apply one solution to a limited problem.
I just replied to someone who claimed that driving one's mother to the hospital was idiotic when you consider how fast a helicopter could do it. The point I didn't explicitly state in that reply is that there are an essentially infinite number of situations that people can find themselves in, and that a one-solution-for-all answer that prevents a limited number of cases is itself idiotic. Unless, of course, you think that everyone in the world drives their Volvos at 113mph or higher... the number of people this is intended to stop is a tiny fraction.
The idea that you can bring your mother faster to the hospital in your car, than a helicopter reachers your house, is completely idiotic.
The local ER is a half a mile away. From a dead-stop standing in my kitchen I can get to the ER in five minutes max. I also pass by the closest urgent care facility on the way to the ER, so four minutes or less to that.
The closest helicopter evac base is 60 miles away, across a range of mountains that can often be IFR/icing. Once they take an hour to spool up and get to my house, the closest landing site is... at the local hospital.
So, I can drive to the ER in five minutes, or wait an hour for the helicopter after driving five minutes to the local hospital helo pad. Which is idiotic, again?
Almost all of those monopolies had expiration dates, and those dates have passed.
The "monopolies" did not have expiration dates; the franchises had expiration dates. Had there not been federal law prohibiting exclusive franchises more than two decades ago, it would have been possible, and likely even, for those existing exclusive franchises to have been renewed as exclusive franchises. They could not legally be renewed as such, and so the "government-granted monopoly" status died with the renewed non-exclusive franchise.
No one does it because the incumbent's natural monopoly will make it a money-losing proposition.
It's not just the natural monopoly from being an incumbent that limits new competition. It's the realization that the market size for cable services is FIXED. There are only so many homes/potential customers in any geographic area. Any competitor has to either rely on getting people who currently do not subscribe to do so (unlikely), or steal customers from the other op.
This is completely unlike the situation for most companies. When a new grocery store opens in a community, it can get customers from surrounding communities, too. For example, a Costco opened up in a town ten miles away. They get shoppers from all over the area, not just from within the legal boundaries of that city. An auto repair shop can get customers from anywhere. A cable company, however, cannot sell services outside the area it has a franchise for.
Also, a monopoly for cable TV does not grant a monopoly for Internet service.
Bingo, ding ding ding, this is the fact that people who claim that ISPs have "government-granted monopolies" do not understand. The ancient practice of exclusive franchises for cable TV providers has absolutely nothing to do with NN or ISPs today simply because cable TV infrastructure is just one means of delivering Internet services. It would be like saying that KATU-TV has a monopoly on video delivery services because it has an FCC license for that specific channel, which ignores that there are a lot of other video delivery services that either use a different channel or don't use broadcast radio frequencies at all.
The ISPs do not have natural monopolies. They have government-granted monopolies.
For the majority of the country, the monopoly is, indeed, a natural monopoly. The average lifespan of a second cable company in most of America is measured in single-digit years.
You make the same mistake of jumping from "ISP" to "cable company". Cable television infrastructure is just one way of delivering Internet services. If you want to talk about monopolies for ISPs, stick to ISPs. Then count the number of ISPs there are and see if "a lot more than one" doesn't put a crimp in the claim that there is any monopoly for ISPs.
The OP makes the mistake of ignoring that there are NO government-granted monopolies for ISPs. Not a single one. There USED to be "exclusive franchises" for cable television companies, but that was outlawed more than 20 years ago, and any such franchises are long expired. There MAY be exclusive franchises for wireline telephone companies, but that's for the wireline telephone service, not because they are an ISP.
A local government can "require" two cable companies all it wants to,
Actually, it can't. A government cannot force a company to come into a market to compete. It can only get out of the way and allow them to, which happened under federal law a very long time ago. The fact that nobody wants to compete against an existing company isn't a "government-granted monopoly", it is pure economics.
Now an FCC radio license can cost a small fortune.
The last license I got cost $0. The one prior to that was $15 because I went through a VEC that charged $15. Laurel VE charges $0. The cost of a license depends on what kind of license. A commercial broadcast license may cost what you think is "a small fortune", but once you have one it's a cash cow.
For what?-- the FCC doesn't really do much of anything for their money.
