8 ms·

I understand the opposition to another government service on ideological grounds, but the response in Ohio seems merely pro-monopoly and not pro-market. Is ther

I understand the opposition to another government service on ideological grounds, but the response in Ohio seems merely pro-monopoly and not pro-market. Is there anywhere in the country where state Republicans are looking for ways to increase competition in the broadband market? Everyone uses the internet, I don't understand why only one party is looking for a solution to this problem.

dboreham 5y ago
Because corruption.
cure 5y ago
Afaik only in Arkansas have Republicans seen the light and are actually supporting municipal broadband (https://www.govtech.com/policy/arkansas-opens-the-door-for-municipal-broadband-networks.html https://www.govtech.com/policy/arkansas-opens-the-door-for-m...). I wonder what made them come to that conclusion, it would be interesting to see if that can be replicated elsewhere. Everywhere else, Republicans are trying to shut muni broadband out. They are colluding with the legacy ISP monopolies to keep speeds low and costs high. I find this surprising because they don't seem to consider the long term economic damage this will do to their states. Who is going to want to move there to work remotely if the internet is expensive and slow?
- falcolas 5y ago
  It honestly feels like short term thinking is dominating not only businesses, but government officials too. It boggles my mind, frankly, because of the exact things you mentioned: losing citizens, economic damage, and so forth. Perhaps the incentives just aren’t there to think long term, for either business leaders or politicians.
  - soco 5y ago
    Could it have something to do with which party supporters are gonna lose more if internet is slow? Can internet be linked in some way to poll results?
    - akkartik 5y ago
      Conspiracy theory time: if you get rid of cities your state will turn reliably red. That way lies the Khmer Rouge..
      - mbg721 5y ago
        Ah, the grand plan is to complete the process of rust-belt de-industrialization and turn Ohio into the Shire! It all makes perfect sense now...
        lotsofpulp 5y ago
        They would still have 2 Senate votes.
        8note 5y ago
        The Shire is a bit too happy of a place to vote Republican. You need people to be angry and afraid
      - alentist 5y ago
        The Khmer Rouge was a left-wing (Communist) genocidal regime.
        8note 5y ago
        Is that to say you don't think right wingers are capable of genocide? Or that they wouldnt do it to people in cities? If it's purely informational for people who don't know what the Khmer Rouge is, it'd be handy to include why its a comparable situation
        alentist 5y ago
        Instead of this knee-jerk reaction, why don't you first read the comment I'm replying to? > it'd be handy to include why its a comparable situation akkartik made that bizarre comparison, not me.
    - 5y ago
  - unyttigfjelltol 5y ago
    Politics is business. Business is about making money. From those foundational facts, it's fair to infer that if state Republican politicians are working to ban cities from providing basic services, the politicians are doing this because they think they can make money doing it. It's wrong. But then, politics, in its current incarnation, is business.
    - theshadowknows 5y ago
      And more importantly, make money for themselves and not for the city/state etc.
      - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
        The only reason people hate graft more than they hate boondoggles is because in the former case it's nearly impossible to bury your head in the sand and pretend like the money was smartly allocated. No matter how you cut it at the end of the day the tax dollars are being squandered on lining pockets they shouldn't be.
        theshadowknows 5y ago
        Extra points for using 'boondoggles' in a sentence :)
  - thayne 5y ago
    It's not surprising. Elected officials care more about getting reelected in the next election than long term effects of their decisions. So they are incentivized to care more about the short term.
    - mavhc 5y ago
      In my new world order we'll vote to fire people in charge, not to hire them
      - vegetablepotpie 5y ago
        We have a system like that with judges in some states. Examples of judges failing to be retained are sparse https://ballotpedia.org/Retention_election https://ballotpedia.org/Retention_election
- only_as_i_fall 5y ago
