No. The municipality had NO CHOICE but to give Comcast a franchise in exchange for network upgrade. I read the minutes in archives. It would have been great if other ISPs wanted to provide a competitive infrastructure but there were no takers.
You STILL haven't explained to me why you think it should be illegal for a company with low prices and high customer satisfaction ratings to come give you the same great service my neighbors and I enjoy.
You are definitely paid to be deliberately obtuse. I have NO OBJECTION at all to multiple ISPs providing a competitive high-class service. It's great when they are available. Yet in most parts of the country the situation is quite different, and it doesn't actually matter if there are ordnances forbidding cities to build municipal networks or franchise agreements. Somehow the US gets only the invisible middle finger of the market.
So far the best way forward is to build municipal fiber networks and then provide RAND access to commercial ISPs to provide services on top of the municipal fiber. Do you have any objections to that?
No, it's perfectly possible to build a fiber network in Oakland. There aren't many undertakers, though.
Comcast only has exclusive cable franchise that it got for network upgrade and which has expired 2 years ago. And you're incoherent, I want the CITY itself to build AND OWN a fiber network. It's NOT possible right now because of California regulations. Are you perhaps paid to not understand this?
In lots of places there is NOBODY competing with Comcast, except perhaps for crappy ASDL providers. Lots of such areas, I live in such a place in Oakland (ZIP 94619).
Then there are sparsely populated areas where it simply makes no sense to build several competing networks.
Are you sure you understand the proposal? It's meant to _allow_ municipalities to build and maintain their own fiber networks. It does not mandate that nor does it outlaw private ISPs.
My city provides municipal water, garbage collection and electricity. They are pretty good at that, when my new house needed a sewer and water hookups it took them only a week or so to do all the required work from their side. Governments (especially local ones) are pretty good at that sort of thing.
And let's face it, fiber networks are not a new technology anymore. Fiber laying, termination and maintenance are pretty simple so that municipalities can either do it themselves or they can easily find a contractor for that.
I know people involved in writing ACA. It was clearly understood that single-payer was out for Lieberman (who was in a pocket of insurance companies) and a handful of other DINOs. And since Republicans were stonewalling _anything_, single payer had to go.
Have you anything other than strawmen? By "basics" Libertarians mean enforcement of laws (civil and criminal)
That is tautological. For example, the USSR had laws codifying the planned economy. I doubt that the libertarians consider the USSR anything close to libertarian.
Libertarians want to pick exactly _what_ laws the state should enforce. And by a strange coincidence these laws are the ones that libertarians themselves need to protect them.
Said the man after repeatedly demonstrating ignorance of those same principles! Yes, the US was founded on these principles — nothing else is entrusted to government in the Constitution.
Are you sure? Can you look at the Article I, Section 8, Clause 1 of the US Constitution?
I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.
This doesn't sound anything like Madison. I checked the web, and lo and behomd - this quote is an outright fake. See here: http://www.democraticundergrou... So yes, libertardians are libertardians.
Cherry-pick _what_? I provided you direct quotes and examples of Jefferson liberalism. Certainly he was against excessive government intervention, but he most definitely was not against government in principle.
Nonsense. Henry Ford [wikipedia.org] was a son of immigrants, who died when he was a child. He supported himself and family by freaking farming before becoming an engineer. Wright brothers [wikipedia.org] were hardly from a rich family either. Thomas Edison [wikipedia.org] was the youngest of seven siblings.
And? They were only few people out of millions living in poverty.
So let me describe your perfect society, the wet dream of libertardians:
1) There are two classes of people: peons and lords.
2) Peons have nothing and earn starvation wages (no minimal wage).
3) The working conditions are appalling (no OSHA either). After all, it's worker's own problem if they can't negotiate good working conditions.
4) Children are, of course, forced to work from an early age. No child labor laws either. After all, if parents wish for a child to study real job skills from the age of 5, then why should the government interfere?
5) No free education. Peons might learn to read and sign their name so their employers might be able to give them orders. Their parents might also sponsor some additional education, but see above about jobs.
6) No Social Security and no retirement. You die after you stop working. You were not able to save enough from your starvation wages? Tough.
7) Ditto for healthcare.
8) Small businesses? No such thing - as middle class tends to get all uppity about their rights. Instead, small businesses are slowly driven out by mega-corporations.
9) Competition? LOL! Next you'd ask for anti-monopoly laws!