Really? The fact that you can listen to the local radio station you want without another one interfering is due, in large part, to FCC frequency allocations. The fact that your local public safety and land mobile users can talk to each other without a thousand other users on their frequencies is due to FCC action. (Yes, there are frequency coordinators to help identify non-interfering frequencies, but it is the FCC license that keeps users where they belong.) The fact that there aren't 100 different types of radio is also due to FCC action. Compare broadcast FM to amateur FM and notice that there are a large number of different modes for amateur -- all incompatible. P25, DMR, Tetra, Fusion, D-STAR. That's (mostly) just voice. JT65, MT63, Vara, FT8, etc. etc. for pure digital.
Remember analog TV? The FCC rules that meant your analog TV receiver could receive any station? The FCC rules that meant that your B/W TV could pick up color TV? That your color TV could pick up B/W broadcasts? That defined the ATSC system? That even provided rebates so people with analog TVs could start picking up digital without having to buy a new TV?
Before you know it the FCC will require a license to have a website or email address,
Right. Sure. You can make up any ridiculous fiction you want if all you want to do is spread fear and lies.
Maybe breaking up Comcast would be a better plan?
What would that gain? Would it create more ISPs? Hardly. Would it create more cable TV providers? Probably not. It will still cost a lot of money that will not be recouped for someone to compete as a cable TV provider. It's not a fictional dejure monopoly that limits competition, nor is it the existing defacto, it's economic factors. You could split Comcast up into one-company-per-town and it would still cost the same to run infrastructure to compete in the dying cable TV market, and it would change nothing about the existing ISP market.
If Progressives aren't on board with it (AOC, Ro Khanna, Sanders, etc), then it's going to be a load of corporate horse crap.
And if "progressives" are on board with it, then it's going to be a load of warm-fuzzy feel-good virtue-signaling technobabble that imposes social sanctions on technical problems.
Tell me, is the sky blue on your planet like it is here on Earth? Sun come up in the east, too? It must be very odd living on a Bizzaro world where you think your politicians are any good at writing laws about technical things.
If you want to strip the FCC of that power, what's the point of having an FCC?
So they aren't busy making rules that have nothing to do with technical standards or coordinating the use of limited resources like radio frequencies. So the FTC can make the rules regarding trade issues.
Don't jump the gun and assume this new NN law is going to be a solution to any perceived problems. It's very likely that you'll find that the law that Pelosi doesn't want you reading to see what it contains will contain things like California's NN law that defines broadband Internet to be anything except dialup. Is that the kind of technical law you like?
Your paycheck is affected by your withholdings more than the tax rate,
Withholding is directly affected by the tax rate. You can choose to withhold more, of course, if you want to loan your money to the government at zero interest.
if your payroll department is good you will get a similar refund to last year
If your payroll department is really good you will get no refund. Getting a refund, while it is psychologically satisfying, means you are losing money in the long run. It may seem like you are "sticking it to the man" by getting the IRS to send you a check -- HA HA! Bite me suckers!-- but it's really not a smart way to manage your money.
Of course, if a link uses a "shortened URL", its probability of legitimacy is rather low, too.
Wonderful story. Our local UNI has decided that too many people click on phishing emails and hand over their login details, so ALL must start using 2FA.
The URL they distributed to provide information about this new requirement was 1. a shortened URL, 2. from a ccTLD that has no connection at all with the UNI, and 3. misspells the name of the UNI's animal mascot so it fits with the ccTLD.
In other words, if an email from my university contains a shortened URL that misspells the mascot and comes out of a country on the other side of the planet, it is actually REAL. And the UNI IT people blame the employees for falling for phishing attacks.
Streaming has also made media transient and disposable.
Remember when there were three TV channels? Media has for the vast majority of time been transient and disposable. People spent a dime going to see the latest installment of the action serial at the movie house, and had only fond memories of last week's episode. VCRs tried to change the transient nature of "media" and did quite a bit to help. DVRs have replaced that, but leave you with intangible things called "files" instead of a tape or DVD. Streaming is just a new wrinkle, not a new paradigm.
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Bear in mind that my argument was not there was a government-granted monopoly. Rather, I argued that there is a natural monopoly on broadband,
You read nothing I wrote, did you? It's economics, not goverment, that results in cable TV having a natural monopoly. But that does NOT apply to ISPs. There are simply too many ISPs to ever claim there is any monopoly at all.