  Certainly not a good thing, but I'd be surprised if this has a measurable impact on the overall attractiveness of a location. Even expensive internet is likely less than 10% of overall expenses and, in my experience, it's very hard to tell if your internet will be good or bad without literally plugging in a modem, which realistically most people won't have the knowledge or means to do. Call me a cynic but I guess my thought is that if incremental decreases in qol and poor planning were enough to drive people away from the republican party it would have happened long ago.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    Is there ever bad fiber internet? If a place has fiber to the home, there is a pretty high probability that it is better than whatever garbage the coaxial cable company is peddling.
    - sbradford26 5y ago
      I have had fiber at two different houses and the first one was worse in that I could only reliably get 890 Mb down and 920 Mb up. The second house I get 950down/950up with the same provider and same hardware. There is variability but nowhere near as much as cable.
    - jschwartzi 5y ago
      Ziply was awful. We got screwed by them when they bought the fiber network in our area, canceled our autopay, and then didn’t bill us for three months until we had racked up a bunch of late fees. My wife spent hours on the phone with them getting the issues sorted out. It was the worst customer service experience I’ve ever had with a broadband provider. I’ve had Charter, Qwest, and Comcast.
      - lotsofpulp 5y ago
        That’s a people problem. I assume the actual product worked fine though?
- thayne 5y ago
  I'm not sure about at the state level, but several republican controlled cities in Utah also have or are building municipal broadband.
  - kyralis 5y ago
    Republican cities are fine with municipal broadband, because it solves a real problem in those cities - local leaders are generally more pragmatic that way. Republican state and national leaders, on the other hand, are generally more concerned about their political narrative. They're not the ones impacted by the crap broadband in the cities.
- hkai 5y ago
  So you're not seeing any concerns about letting the government control your internet? Not at all? Especially when this idea is proposed by a party who is vocally against freedom of speech and a few other freedoms?
  - ryukafalz 5y ago
    The government is beholden to the first amendment, unlike the (small number of) private ISPs. Even if they weren't, in almost all cases we're talking about municipal broadband as an additional option, not the only option. One that would drive down prices through competition and whose operators have a vested interest in their users having a good experience regardless of how remote they are.
    - throw0101a 5y ago
      A lot of muni broadband is the government owning the cables/fibre (OSI Layer 1/2) and then having ISPs sell IP (Layer 3) to those connected. See Utopia in UT for example: * https://www.utopiafiber.com/isp/ https://www.utopiafiber.com/isp/
  - mcphage 5y ago
    > So you're not seeing any concerns about letting the government control your internet? Laws forbidding municipal broadband fall squarely in the “government control your internet” camp. > Especially when this idea is proposed by a party who is vocally against freedom of speech and a few other freedoms? Well that’s the nice thing about municipal internet: the government is controlled by the first amendment, unlike corporate broadband. So if you’re worried about being censored by your internet provider, I’d stick with the internet provider which is constitutionally forbidden from doing that.
    - fitblipper 5y ago
      I love how you put that! When the utility is operated by the government we, the people, have more direct control of how they operate. We don't have to put up with laws which encourage mass surveillance and data retention [1], 3rd party doctorine which makes all of your data owned by the provider you are using so you have no rights over them, and the governments ability to just ask or provide a gag ordered request to get all your data. This cuts out the middle man and allows us to demand our communication rights directly from the government instead of muddying the waters by allowing a 3rd party corporation advocate against the consumer/citizen. [1] https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/28/house-vote-sj-34-isp-regulations-fcc https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/28/house-vote-sj-34-isp-regul...
- irjustin 5y ago
  They do consider it, but it's lobbying. The ISPs control a lot and have a lot of money to 'donate'.
- ookdatnog 5y ago
  I think it makes political sense for them to do this. The "small government" political platform obviously appeals to large corporations and ideological libertarians, but these groups don't get you a majority in the election. So how do you get average people who don't directly stand to gain from these policies to vote for you? You convince them that governments are intrinsically ineffective, that the private sector will systematically perform better. This is presented almost as a law of nature, if you disagree you simply don't understand economics. The existence of a clear and prominent counterexample (a government-run competitor outperforming privately owned businesses) is pure poison to this story, so they cannot allow it to exist. They -- knowingly, deliberately -- choose to hurt the people they represent and the economy of their state to save their political platform.
