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Broadband access is a natural monopoly, and a municipality offering quality service should not be bound by the same obligations as a profit-making enterprise.

Broadband access is a natural monopoly, and a municipality offering quality service should not be bound by the same obligations as a profit-making enterprise. Neither of these statements make sense. First, regarding the "natural monopoly", I just can't understand why you'd say that. You've offered no supporting argument. So I'll just point out that, 30 years ago, ATT said exactly the same thing. But we've come a long way from there, virtually all of it good. Why would you want to run your broadband access under the same ideas that gave us the evil old phone monopoly? I don't understand why you'd think that a government-run service should have special privileges over a corporation. I would say the other way around, because the price of freedom is eternal vigilance, and all that. Plus there's the dismal track record of other governmental efforts. Take sports stadiums, for example. Giving public education huge benefits in that business certainly hasn't delivered better outcomes.

gergles 16y ago
AT&T was right that telephone service is a natural monopoly. There's still only one set of phone lines running into your house. This trend on HN of expecting every argument to be entirely self-supported and encyclopedic-length, defining everything from first principles, is really quite annoying. You don't win an argument by going "HA HA YOU DIDN'T DEFINE A TERM." If you don't know what a natural monopoly is, go look it the fuck up. Utilities such as telephone service and internet access are the textbook definition of a natural monopoly. Government run services already have tons of special privileges corporations don't. Try not paying your taxes and see what happens. Regardless, it is my opinion (and I'd believe the article writers would agree with me) that infrastructure is something that is inherently in the public interest and therefore best managed by the public (through government.) You don't drive on four separate interstate systems, you don't have eighteen sets of phone lines running into your house, and you don't have 4 sets of power cables either.
- billswift 16y ago
  >infrastructure is something that is inherently in the public interest and therefore best managed by the public (through government.) By this idiot "argument", government should go back to the 1950s through 1970s and start nationalizing railroads, power companies, and oil companies again. How did that work out again?
  - leot 16y ago
    Yes, because it worked out so well when governments divested themselves of their local transit systems to private businesses: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_American_streetcar_scandal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_American_streetcar_scanda...
    - CWuestefeld 16y ago
      Apples and oranges. On the one hand, you are talking about a program to privatize a previously-public program. That has nothing to do with the question of whether public entities should enter markets that are already serviced by corporate entities. Indeed, if anything, it seems to me that your example argues against government getting into business, because of the danger of it being corrupted or subverted, as in your example.
  - gergles 16y ago
    I don't know, let's ask California how their energy prices are doing now that they've been radically deregulated. Let's take a train on our efficient, safe, and inexpensive national rail system there to ask them.
    - CWuestefeld 16y ago
      Sigh. The brownouts a couple years back were because the State deregulated only one side of the market, leaving the sellers of electricity in an untenable position. Essentially, they had to compete to sell on the one hand, but were forbidden from competition on the purchasing side. The problem was entirely (and it's not often one can point a finger at one single cause, but here it is) the fault of ham-fisted State regulation. The federal rail system is not inexpensive, it's heavily subsidized. Don't start with the per-passenger-mile comparison to highways, because it's wrong: the study failed to account for capital cost in the railway, while counting for it against roads. On the topic of rail, the network of rail in the US was subsidized and built using eminent domain -- yet all of those railroads failed or were merged into others. The one exception, the one railroad that stood on its own without federal strongarming others into supporting it, is the only one that managed to survive until the present day.
- knieveltech 16y ago
  The tendency to require formal or semi-formal logical proof supporting any claims made correlates heavily with Aspergers.
otterley 16y ago
> First, regarding the "natural monopoly", I just can't understand why you'd say that Why do you think AT&T has basically remerged back together (with the exception of the RBOCs that make up Verizon) after it was broken up?
jellicle 16y ago
> First, regarding the "natural monopoly", I just can't understand why you'd say that. If you don't understand economies of scale or network effects, why are you commenting on this post?
- CWuestefeld 16y ago
  If you don't understand economies of scale or network effects, why are you commenting on this post? Ahem. Network effects refer to the network, not to the individual provider. As a customer of Verizon, for example, I can participate in the same network that ATT customers use. My ISP is PennTeleData, and I'm fairly confident that this is not the way you're moving your data. Yet we still manage to mutually benefit from network effects. Economies of scale are a positive effect of larger entities. But this is weighed against by the dinosaur effect, shall we say, that prevents them from changing business methods or products in an agile fashion. Or perhaps you believe that Microsoft should be the only maker of software?
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]

