8 ms·

>is the panacea we all hope for I have never seen "panacea" used by anyone except those opposed to any public infrastructure, and while you sound like you're s

by xoa 8y ago

>is the panacea we all hope for I have never seen "panacea" used by anyone except those opposed to any public infrastructure, and while you sound like you're speaking in all good faith and I appreciate that I still have trouble seeing this as something other then a strawman. Of course governments can have issues too. Public roads can have potholes. Bridges have not been kept up. Public parks aren't always maintained to the extent they're supposed to be. Etc etc. But at the same time there are plenty of good cases to show it can be done very well too, and the massive failures of privatized infrastructure are also in ample evidence. Fundamentally natural monopolies and basic floor level services for society (taking into account not just existing people but future generations and flexibility value to the nation overall) aren't great fits for a market. Some things really do make sense as an area of government. Corruption is simply something that has to be fought, period, but we do have the tools to do so more easily at the local government level then for more widely distributed private entities. And whatever else the fact is that privatized information infrastructure simply has not worked overall. There will absolutely be cases of mismanagement and corruption in public information infrastructure should it become widespread, there will be fierce fights and politics and so forth same as with roads and everything else. That however doesn't make it worse then the alternatives, and long term in America at least citizens get the government they deserve.

supercanuck 8y ago
The other point is that with a government, people have the opportunity to vote management out. Not so much with Comcast.
- CountSessine 8y ago
  But you don't have the opportunity to vote with your pocketbook at all once it becomes a government service. Why not use the power of government to create a competitive market that would allow new ISPs to enter the market? Like making a modest investment in common conduits into neighborhoods that all ISPs can wire through?
  - trylist 8y ago
    How can you vote with your wallet against a monopoly? Just go without? That's not a choice, it's coercion.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
theptip 8y ago
> I have never seen "panacea" used by anyone except those opposed to any public infrastructure This is a good point; seems like an isolated demand for rigor. The bar we should be aiming to be above is "better than Comcast", which is a quite low standard. > Corruption is simply something that has to be fought, period, but we do have the tools to do so more easily at the local government level then for more widely distributed private entities. I like this way of putting it. At the local scope, you aren't fighting well-paid lobbyists; you just have to persuade a majority of people in your area, and that's a much more tractable problem. The only problem here is that people tend to care less about local politics (turnout is lower, information flow is harder, etc.) which does add challenges.
- microcolonel 8y ago
  > This is a good point; seems like an isolated demand for rigor. The bar we should be aiming to be above is "better than Comcast", which is a quite low standard. The problem is that in many cases, the common folk in a town have to pay at least somewhat for the municipal broadband even if they do not use it; so it'd better be worth using. I can understand municipal cable conduits and such, since they are somewhat analogous to the roads; but when your municipal government is actively excluding competition (Comcast in this case, if the title is anything to go by), they had better make sure they municipal cars on those roads are good; because if you don't like them, your only recourse is generally to leave town. To satisfy the "better than Comcast" requirement, generally speaking the only thing you need to do is stop excluding their competitors. Comcast is actually pretty reasonable in competitive markets; but when a satellite internet company needs specific permission to operate in your county, that's something you can fix right now, with no investment, and immediately gain some competitiveness in your ISP market.
  - nonce413 8y ago
