4 ms·

Imagine if GM or Ford prevented their cars from driving on certain roads.

astrodust 8y ago
Imagine if GM built a significant highway and made it available for free for any GM OnStar customer, but everyone else had to pay tolls. This used to seem utterly dystopian, but it's probably right around the corner. For instance, Detroit could be forced to sell off highways and if GM's financing division bought one as an investment...
- mindslight 8y ago
  > Detroit could be forced to sell off highways and if GM's financing division bought one as an investment This is completely analogous to the current issue, just an iteration or two behind. Detroit should be incapable of "selling off highways", as they're public property built out with public money. "Detroit" is a force monopoly that purported to steward public money for public works, not a free enterprise that took private investment to improve private property. An [inherently temporary] politician purporting to represent Detroit while selling off assets for short-term balance sheet boosts is in violation of the public trust and therefore has no actual authority to contract. All of these communication companies used to fall under the purview of regulated utilities, and were built out using public subsidies. They've lobbied to escape the regulatory regime, and are now playing the "muh propertuh" card with public infrastructure that they essentially embezzled from the public. If big ISP wishes offer only curated media services instead of general communications, they can easily divest their holdings of this inappropriately-titled public infrastructure to another company which can then carry their traffic non-exclusively.
  - astrodust 8y ago
    "Should be incapable" and "are legally prohibited from" are two different things here. The United States is perilously close to seeing its infrastructure utterly collapse in many areas with the backlog of repairs climbing exponentially every year. Sure, maintenance is expensive, but failing to do routine maintenance means a simple repair becomes a big problem. If there's one thing that America seems to love it's building things, and if there's one thing it seems allergic to it's paying taxes to keep those things in working order. The only way out for some municipalities might be to offload these expensive responsibilities to third parties (e.g. "Public-Private Partnerships" or outright sale) to get them off their books. Domino's taking over road repair responsibilities is just the beginning of a sad trend. The problem here is that roads aren't cheap to maintain but they're necessary and if the only option is a private one then equal access is critical. The same goes for network infrastructure although at a smaller scale.
    - mindslight 8y ago
      This is the kind of thinking that enables this cancer of public-private corruption. The agility offered by the private sector would have been during the build out. Privatizing a monopoly after having used public authority to carve it out and after having suffered the bureaucratic red tape to build it is exactly backwards. Frankly, we'd be better off letting the high-speed road surface fall apart rather than giving up the public right of way! The sensible public-private synergy would be to retain public control of the monopoly while applying market freedom to what gets funded, so politicians could no longer play chicken with services. Let individual taxpayers choose between funding roads repairs and traffic police, between national parks and the NSA.

Imagine if GM built a significant highway and made it available for free for any GM OnStar customer, but everyone else had to pay tolls. This used to seem utterly dystopian, but it's probably right around the corner. For instance, Detroit could be forced to sell off highways and if GM's financing division bought one as an investment...

mindslight 8y ago
> Detroit could be forced to sell off highways and if GM's financing division bought one as an investment This is completely analogous to the current issue, just an iteration or two behind. Detroit should be incapable of "selling off highways", as they're public property built out with public money. "Detroit" is a force monopoly that purported to steward public money for public works, not a free enterprise that took private investment to improve private property. An [inherently temporary] politician purporting to represent Detroit while selling off assets for short-term balance sheet boosts is in violation of the public trust and therefore has no actual authority to contract. All of these communication companies used to fall under the purview of regulated utilities, and were built out using public subsidies. They've lobbied to escape the regulatory regime, and are now playing the "muh propertuh" card with public infrastructure that they essentially embezzled from the public. If big ISP wishes offer only curated media services instead of general communications, they can easily divest their holdings of this inappropriately-titled public infrastructure to another company which can then carry their traffic non-exclusively.
- astrodust 8y ago
  "Should be incapable" and "are legally prohibited from" are two different things here. The United States is perilously close to seeing its infrastructure utterly collapse in many areas with the backlog of repairs climbing exponentially every year. Sure, maintenance is expensive, but failing to do routine maintenance means a simple repair becomes a big problem. If there's one thing that America seems to love it's building things, and if there's one thing it seems allergic to it's paying taxes to keep those things in working order. The only way out for some municipalities might be to offload these expensive responsibilities to third parties (e.g. "Public-Private Partnerships" or outright sale) to get them off their books. Domino's taking over road repair responsibilities is just the beginning of a sad trend. The problem here is that roads aren't cheap to maintain but they're necessary and if the only option is a private one then equal access is critical. The same goes for network infrastructure although at a smaller scale.
  - mindslight 8y ago
    This is the kind of thinking that enables this cancer of public-private corruption. The agility offered by the private sector would have been during the build out. Privatizing a monopoly after having used public authority to carve it out and after having suffered the bureaucratic red tape to build it is exactly backwards. Frankly, we'd be better off letting the high-speed road surface fall apart rather than giving up the public right of way! The sensible public-private synergy would be to retain public control of the monopoly while applying market freedom to what gets funded, so politicians could no longer play chicken with services. Let individual taxpayers choose between funding roads repairs and traffic police, between national parks and the NSA.