When the Colorado town decided to create its own municipal broadband because there was a "monopoly" they needed to destroy, I did some simple research. Guess what? Instead of a monopoly on ISP services, there were actually at least 8 residential broadband providers in that town, and at least 8 commercial, and they weren't the same 8. Not a monopoly. But because the only CABLE TV service was a monopoly, and it was also an ISP, they claimed there was a monopoly on ISP services. And stupid people believed it. One of the commercial ISPs was Level 3. Are you going to claim that Level 3 is not an ISP?
which means precisely that only one company can viably deliver the level of service that qualifies as broadband for a price that customers are willing to pay.
And THAT is a perfect description of the argument I said you were making. Only one provider of the service at the speed you want at the price you think you should be required to pay. That's not how a monopoly is defined, sir. Monopoly means one provider period. There are lots of ISPs, and there are ISPs who will provide the speeds and service you want for more than you think you ought to pay for it. Level 3, for just one, surely finds customers who will pay what it asks. How do they stay in business otherwise?
If you think that qualifies as "monopoly", then let me talk about the monopoly that Subaru has on the US automobile market, since only Subaru makes a vehicle that I like at a price I think is reasonable. Now, ignore all the other car manufacturers that sell cars to everyone else, Subaru is an evil monopoly because I said it was. Right? Shall we go there?
The crux of my argument was that, based on repeated failures to compete back when there were government-granted monopolies,
There has never been a government-granted monopoly to an ISP ever. At least not in the US. I challenged you to name just one, and you were not able to do so. The problem is that you consistently and repeatedly confuse "ISP" and "cable company", freely switching between the two, non-synonymous things, to try to prove there is some monopoly for ISPs. Yeah, two cable companies don't survive in one place. That's not because either one or neither one or both of them are ISPs, it's because there is a limited number of subs for their services and they can't both profit from cable TV if they compete. But ISPs, gosh, they're a different thing.
It's not that I deny that it exists. It is that if it were actually financially competitive, someone would have done it already in any given area.
I quoted you as saying it doesn't exist, and yet, it exists here. It must be financially competitive, they've been in business for a very long time. In other words, someone has done it already, at least here. I can't speak for technical issues that prevent it from being done in other places, but then, technical issues are not based on government-granted monopoly status, either now or "way back when" there wasn't a government-granted monopoly.
The fact that I could find more than 8 broadband providers in just the one town that claimed it was victim of an evil monopoly and needed to use taxpayer dollars to create competition is pretty clear evidence that, despite your personal limitations in accepting what being an ISP means, there are enough people who will pay what the other competitors ask for the service they provide. And that means there is no monopoly, and certainly not a government-granted one like the person claimed that started this discussion.
Let me take you back
In the UK, several thousand people a year die when a car driver hits them with their vehicle.
Well, the best answer is to find that guy and take away his car.
Speed is a factor in 20 or 30% of those cases.
Speed is obviously a factor in all of those cases. A car going 0 MPH kills nobody. At any other speed death is possible. Even at 1 MPH, if a car runs over your head you're dead.
That points out how specious the "if it saves even one life" argument actually is. Applied rigorously it means banning planes, trains and automobiles. Bicycles, roller skates, skate boards, surf boards; all banned. Food, water, air, all gone. Each of those things, at some point, has cost someone their life. (And you must be an anti-vaxxer, since certainly some vaccine has cost someone their life, so if saving even one life is justification ...)
Life is a risk. Everyone dies. Some die sooner than others. I'm sorry, but that's, well, life. Everything we do has some risk involved, either to oneself or to others.
No, it doesn't. There are only three real ways of delivering broadband currently:
And now you are making the argument that there exists a government-granted monopoly on ISP services because there exists just one means of delivering the speed of service for the price you're willing to pay. There are a lot of ways of delivering ISP services, and "cable TV" isn't the only one. The fact that "cable TV" no longer has a government-granted monopoly seems to be irrelevant to you, and the topic is about government-granted monopolies to an ISP. The context of the comment of mine you quoted was government-granted monopolies and ISPs.