    > the common folk in a town have to pay at least somewhat for the municipal broadband even if they do not use it; so it'd better be worth using. Just anecdotally, there are Whip City Fiber signs up all over (you get a discount if you let them put one on your lawn with installation). We're long past the days where Internet access is desired by only a subset of the population. I think $70/mo is a little above what "everybody" wants to pay. I am hoping after the initial financials have settled, they will offer a lower tier. > actively excluding competition (Comcast in this case, if the title is anything to go by) If you read the article, what Charlemont rejected was the town paying Comcast for a build out. That's a significant point that's glossed over in most of these public vs private debates - with low population density, private communications companies do not nobly invest their own money, but get the government to pay for the infrastructure that they end up owning.
onlyrealcuzzo 8y ago
Is private sector waste a big thing? I wonder if there's something simple we're missing for a way to stop public spending that goes to corruption/waste.
- wongarsu 8y ago
  >Is private sector waste a big thing? sure, lots of big companies have problems with waste. Keeping things lean, focused and uncorrupted gets hard with size and higher hierarchies. But if the incentives are there it is somewhat easier for a private enterprise to avoid waste in all its forms. >I wonder if there's something simple we're missing for a way to stop public spending that goes to corruption/waste. Yes, accountability and informed voters. Why is a major who hired her cousin as city manager (even if it was at market rate) still in office? Bringing reporting to the 21 century with easy to digest dashboards how various metrics of the city changed over the last 12 years or so would also help. The data is mostly there, it's just very time consuming to consume.
  - michaelt 8y ago
    Why is a major who hired her cousin as city manager (...) still in office? Decline in quality local newspapers with original reporting?
- vkou 8y ago
  > Is private sector waste a big thing? As anyone who has ever spent any time working in the private sector will tell you: Absolutely. Large companies routinely piss millions, and billions of dollars away on ego projects, inter-department fighting, building things that are counterproductive to the company's goals, bloating their bureaucracy, and other corporate politics bullshit. Not to mention that any income that's left is skimmed off the end, by shareholders. I get that they want a profit on their investment, but from the customer's perspective, dividend payments are a great example of waste.
rayiner 8y ago
Your post is based on a premise that is simply false: > And whatever else the fact is that privatized information infrastructure simply has not worked overall. "Worked" compared to what? The U.S. is in the top 10 for average connection speeds: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Internet_connection_speeds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Internet_.... It is far ahead of France, Germany, the U.K., Italy, and Spain (which is 70%+ of the EU population). That's all the result of private infrastructure. > Of course governments can have issues too. This is a huge understatement. Our roads are full of potholes. Amtrak is never on time. WMATA is on fire. New York spends 5-7x as much money to build a mile of subway as London or Paris.[1] Our water infrastructure is poisoning children with lead.[2] That's our public infrastructure. I travel to Germany and Japan for business, and when I come home, it's not broadband that I'm steamed about. Our broadband is fine (better than Germany, worse than Japan), especially here on the east coast. But our public, government-run infrastructure is total shit in comparison. After riding Japanese trains around, I get on the D.C. Metro and it makes me actively mad. To me, the correct premise seems to be exactly the opposite of the one you're applying. U.S. state and local governments are so completely awful at building and maintaining infrastructure, that even a private monopoly with no competition is preferable to a government-run system. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-construction-costs.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-... [2] https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/watchdog/ct-chicago-water-lead-contamination-20180411-htmlstory.html https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/watchdog/ct-chicago-wate...
- guelo 8y ago
  In those countries with better infrastructure there isn't as strong of a government-is-always-awful ideology as we have here. Our "conservative" politicians thinks of their job as destroying government. So we get bad government. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.
  - rayiner 8y ago
    Except infrastructure is awful in solidly blue states as well as red states. What "conservative politicians" are to blame for the NYC subway falling apart? I think you've got the causation backward. There's a bigger "market" for anti-government rhetoric in the U.S. than in Europe because the governmental units closest to the people here are so awful.