10) Voting laws are reverted back to the good old American tradition proclaimed by the Founding Fathers: "One Dollar - One Vote". This tradition was advocated by all the founding fathers - or so says Fox News.
Of course, tame 'intellectuals' will protect that status-quo by pointing out that lots of people each year become rich! Perhaps 10 or even 20, out of 400 millions or so. And its entirely peons' fault that they are poor.
And so? Pure capitalism doesn't work either, so reducing free education is a step towards a hereditary oligarchy exploiting masses of poor people.
We, Libertarians, would like the country to move in the opposite direction — away from the Socialism — and you are calling us names.
Yes, you think that you'll be slaveowners in the new capitalistic paradise, not slaves.
Something is seriously messed up in your head — you aren't self-consistent.
I'm a classic European liberal. So I stand for a _limited_ involvement of government - it should provide free education (possibly even higher education), universal healthcare, reasonable infrastructure and environment, and various means of support for those who need it. I don't want Soviet-style planned economy because it doesn't _work_ not because I'm a worshipper of the Invisible Fisting Of Market. And Soviet-style states also seems to be incompatible with social liberalism.
But this conversation is about ensuring good things are done to us — subject to the government's understanding of what "good" means. And that is a road to slavery — workers on plantations had free food, shelter, education, entertainment, and healthcare, you'll recall, in exchange for work. They weren't paid for their work (100% taxation), but they didn't need money either, because everything useful — in their betters' educated opinion — was provided to them. The slaves hated it, for some reason... Probably, because they wanted to be able to make their own choices. And so do I.
Nope. If you take it to its conclusion, socialism will make sure that no slaves or masters exist. Everyone will get an equal share of production output. So please, read your Marx first before spouting nonsense.
Of course, Marx's socialism doesn't work well in _practice_.
At the time of Jefferson there was no real problem with industrial pollution (little industry), healthcare (pre-germ theory world) and little need for roads. Practically the only things that were relevant at that time were army, public education and public welfare.
Jefferson supported the universal free 3-year public education, funded by taxes ("A Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge") and accessible both for boys and girls.
As for welfare, just let me quote him: "It is a duty certainly to give our sparings to those who want; but to see also that they are faithfully distributed and duly apportioned to the respective wants of those receivers.", from a letter from Thomas Jefferson to Megear, 1823.
So fuck off and learn your history. Founding fathers were most definitely not the spoiled brat libertardians.
Yes, it's mine (being a tax-paying resident of the USA) in a small part because it's protected by the environment legislation. Feel free to move to Beijing if you don't see a value of it.
Yes. Please return that several millions of dollars that people before you have spent on your roads, security, education, good environment and so on. Libertardians in the US have never actually lived in countries that lack this stuff so they have no freaking idea how privileged they are.
We can build structures that can last for millenia. That's easy. For instance, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... utterly dwarfs pyramids and it's expected to last longer.
It's just that with rare exceptions people do not WANT such structures. A typical house could probably be rebuilt much cheaper in 50-70 years and with better safety. For example, the house where I live right now was built 5 years ago - it certainly doesn't look as 'solid' as a renovated Victorian house where I'd been living earlier. However, the new house is an order of magnitude better insulated so it requires much less heating and cooling. Its sound insulation allows me to run on a treadmill listening to music while my girlfriend is sleeping downstairs. The electrical wiring allows me to power a coffee maker, electric kettle and a dishwasher without burning down the whole block and so on.
But I totally expect that in 100 years it'd replaced with a house made from paper-thing carbon-nanotube reinforced smart self-forming concrete with built-in automated furniture extruders. While people will be telling each other that nobody can make anything lasting more than a week, unlike people in 2010 who could build stuff lasting for _decades_.
So let me get it straight, freedom of press is OK only when it's of no consequence? Do you tell me that North Korea and the USSR had been making the right decision to block and jam the Western radio?
Slashdot Mirror
You STILL haven't explained to me why you think it should be illegal for a company with low prices and high customer satisfaction ratings to come give you the same great service my neighbors and I enjoy.
You are definitely paid to be deliberately obtuse. I have NO OBJECTION at all to multiple ISPs providing a competitive high-class service. It's great when they are available. Yet in most parts of the country the situation is quite different, and it doesn't actually matter if there are ordnances forbidding cities to build municipal networks or franchise agreements. Somehow the US gets only the invisible middle finger of the market.
So far the best way forward is to build municipal fiber networks and then provide RAND access to commercial ISPs to provide services on top of the municipal fiber. Do you have any objections to that?