- noobermin 5y ago
  The Ohio Republicans literally were bribed by a failing nuclear power plant and have faced barely any reprecussions from it due to the gerrymandering and general reliable partisanship in the gerrymandered districts. Only a year later is the (now former) speaker of house being removed from office after being re-elected in 2020! I wouldn't be surprised if the ISPs are also literally (and not even in the figurative sense of legal campaign contributions) bribing someone to put this into law.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
cracker-news 5y ago
> I don't understand why only one party is looking for a solution to this problem. Are you retarded?
antattack 5y ago
I presume religious groups that support Republicans see internet as a source of evil. https://www.technologyreview.com/2014/04/04/13684/how-the-internet-is-taking-away-americas-religion/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2014/04/04/13684/how-the-in... "the drop in religious upbringing, the increase in college-level education and the increase in Internet use—that together explain about 50 percent of the drop in religious affiliation."
CountDrewku 5y ago
Doubtful... it seems neither party is interested in breaking up monopolies. They'd both rather bend them to their interests is some selfish power move.
- dylan604 5y ago
  What's the point in the breaking up, if you just let the pieces reassemble a few years later?
  - frockington1 5y ago
    Campaign buzzwords. It's the same reason neither party will actually do anything about 2A or abortion. Can't get your base riled up if the issue is resolved
    - dylan604 5y ago
      I would love to see an amendment passed that limits all campaigns to the 3 months immediately preceding an election. Campaign, get elected, go to work, and not campaign, get elected, immediately start campaigning again. It's never not campaign season. Except we can't pass an amendment because everyone is campaigning.
- nobody9999 5y ago
  >Doubtful... it seems neither party is interested in breaking up monopolies. They'd both rather bend them to their interests is some selfish power move. Except reality[0] doesn't comport with your statement. That's not to say that the bills proposed are perfect, but they are from one party (and not the one trying to block municipal broadband in OH). Just some food for thought. [0] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/06/five-new-bills-aim-to-break-up-big-tech-platforms-force-them-to-play-nice/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/06/five-new-bills-a...
  - CountDrewku 5y ago
    >but they are from one party (and not the one trying to block municipal broadband in OH). Did you even read the article you linked? There's clear Republican involvement... "“Big Tech companies are stifling American innovation with their monopolistic behavior,” said Rep. Lance Gooden (R-Tex.), who co-sponsored two of the bills."" "Bipartisan movement It’s unclear whether any of these bills will pass. The last one, the Merger Filing Fee Modernization Act, appears most likely at this point since it’s a relatively incremental piece of legislation that already has bipartisan support in both chambers. But the fact that the other bills, which garnered bipartisan support in the otherwise highly partisan House, suggests that a major overhaul of antitrust law may be imminent, even if these specific bills don’t survive." >Except reality[0] doesn't comport with your statement. Let me know when they pass....
bionhoward 5y ago
There's a serious argument to be made to keep the government out of areas which ought to be free market territory. If there's not enough demand for internet in these areas to justify multiple service providers, perhaps that's OK, because to provide the service would be a waste of resources... Just because internet is a utility does not mean the government ought to be the one providing that utility. Also, this just reinforces the argument for projects like Starlink -- which could change the game in rural broadband. Conservatives have a lot of motivation to oppose government programs and that does not necessarily make them corrupt. What America needs is more intellectual + centrist + pragmatic conservatism to counter Trumpist BS, not necessarily more government programs....
- natex 5y ago
  A municipality's decision to implement common locally-owned internet as a public utility IS the free market. The State should not get to decide what's a "waste of resources" for me and my neighbors.
  - bluGill 5y ago
    If your neighbor doesn't use the public internet for whatever reason, then making your neighbor pay for it is a waste of resources.