gergles 16y ago

AT&T was right that telephone service is a natural monopoly. There's still only one set of phone lines running into your house. This trend on HN of expecting every argument to be entirely self-supported and encyclopedic-length, defining everything from first principles, is really quite annoying. You don't win an argument by going "HA HA YOU DIDN'T DEFINE A TERM." If you don't know what a natural monopoly is, go look it the fuck up. Utilities such as telephone service and internet access are the textbook definition of a natural monopoly. Government run services already have tons of special privileges corporations don't. Try not paying your taxes and see what happens. Regardless, it is my opinion (and I'd believe the article writers would agree with me) that infrastructure is something that is inherently in the public interest and therefore best managed by the public (through government.) You don't drive on four separate interstate systems, you don't have eighteen sets of phone lines running into your house, and you don't have 4 sets of power cables either.

billswift 16y ago
>infrastructure is something that is inherently in the public interest and therefore best managed by the public (through government.) By this idiot "argument", government should go back to the 1950s through 1970s and start nationalizing railroads, power companies, and oil companies again. How did that work out again?
- leot 16y ago
  Yes, because it worked out so well when governments divested themselves of their local transit systems to private businesses: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_American_streetcar_scandal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_American_streetcar_scanda...
  - CWuestefeld 16y ago
    Apples and oranges. On the one hand, you are talking about a program to privatize a previously-public program. That has nothing to do with the question of whether public entities should enter markets that are already serviced by corporate entities. Indeed, if anything, it seems to me that your example argues against government getting into business, because of the danger of it being corrupted or subverted, as in your example.
- gergles 16y ago
  I don't know, let's ask California how their energy prices are doing now that they've been radically deregulated. Let's take a train on our efficient, safe, and inexpensive national rail system there to ask them.
  - CWuestefeld 16y ago
    Sigh. The brownouts a couple years back were because the State deregulated only one side of the market, leaving the sellers of electricity in an untenable position. Essentially, they had to compete to sell on the one hand, but were forbidden from competition on the purchasing side. The problem was entirely (and it's not often one can point a finger at one single cause, but here it is) the fault of ham-fisted State regulation. The federal rail system is not inexpensive, it's heavily subsidized. Don't start with the per-passenger-mile comparison to highways, because it's wrong: the study failed to account for capital cost in the railway, while counting for it against roads. On the topic of rail, the network of rail in the US was subsidized and built using eminent domain -- yet all of those railroads failed or were merged into others. The one exception, the one railroad that stood on its own without federal strongarming others into supporting it, is the only one that managed to survive until the present day.
knieveltech 16y ago
The tendency to require formal or semi-formal logical proof supporting any claims made correlates heavily with Aspergers.

otterley 16y ago

> First, regarding the "natural monopoly", I just can't understand why you'd say that Why do you think AT&T has basically remerged back together (with the exception of the RBOCs that make up Verizon) after it was broken up?

jellicle 16y ago

> First, regarding the "natural monopoly", I just can't understand why you'd say that. If you don't understand economies of scale or network effects, why are you commenting on this post?

CWuestefeld 16y ago
If you don't understand economies of scale or network effects, why are you commenting on this post? Ahem. Network effects refer to the network, not to the individual provider. As a customer of Verizon, for example, I can participate in the same network that ATT customers use. My ISP is PennTeleData, and I'm fairly confident that this is not the way you're moving your data. Yet we still manage to mutually benefit from network effects. Economies of scale are a positive effect of larger entities. But this is weighed against by the dinosaur effect, shall we say, that prevents them from changing business methods or products in an agile fashion. Or perhaps you believe that Microsoft should be the only maker of software?

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]