No, it's perfectly possible to build a fiber network in Oakland. There aren't many undertakers, though.
Comcast only has exclusive cable franchise that it got for network upgrade and which has expired 2 years ago. And you're incoherent, I want the CITY itself to build AND OWN a fiber network. It's NOT possible right now because of California regulations. Are you perhaps paid to not understand this?
In lots of places there is NOBODY competing with Comcast, except perhaps for crappy ASDL providers. Lots of such areas, I live in such a place in Oakland (ZIP 94619).
Then there are sparsely populated areas where it simply makes no sense to build several competing networks.
Are you sure you understand the proposal? It's meant to _allow_ municipalities to build and maintain their own fiber networks. It does not mandate that nor does it outlaw private ISPs.
My city provides municipal water, garbage collection and electricity. They are pretty good at that, when my new house needed a sewer and water hookups it took them only a week or so to do all the required work from their side. Governments (especially local ones) are pretty good at that sort of thing.
And let's face it, fiber networks are not a new technology anymore. Fiber laying, termination and maintenance are pretty simple so that municipalities can either do it themselves or they can easily find a contractor for that.
I know people involved in writing ACA. It was clearly understood that single-payer was out for Lieberman (who was in a pocket of insurance companies) and a handful of other DINOs. And since Republicans were stonewalling _anything_, single payer had to go.
Romans also had stagnated in a pre-industrial world. Hardly a role model.
Have you anything other than strawmen? By "basics" Libertarians mean enforcement of laws (civil and criminal)
That is tautological. For example, the USSR had laws codifying the planned economy. I doubt that the libertarians consider the USSR anything close to libertarian.
Libertarians want to pick exactly _what_ laws the state should enforce. And by a strange coincidence these laws are the ones that libertarians themselves need to protect them.
Said the man after repeatedly demonstrating ignorance of those same principles! Yes, the US was founded on these principles — nothing else is entrusted to government in the Constitution.
Are you sure? Can you look at the Article I, Section 8, Clause 1 of the US Constitution?
I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.
This doesn't sound anything like Madison. I checked the web, and lo and behomd - this quote is an outright fake. See here: http://www.democraticundergrou... So yes, libertardians are libertardians.
Cherry-pick _what_? I provided you direct quotes and examples of Jefferson liberalism. Certainly he was against excessive government intervention, but he most definitely was not against government in principle.
Duh. The US betrays its own principles once more. The fundamental US right of the freedom of speech? Who cares!
Nonsense. Henry Ford [wikipedia.org] was a son of immigrants, who died when he was a child. He supported himself and family by freaking farming before becoming an engineer. Wright brothers [wikipedia.org] were hardly from a rich family either. Thomas Edison [wikipedia.org] was the youngest of seven siblings.
And? They were only few people out of millions living in poverty.
So let me describe your perfect society, the wet dream of libertardians:
1) There are two classes of people: peons and lords.
2) Peons have nothing and earn starvation wages (no minimal wage).
3) The working conditions are appalling (no OSHA either). After all, it's worker's own problem if they can't negotiate good working conditions.
4) Children are, of course, forced to work from an early age. No child labor laws either. After all, if parents wish for a child to study real job skills from the age of 5, then why should the government interfere?
5) No free education. Peons might learn to read and sign their name so their employers might be able to give them orders. Their parents might also sponsor some additional education, but see above about jobs.
6) No Social Security and no retirement. You die after you stop working. You were not able to save enough from your starvation wages? Tough.
7) Ditto for healthcare.
8) Small businesses? No such thing - as middle class tends to get all uppity about their rights. Instead, small businesses are slowly driven out by mega-corporations.
9) Competition? LOL! Next you'd ask for anti-monopoly laws!
10) Voting laws are reverted back to the good old American tradition proclaimed by the Founding Fathers: "One Dollar - One Vote". This tradition was advocated by all the founding fathers - or so says Fox News.
Of course, tame 'intellectuals' will protect that status-quo by pointing out that lots of people each year become rich! Perhaps 10 or even 20, out of 400 millions or so. And its entirely peons' fault that they are poor.
So yes, that's your dream society.
We, Libertarians, would like the country to move in the opposite direction — away from the Socialism — and you are calling us names.
Yes, you think that you'll be slaveowners in the new capitalistic paradise, not slaves.
Something is seriously messed up in your head — you aren't self-consistent.