But even when you try to limit the delivery of broadband to three media, that still shows there is no government monopoly. You deny that wireless fixed broadband exists because it doesn't work for you. Sorry, we have that where I live. It's not a densely populated area. It doesn't take a lot of unsightly equipment that is prohibited. It's not the most popular system, but they clearly exist and count. And trying to claim that because some parts of the country aren't suitable for wireless fixed service doesn't create a government-granted monopoly in those areas, either.
It isn't that I'm ignoring other types of ISPs.
Yeah, it's just that you deny they exist. "In other words, this might as well not exist." You don't get to deny something that clearly exists does exist so you can prove there is some government monopoly system for ISPs.
I think you kind of misunderstood that statement. The construct "X can do Y all it wants to, Z" does not actually imply that X has the right to do Y.
You say it can do something it cannot. I say it cannot. You correct me by telling me that it cannot, so what's the problem?
It should be noted that only local-level franchising laws were banned in 1992. State-level franchising laws are still allowed.
Nobody said that franchising laws are not allowed. Federal law allows franchises, but specifically states that exclusive franchises are prohibited, and failure to grant additional franchises are allowed only for certain reasons. That applies to city, county, and STATE franchising authorities, because the law does not differentiate when it make the prohibition. In fact, federal law does NOT prohibit "local-level" franchises. It is states that have acted to centralize the franchise authority, and even then, they are subject to the prohibitions found in federal law.
But still, it doesn't matter,
Of course it matters. It's dejure proof that government-granted monopolies for cable television services are PROHIBITED. It's black letter law. And there has never been an exclusive franchise or "government-granted monopoly" for any ISP. I've had a standing challenge for people to name one, but nobody has yet been able to. Can you?
does not mean I'm "putting words in your mouth". That's just your attempt to avoid the conflict.
A conflict you created when you tried putting the word "secret" into my mouth. Your word, not mine. Now bugger off, troll.
Payroll doesn't set my number of withholdings, I do
And they will give you advice on what the best number is.
but yes if they do a good job educating me then I get a minimal refund.
If they do a good job you will get no refund. Why do you believe it is better for the government to borrow your money at zero interest instead of you having it where you can use it? The best withholding is what leaves you paying some amount when you file, but less than what would trigger a penalty.
No, they don't have.
You apparently lack any reading comprehension skills, or are so infatuated with your ability to jump down someone elses throat for what you can't understand that you didn't bother reading what you replied to.
In just this example, the OP has three hospitals within one mile. I have one that is half a mile away. That's difference. He would get ambulances from all three hospitals. I would get one from a fire station even further away than the hospital. His ambulances would contain "real doctors". Mine would not. These are all differences. Denying they exist is moronic.
It is always faster and safer to call the emergency and get an ambulance to YOUR place
It may be safer, but it is not always faster, and it is not always best for the patient. If, for example, all four ambulances of the fire department are out on other calls when I need one, they may be hours away from being able to help. Hours. And I can make a five minute drive. Compare the time. Five minutes, on planet Earth, is shorter than "hours". Maybe different on the planet where you live.
But that's irrelevant. The comment I replied to compared driving to the hospital against HELICOPTER services. Very specific, and it doesn't include ambulances at all. You didn't bother to read or comprehend that, so now you think you've won some magic token.
You still don't grasp the grand parents mistake, he thinks a car that is throttled down can not be used to save his mother,
That's rich, you telling me what I didn't grasp when it was you who missed completely the comparison between driving and flying. And no, the person you are referring to didn't say it cannot be used.
when the right thing is to get a doctor ASAP to his place
How is it the right thing to wait hours or days to get a doctor to come make a house call instead of driving the patient to the doctor-house? How is it the right thing to try to get an appointment to get a doctor to come to your house, or to drag a doctor away from the emergency room, to deal with one person? Fact: it isn't. It's the wrong thing.
and not hurry around in a car to SOME place.
No, nit, not SOME place, to a HOSPITAL. That's A place where there are lots of doctors and nurses and equipment an medicines, but most of all, doctors. A specific place.
And it will ALWAYS be faster to drive five minutes straight to the hospital instead of waiting for a helicopter to be dispatched, take off, fly to the closest landing pad, and drive to the landing pad so the helo can pick up the patient -- who still needs to be transported to the hospital after all of that. Always.
You don't literally call a helo. You call emergency, and they decide if they sent a helo.