by xoa 8y ago

supercanuck 8y ago

The other point is that with a government, people have the opportunity to vote management out. Not so much with Comcast.

CountSessine 8y ago
But you don't have the opportunity to vote with your pocketbook at all once it becomes a government service. Why not use the power of government to create a competitive market that would allow new ISPs to enter the market? Like making a modest investment in common conduits into neighborhoods that all ISPs can wire through?
- trylist 8y ago
  How can you vote with your wallet against a monopoly? Just go without? That's not a choice, it's coercion.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]

theptip 8y ago

> I have never seen "panacea" used by anyone except those opposed to any public infrastructure This is a good point; seems like an isolated demand for rigor. The bar we should be aiming to be above is "better than Comcast", which is a quite low standard. > Corruption is simply something that has to be fought, period, but we do have the tools to do so more easily at the local government level then for more widely distributed private entities. I like this way of putting it. At the local scope, you aren't fighting well-paid lobbyists; you just have to persuade a majority of people in your area, and that's a much more tractable problem. The only problem here is that people tend to care less about local politics (turnout is lower, information flow is harder, etc.) which does add challenges.

microcolonel 8y ago
> This is a good point; seems like an isolated demand for rigor. The bar we should be aiming to be above is "better than Comcast", which is a quite low standard. The problem is that in many cases, the common folk in a town have to pay at least somewhat for the municipal broadband even if they do not use it; so it'd better be worth using. I can understand municipal cable conduits and such, since they are somewhat analogous to the roads; but when your municipal government is actively excluding competition (Comcast in this case, if the title is anything to go by), they had better make sure they municipal cars on those roads are good; because if you don't like them, your only recourse is generally to leave town. To satisfy the "better than Comcast" requirement, generally speaking the only thing you need to do is stop excluding their competitors. Comcast is actually pretty reasonable in competitive markets; but when a satellite internet company needs specific permission to operate in your county, that's something you can fix right now, with no investment, and immediately gain some competitiveness in your ISP market.
- nonce413 8y ago
  > the common folk in a town have to pay at least somewhat for the municipal broadband even if they do not use it; so it'd better be worth using. Just anecdotally, there are Whip City Fiber signs up all over (you get a discount if you let them put one on your lawn with installation). We're long past the days where Internet access is desired by only a subset of the population. I think $70/mo is a little above what "everybody" wants to pay. I am hoping after the initial financials have settled, they will offer a lower tier. > actively excluding competition (Comcast in this case, if the title is anything to go by) If you read the article, what Charlemont rejected was the town paying Comcast for a build out. That's a significant point that's glossed over in most of these public vs private debates - with low population density, private communications companies do not nobly invest their own money, but get the government to pay for the infrastructure that they end up owning.

onlyrealcuzzo 8y ago

Is private sector waste a big thing? I wonder if there's something simple we're missing for a way to stop public spending that goes to corruption/waste.

wongarsu 8y ago
>Is private sector waste a big thing? sure, lots of big companies have problems with waste. Keeping things lean, focused and uncorrupted gets hard with size and higher hierarchies. But if the incentives are there it is somewhat easier for a private enterprise to avoid waste in all its forms. >I wonder if there's something simple we're missing for a way to stop public spending that goes to corruption/waste. Yes, accountability and informed voters. Why is a major who hired her cousin as city manager (even if it was at market rate) still in office? Bringing reporting to the 21 century with easy to digest dashboards how various metrics of the city changed over the last 12 years or so would also help. The data is mostly there, it's just very time consuming to consume.
- michaelt 8y ago
  Why is a major who hired her cousin as city manager (...) still in office? Decline in quality local newspapers with original reporting?
vkou 8y ago
> Is private sector waste a big thing? As anyone who has ever spent any time working in the private sector will tell you: Absolutely. Large companies routinely piss millions, and billions of dollars away on ego projects, inter-department fighting, building things that are counterproductive to the company's goals, bloating their bureaucracy, and other corporate politics bullshit. Not to mention that any income that's left is skimmed off the end, by shareholders. I get that they want a profit on their investment, but from the customer's perspective, dividend payments are a great example of waste.

rayiner 8y ago

Your post is based on a premise that is simply false: > And whatever else the fact is that privatized information infrastructure simply has not worked overall. "Worked" compared to what? The U.S. is in the top 10 for average connection speeds: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Internet_connection_speeds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Internet_.... It is far ahead of France, Germany, the U.K., Italy, and Spain (which is 70%+ of the EU population). That's all the result of private infrastructure. > Of course governments can have issues too. This is a huge understatement. Our roads are full of potholes. Amtrak is never on time. WMATA is on fire. New York spends 5-7x as much money to build a mile of subway as London or Paris.[1] Our water infrastructure is poisoning children with lead.[2] That's our public infrastructure. I travel to Germany and Japan for business, and when I come home, it's not broadband that I'm steamed about. Our broadband is fine (better than Germany, worse than Japan), especially here on the east coast. But our public, government-run infrastructure is total shit in comparison. After riding Japanese trains around, I get on the D.C. Metro and it makes me actively mad. To me, the correct premise seems to be exactly the opposite of the one you're applying. U.S. state and local governments are so completely awful at building and maintaining infrastructure, that even a private monopoly with no competition is preferable to a government-run system. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-construction-costs.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-... [2] https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/watchdog/ct-chicago-water-lead-contamination-20180411-htmlstory.html https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/watchdog/ct-chicago-wate...

guelo 8y ago
In those countries with better infrastructure there isn't as strong of a government-is-always-awful ideology as we have here. Our "conservative" politicians thinks of their job as destroying government. So we get bad government. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.
- rayiner 8y ago
  Except infrastructure is awful in solidly blue states as well as red states. What "conservative politicians" are to blame for the NYC subway falling apart? I think you've got the causation backward. There's a bigger "market" for anti-government rhetoric in the U.S. than in Europe because the governmental units closest to the people here are so awful.