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      And some people do not have cars or children in schools or use the food banks or go to community college. Not everything is about the individual cost/benefit, and individuals can benefit from society wide benefits.
      - taeric 5y ago
        Further in this direction. The neighbor that doesn't use this internet will still benefit from the value of new jobs and opportunity that it will bring.
- 5y ago
gaoshan 5y ago
It is totally pro-monopoly. I live in Ohio and many of our communities are only served by a single provider. Those providers offer fairly sluggish service as well as fairly high costs. People that I work with regularly complain about one or the other. My community discussed community broadband (going so far as to put at least exploring it to a vote on one of our ballots). It was shot down ("Why do we need to increase taxes to pay for this? I already have the internets... no one needs more") and shortly after that we finally got a second provider. Just that second provider caused prices to plummet. I went from being stuck with getting anywhere from 5 to 30 down (advertised as "up to 100") for $75 a month to getting gigabit internet for $65 a month.
- mywittyname 5y ago
  I heard a while ago that Ohio wrote into the Constitution a monopoly on casino gambling.\ Not knowing if I was remembering correctly, I read through the state constitution, and holy hell, they dedicate like seven pages of the constitution to casino gambling for four gambling facilities. For reference, most other sections are a few paragraphs, at most.
  - crote 5y ago
    It's not that uncommon, actually. In The Netherlands, both running a lottery and running a physical casinos are reserved for two state-owned companies. By law, half of the profit goes to charity. The rest goes to the government. In Sweden, the government-owned liquor chain Systembolaget is the only one allowed to sell stuff containing more than 3.5% alcohol. Norway has basically the same thing going on. The idea is that things like gambling and alcohol consumption have an overall negative impact on society, but completely banning them will cause even more harm. Having a state monopoly makes it easier to promote safe and moderate consumption, as no profit is required and criminal figures are kept out - at least in theory.
    - charwalker 5y ago
      Oregon has a state run liquor board over distribution. It's great as technically they own all the product in a licensed liquor store so prices are identical. You can walk into any place, make a request for a certain bottle, and it usually arrives in a few days at the same price it would be anywhere else. If only we could apply that model to other services...
thayne 5y ago
It sounds like this is just one provision in a big budget bill. My guess is it didn't even factor into how most of the legislature voted at all. I wouldn't be surprised if some of them didn't even know it was in the bill.
JoeAltmaier 5y ago
Oh yes, this. In every small Iowa town they have private ISPs/ cable service. Hurray free enterprise! But they're all monopolies, given by the city to some favorite son. The biggest house in any midwest small town, is the cable guy. Gouging the highest prices the locals will tolerate. That's what Republican 'free enterprise' looks like.
jliptzin 5y ago
When Republicans say they are pro-business they actually mean they are pro-entrenched corporate oligopolies.
- stronglikedan 5y ago
  Replace "Republicans" with "Politicians" (at the state and federal level), and the statement is just as correct. I believe the problem is allowing private money to affect government, but I have no idea how to fix it.
- axaxs 5y ago
  This isn't clearly a R vs D issue, perhaps localized. TN has a surprising amount of gigabit muni broadband in very, very red areas. Though another R has done her damnedest to stop that.
WhompingWindows 5y ago
Pro-market and pro-monopoly are mere principles which don't matter when the sausage gets made. Politicians have no problem keeping their fingers on the scale, provided they get paid well for the service.
binaryblitz 5y ago
Because politicians in the US exist to accept bribes for personal gain. Very few of them seem to give two shits about anyone besides themselves. Especially on the right side of the aisle.
partiallypro 5y ago
No party is -actually- looking for a solution to the problem. The main problem is municipal monopolies which the federal government has no control over (ie Charter pays the city a fee to be their only cable provider in X neighborhood or AT&T won't lease line space to competitors on their utility poles, etc.) Local government have vastly more powerful controlling interests than Washington in terms of a company can just up and leave. Google tried to get around this but has ultimately failed the majority of the time.