Oh for fuck's sake, now I know you are a troll. I said that very thing. You're being a dick and pretending "call a helo" means I personally called the helo when I already said that that doesn't happen.
You do realize that the text indented with the little vertical line is a quote, right?
Now you are being an arrogant ass who tries to put words in my mouth. I replied to your comment that had no "little vertical line", which you do realize is stuff that YOU said, not me, right?
The closest helicopter base to my house is not even a mile, in case you are interested.
I don't care in the least. I responded to an idiotic blanket statement about the use of helicopter emergency response services based on personal experience.
I think the point you just missed is that different people have different situations to deal with, and blanket statements like yours calling something idiotic based solely on your situation is, itself, idiotic.
But I have three hospitals around me, each about a mile or less than a mile away. Obviously they all would send an ambulance ...
Well, here again, you're making statements about your personal situation that don't apply to others. First, why would you expect them all to send an ambulance to deal with one person? That's idiotic to start with. Any sane dispatcher will order out one ambulance to deal with one person. But then, where I live the hospitals don't have ambulances. Ambulance service is a function of the fire department. (Reason: because it is much faster for the dispatcher to tone-out a fire response than to deal with a hospital resource.) The closest fire station is a mile away, the opposite direction. Even if they're not out on a call already, it is still faster for me to drive to the ER.
In your case it is the same,
Uhh, another idiotic statement. I think it is pretty clear our cases are not the same, just from my initial description.
why not call an ambulance (emergency number) with a real doctor inside
Because none of the ambulances I have ever been in have had "a real doctor" inside. The fire department does not even keep "real doctors" on-site. Another example of how "in your case it is the same" is a lie.
and trying to get attention of emergency personell?
It takes no effort to get the attention of ER personnel. You just drive up to the door in most cases. Walk inside otherwise. They're right there.
And hint: a helicopter does not need an hour for 60mile ...
I didn't say it did. I said it would take an hour to spool up and cross the mountains. They aren't sitting in a warmed-up already running helo when I call. (I don't even talk to them, I talk to a local dispatcher who has to decide to call them out. That takes time.) Not even the Coast Guard operates that way. There's ground time getting to and preflighting the helo before they can even start flying. Of course, maybe in your magic world where three hospitals all send an ambulance to deal with one person, with a "real doctor" in each one, all the medical helos do sit with rotors turning ready to leap off the ground at the first hint of someone to go get.
can often be IFR/icing No idea what that means ...
Sometimes that means that they can't fly at all. That hour delay turns into a couple of hours as the second closest helo gets activated and dispatched.
So, like I said, I can either drive to the closest spot a helo can pick up my poor, injured mother in five minutes and wait an hour for the helo to show up, or I can drive directly to the ER (right across the road from the helo pad) and save a huge amount of time. Yes, I think the "call a helo" answer is the idiotic one.
Unless you live in a very remote place with very low population, the chance of traffic being light enough to even exceed the normal speed limit is pretty low.
When everyone on the highway is going over the posted speed limit, it's not "traffic being light" that causes it, nor does it require "a very remote place".
Japanese manufacturers have been doing this for decades and it doesn't seem to have hurt them.
Well, of course. Once you get the time it takes to drive from one side of the country to the other down to a minute thirty, it makes no sense to be able to do it in a minute flat.
So if your standard is saving a single life, then artificially limiting the top speed can cost lives too.
It would be a lot more productive to simply prohibit camping or even visiting an active volcanic area. Or a tsunami zone along the ocean. Or a potential hurricane/tornado area. Think of the children who would be saved if no children were anywhere close to Fukashima or any other coastal area.
It is. But in general your rights end where you're endangering others.
Every time you get into a car you endanger someone else.
Every time you cook dinner, you endanger someone else. (Unless you only ever eat alone, of course.)
Every time you open an umbrella, you endanger someone else. (Hey, you just poked me in the eye you bastard!)
At what point do your rights end, again?
Or where things you do are stupid and costly to society
It costs a lot of money for an ambulance to come deal with a choking victim who ate a hotdog the wrong way. At what point does your right to eat a hot dog end?
Honestly, it's hard to argue against it when it's 32 mph faster than the highest posted limit in the countries the car is sold in.
Honestly, it is trivial to argue against it when it is a blanket-restriction that ignores different situations and needs, and tries to apply one solution to a limited problem.