I'm a classic European liberal. So I stand for a _limited_ involvement of government - it should provide free education (possibly even higher education), universal healthcare, reasonable infrastructure and environment, and various means of support for those who need it. I don't want Soviet-style planned economy because it doesn't _work_ not because I'm a worshipper of the Invisible Fisting Of Market. And Soviet-style states also seems to be incompatible with social liberalism.
But this conversation is about ensuring good things are done to us — subject to the government's understanding of what "good" means. And that is a road to slavery — workers on plantations had free food, shelter, education, entertainment, and healthcare, you'll recall, in exchange for work. They weren't paid for their work (100% taxation), but they didn't need money either, because everything useful — in their betters' educated opinion — was provided to them. The slaves hated it, for some reason... Probably, because they wanted to be able to make their own choices. And so do I.
Nope. If you take it to its conclusion, socialism will make sure that no slaves or masters exist. Everyone will get an equal share of production output. So please, read your Marx first before spouting nonsense.
Of course, Marx's socialism doesn't work well in _practice_.
Are you seriously contending, that without taxes our air would've been like that of Bejing?
Yep. You can't have regulation without taxes.
Who the fart are you? And what else are going to claim credit for? Am I to thank you for not poisoning my water too? For not beating me up?
Also for not shooting you or using your house as a toxic dump.
Well, then you breath your small part, and I'll breath mine.
I'm paying for my part in taxes. Since you don't want to pay them, it's only fair that you reimburse me for that.
Why don't you move to North Korea or Cuba instead? Everything is free (or 90+ percent subsidized) there — in exchange for 90+ % effective taxes...
I prefer Sweden, actually.
At the time of Jefferson there was no real problem with industrial pollution (little industry), healthcare (pre-germ theory world) and little need for roads. Practically the only things that were relevant at that time were army, public education and public welfare.
Jefferson supported the universal free 3-year public education, funded by taxes ("A Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge") and accessible both for boys and girls.
As for welfare, just let me quote him: "It is a duty certainly to give our sparings to those who want; but to see also that they are faithfully distributed and duly apportioned to the respective wants of those receivers.", from a letter from Thomas Jefferson to Megear, 1823.
So fuck off and learn your history. Founding fathers were most definitely not the spoiled brat libertardians.
Yes, it's mine (being a tax-paying resident of the USA) in a small part because it's protected by the environment legislation. Feel free to move to Beijing if you don't see a value of it.
Why don't I pay for what I actually use? And you pay for what you use?
For each meter of the road and cubic meter of fresh air?
Basics? You mean "exactly what I got but nothing else?
And no, the US was not founded on libertarian principles.
Only if you refund all my taxes — and not tax me ever again. Deal?
Of course not. That'll only pay for your past usage of the common infrastructure. You must also cease any use of it.
He-he... Hating "on" Libertarians, I see... Goog — mere ten years ago you barely knew, who we are.
Don't flatter yourself. Libertardian ideology is far older and was well-known even centuries before.
Yes. Please return that several millions of dollars that people before you have spent on your roads, security, education, good environment and so on. Libertardians in the US have never actually lived in countries that lack this stuff so they have no freaking idea how privileged they are.
We can build structures that can last for millenia. That's easy. For instance, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... utterly dwarfs pyramids and it's expected to last longer.
It's just that with rare exceptions people do not WANT such structures. A typical house could probably be rebuilt much cheaper in 50-70 years and with better safety. For example, the house where I live right now was built 5 years ago - it certainly doesn't look as 'solid' as a renovated Victorian house where I'd been living earlier. However, the new house is an order of magnitude better insulated so it requires much less heating and cooling. Its sound insulation allows me to run on a treadmill listening to music while my girlfriend is sleeping downstairs. The electrical wiring allows me to power a coffee maker, electric kettle and a dishwasher without burning down the whole block and so on.
But I totally expect that in 100 years it'd replaced with a house made from paper-thing carbon-nanotube reinforced smart self-forming concrete with built-in automated furniture extruders. While people will be telling each other that nobody can make anything lasting more than a week, unlike people in 2010 who could build stuff lasting for _decades_.
So let me get it straight, freedom of press is OK only when it's of no consequence? Do you tell me that North Korea and the USSR had been making the right decision to block and jam the Western radio?
That's OK. ISPs just have to provide equal opportunities (within reasonable bounds) for Netflix competitors to interconnect their own CDNs.
Should that matter? Freedom of speech should mean even the freedom of speech that you don't like. Even if you think its propaganda or pure nonsense.
There are double standards in play in Europe.