dboreham 5y ago

Because corruption.

cure 5y ago

Afaik only in Arkansas have Republicans seen the light and are actually supporting municipal broadband (https://www.govtech.com/policy/arkansas-opens-the-door-for-municipal-broadband-networks.html https://www.govtech.com/policy/arkansas-opens-the-door-for-m...). I wonder what made them come to that conclusion, it would be interesting to see if that can be replicated elsewhere. Everywhere else, Republicans are trying to shut muni broadband out. They are colluding with the legacy ISP monopolies to keep speeds low and costs high. I find this surprising because they don't seem to consider the long term economic damage this will do to their states. Who is going to want to move there to work remotely if the internet is expensive and slow?

falcolas 5y ago
It honestly feels like short term thinking is dominating not only businesses, but government officials too. It boggles my mind, frankly, because of the exact things you mentioned: losing citizens, economic damage, and so forth. Perhaps the incentives just aren’t there to think long term, for either business leaders or politicians.
- soco 5y ago
  Could it have something to do with which party supporters are gonna lose more if internet is slow? Can internet be linked in some way to poll results?
  - akkartik 5y ago
    Conspiracy theory time: if you get rid of cities your state will turn reliably red. That way lies the Khmer Rouge..
    - mbg721 5y ago
      Ah, the grand plan is to complete the process of rust-belt de-industrialization and turn Ohio into the Shire! It all makes perfect sense now...
      - lotsofpulp 5y ago
        They would still have 2 Senate votes.
      - 8note 5y ago
        The Shire is a bit too happy of a place to vote Republican. You need people to be angry and afraid
    - alentist 5y ago
      The Khmer Rouge was a left-wing (Communist) genocidal regime.
      - 8note 5y ago
        Is that to say you don't think right wingers are capable of genocide? Or that they wouldnt do it to people in cities? If it's purely informational for people who don't know what the Khmer Rouge is, it'd be handy to include why its a comparable situation
        alentist 5y ago
        Instead of this knee-jerk reaction, why don't you first read the comment I'm replying to? > it'd be handy to include why its a comparable situation akkartik made that bizarre comparison, not me.
  - 5y ago
- unyttigfjelltol 5y ago
  Politics is business. Business is about making money. From those foundational facts, it's fair to infer that if state Republican politicians are working to ban cities from providing basic services, the politicians are doing this because they think they can make money doing it. It's wrong. But then, politics, in its current incarnation, is business.
  - theshadowknows 5y ago
    And more importantly, make money for themselves and not for the city/state etc.
    - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
      The only reason people hate graft more than they hate boondoggles is because in the former case it's nearly impossible to bury your head in the sand and pretend like the money was smartly allocated. No matter how you cut it at the end of the day the tax dollars are being squandered on lining pockets they shouldn't be.
      - theshadowknows 5y ago
        Extra points for using 'boondoggles' in a sentence :)
- thayne 5y ago
  It's not surprising. Elected officials care more about getting reelected in the next election than long term effects of their decisions. So they are incentivized to care more about the short term.
  - mavhc 5y ago
    In my new world order we'll vote to fire people in charge, not to hire them
    - vegetablepotpie 5y ago
      We have a system like that with judges in some states. Examples of judges failing to be retained are sparse https://ballotpedia.org/Retention_election https://ballotpedia.org/Retention_election
only_as_i_fall 5y ago
Certainly not a good thing, but I'd be surprised if this has a measurable impact on the overall attractiveness of a location. Even expensive internet is likely less than 10% of overall expenses and, in my experience, it's very hard to tell if your internet will be good or bad without literally plugging in a modem, which realistically most people won't have the knowledge or means to do. Call me a cynic but I guess my thought is that if incremental decreases in qol and poor planning were enough to drive people away from the republican party it would have happened long ago.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  Is there ever bad fiber internet? If a place has fiber to the home, there is a pretty high probability that it is better than whatever garbage the coaxial cable company is peddling.
  - sbradford26 5y ago
    I have had fiber at two different houses and the first one was worse in that I could only reliably get 890 Mb down and 920 Mb up. The second house I get 950down/950up with the same provider and same hardware. There is variability but nowhere near as much as cable.
  - jschwartzi 5y ago