I just replied to someone who claimed that driving one's mother to the hospital was idiotic when you consider how fast a helicopter could do it. The point I didn't explicitly state in that reply is that there are an essentially infinite number of situations that people can find themselves in, and that a one-solution-for-all answer that prevents a limited number of cases is itself idiotic. Unless, of course, you think that everyone in the world drives their Volvos at 113mph or higher ... the number of people this is intended to stop is a tiny fraction.
The idea that you can bring your mother faster to the hospital in your car, than a helicopter reachers your house, is completely idiotic.
The local ER is a half a mile away. From a dead-stop standing in my kitchen I can get to the ER in five minutes max. I also pass by the closest urgent care facility on the way to the ER, so four minutes or less to that.
The closest helicopter evac base is 60 miles away, across a range of mountains that can often be IFR/icing. Once they take an hour to spool up and get to my house, the closest landing site is ... at the local hospital.
So, I can drive to the ER in five minutes, or wait an hour for the helicopter after driving five minutes to the local hospital helo pad. Which is idiotic, again?
And, very conveniently, if your speedo is in mph, you have the emergency call number listed right there.
I'd love a car that goes 911 MPH.
When you start putting words in my mouth, I stop talking to you. You don't need me if all you want to do is make up stuff you want me to have said.
Almost all of those monopolies had expiration dates, and those dates have passed.
The "monopolies" did not have expiration dates; the franchises had expiration dates. Had there not been federal law prohibiting exclusive franchises more than two decades ago, it would have been possible, and likely even, for those existing exclusive franchises to have been renewed as exclusive franchises. They could not legally be renewed as such, and so the "government-granted monopoly" status died with the renewed non-exclusive franchise.
No one does it because the incumbent's natural monopoly will make it a money-losing proposition.
It's not just the natural monopoly from being an incumbent that limits new competition. It's the realization that the market size for cable services is FIXED. There are only so many homes/potential customers in any geographic area. Any competitor has to either rely on getting people who currently do not subscribe to do so (unlikely), or steal customers from the other op.
This is completely unlike the situation for most companies. When a new grocery store opens in a community, it can get customers from surrounding communities, too. For example, a Costco opened up in a town ten miles away. They get shoppers from all over the area, not just from within the legal boundaries of that city. An auto repair shop can get customers from anywhere. A cable company, however, cannot sell services outside the area it has a franchise for.
Also, a monopoly for cable TV does not grant a monopoly for Internet service.
Bingo, ding ding ding, this is the fact that people who claim that ISPs have "government-granted monopolies" do not understand. The ancient practice of exclusive franchises for cable TV providers has absolutely nothing to do with NN or ISPs today simply because cable TV infrastructure is just one means of delivering Internet services. It would be like saying that KATU-TV has a monopoly on video delivery services because it has an FCC license for that specific channel, which ignores that there are a lot of other video delivery services that either use a different channel or don't use broadcast radio frequencies at all.
The ISPs do not have natural monopolies. They have government-granted monopolies.
For the majority of the country, the monopoly is, indeed, a natural monopoly. The average lifespan of a second cable company in most of America is measured in single-digit years.
You make the same mistake of jumping from "ISP" to "cable company". Cable television infrastructure is just one way of delivering Internet services. If you want to talk about monopolies for ISPs, stick to ISPs. Then count the number of ISPs there are and see if "a lot more than one" doesn't put a crimp in the claim that there is any monopoly for ISPs.
The OP makes the mistake of ignoring that there are NO government-granted monopolies for ISPs. Not a single one. There USED to be "exclusive franchises" for cable television companies, but that was outlawed more than 20 years ago, and any such franchises are long expired. There MAY be exclusive franchises for wireline telephone companies, but that's for the wireline telephone service, not because they are an ISP.
A local government can "require" two cable companies all it wants to,
Actually, it can't. A government cannot force a company to come into a market to compete. It can only get out of the way and allow them to, which happened under federal law a very long time ago. The fact that nobody wants to compete against an existing company isn't a "government-granted monopoly", it is pure economics.
Now an FCC radio license can cost a small fortune.
The last license I got cost $0. The one prior to that was $15 because I went through a VEC that charged $15. Laurel VE charges $0. The cost of a license depends on what kind of license. A commercial broadcast license may cost what you think is "a small fortune", but once you have one it's a cash cow.
For what?-- the FCC doesn't really do much of anything for their money.
Really? The fact that you can listen to the local radio station you want without another one interfering is due, in large part, to FCC frequency allocations. The fact that your local public safety and land mobile users can talk to each other without a thousand other users on their frequencies is due to FCC action. (Yes, there are frequency coordinators to help identify non-interfering frequencies, but it is the FCC license that keeps users where they belong.) The fact that there aren't 100 different types of radio is also due to FCC action. Compare broadcast FM to amateur FM and notice that there are a large number of different modes for amateur -- all incompatible. P25, DMR, Tetra, Fusion, D-STAR. That's (mostly) just voice. JT65, MT63, Vara, FT8, etc. etc. for pure digital.
Remember analog TV? The FCC rules that meant your analog TV receiver could receive any station? The FCC rules that meant that your B/W TV could pick up color TV? That your color TV could pick up B/W broadcasts? That defined the ATSC system? That even provided rebates so people with analog TVs could start picking up digital without having to buy a new TV?
Before you know it the FCC will require a license to have a website or email address,
Right. Sure. You can make up any ridiculous fiction you want if all you want to do is spread fear and lies.
Maybe breaking up Comcast would be a better plan?
What would that gain? Would it create more ISPs? Hardly. Would it create more cable TV providers? Probably not. It will still cost a lot of money that will not be recouped for someone to compete as a cable TV provider. It's not a fictional dejure monopoly that limits competition, nor is it the existing defacto, it's economic factors. You could split Comcast up into one-company-per-town and it would still cost the same to run infrastructure to compete in the dying cable TV market, and it would change nothing about the existing ISP market.
If Progressives aren't on board with it (AOC, Ro Khanna, Sanders, etc), then it's going to be a load of corporate horse crap.
And if "progressives" are on board with it, then it's going to be a load of warm-fuzzy feel-good virtue-signaling technobabble that imposes social sanctions on technical problems.
Tell me, is the sky blue on your planet like it is here on Earth? Sun come up in the east, too? It must be very odd living on a Bizzaro world where you think your politicians are any good at writing laws about technical things.
If you want to strip the FCC of that power, what's the point of having an FCC?
So they aren't busy making rules that have nothing to do with technical standards or coordinating the use of limited resources like radio frequencies. So the FTC can make the rules regarding trade issues.
Don't jump the gun and assume this new NN law is going to be a solution to any perceived problems. It's very likely that you'll find that the law that Pelosi doesn't want you reading to see what it contains will contain things like California's NN law that defines broadband Internet to be anything except dialup. Is that the kind of technical law you like?
Your paycheck is affected by your withholdings more than the tax rate,
Withholding is directly affected by the tax rate. You can choose to withhold more, of course, if you want to loan your money to the government at zero interest.
if your payroll department is good you will get a similar refund to last year
If your payroll department is really good you will get no refund. Getting a refund, while it is psychologically satisfying, means you are losing money in the long run. It may seem like you are "sticking it to the man" by getting the IRS to send you a check -- HA HA! Bite me suckers!-- but it's really not a smart way to manage your money.
Of course, if a link uses a "shortened URL", its probability of legitimacy is rather low, too.
Wonderful story. Our local UNI has decided that too many people click on phishing emails and hand over their login details, so ALL must start using 2FA.
The URL they distributed to provide information about this new requirement was 1. a shortened URL, 2. from a ccTLD that has no connection at all with the UNI, and 3. misspells the name of the UNI's animal mascot so it fits with the ccTLD.
In other words, if an email from my university contains a shortened URL that misspells the mascot and comes out of a country on the other side of the planet, it is actually REAL. And the UNI IT people blame the employees for falling for phishing attacks.
Streaming has also made media transient and disposable.
Remember when there were three TV channels? Media has for the vast majority of time been transient and disposable. People spent a dime going to see the latest installment of the action serial at the movie house, and had only fond memories of last week's episode. VCRs tried to change the transient nature of "media" and did quite a bit to help. DVRs have replaced that, but leave you with intangible things called "files" instead of a tape or DVD. Streaming is just a new wrinkle, not a new paradigm.