    Ziply was awful. We got screwed by them when they bought the fiber network in our area, canceled our autopay, and then didn’t bill us for three months until we had racked up a bunch of late fees. My wife spent hours on the phone with them getting the issues sorted out. It was the worst customer service experience I’ve ever had with a broadband provider. I’ve had Charter, Qwest, and Comcast.
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      That’s a people problem. I assume the actual product worked fine though?
thayne 5y ago
I'm not sure about at the state level, but several republican controlled cities in Utah also have or are building municipal broadband.
- kyralis 5y ago
  Republican cities are fine with municipal broadband, because it solves a real problem in those cities - local leaders are generally more pragmatic that way. Republican state and national leaders, on the other hand, are generally more concerned about their political narrative. They're not the ones impacted by the crap broadband in the cities.
hkai 5y ago
So you're not seeing any concerns about letting the government control your internet? Not at all? Especially when this idea is proposed by a party who is vocally against freedom of speech and a few other freedoms?
- ryukafalz 5y ago
  The government is beholden to the first amendment, unlike the (small number of) private ISPs. Even if they weren't, in almost all cases we're talking about municipal broadband as an additional option, not the only option. One that would drive down prices through competition and whose operators have a vested interest in their users having a good experience regardless of how remote they are.
  - throw0101a 5y ago
    A lot of muni broadband is the government owning the cables/fibre (OSI Layer 1/2) and then having ISPs sell IP (Layer 3) to those connected. See Utopia in UT for example: * https://www.utopiafiber.com/isp/ https://www.utopiafiber.com/isp/
- mcphage 5y ago
  > So you're not seeing any concerns about letting the government control your internet? Laws forbidding municipal broadband fall squarely in the “government control your internet” camp. > Especially when this idea is proposed by a party who is vocally against freedom of speech and a few other freedoms? Well that’s the nice thing about municipal internet: the government is controlled by the first amendment, unlike corporate broadband. So if you’re worried about being censored by your internet provider, I’d stick with the internet provider which is constitutionally forbidden from doing that.
  - fitblipper 5y ago
    I love how you put that! When the utility is operated by the government we, the people, have more direct control of how they operate. We don't have to put up with laws which encourage mass surveillance and data retention [1], 3rd party doctorine which makes all of your data owned by the provider you are using so you have no rights over them, and the governments ability to just ask or provide a gag ordered request to get all your data. This cuts out the middle man and allows us to demand our communication rights directly from the government instead of muddying the waters by allowing a 3rd party corporation advocate against the consumer/citizen. [1] https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/28/house-vote-sj-34-isp-regulations-fcc https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/28/house-vote-sj-34-isp-regul...
irjustin 5y ago
They do consider it, but it's lobbying. The ISPs control a lot and have a lot of money to 'donate'.
ookdatnog 5y ago
I think it makes political sense for them to do this. The "small government" political platform obviously appeals to large corporations and ideological libertarians, but these groups don't get you a majority in the election. So how do you get average people who don't directly stand to gain from these policies to vote for you? You convince them that governments are intrinsically ineffective, that the private sector will systematically perform better. This is presented almost as a law of nature, if you disagree you simply don't understand economics. The existence of a clear and prominent counterexample (a government-run competitor outperforming privately owned businesses) is pure poison to this story, so they cannot allow it to exist. They -- knowingly, deliberately -- choose to hurt the people they represent and the economy of their state to save their political platform.
noobermin 5y ago
The Ohio Republicans literally were bribed by a failing nuclear power plant and have faced barely any reprecussions from it due to the gerrymandering and general reliable partisanship in the gerrymandered districts. Only a year later is the (now former) speaker of house being removed from office after being re-elected in 2020! I wouldn't be surprised if the ISPs are also literally (and not even in the figurative sense of legal campaign contributions) bribing someone to put this into law.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

cracker-news 5y ago

> I don't understand why only one party is looking for a solution to this problem. Are you retarded?

antattack 5y ago

I presume religious groups that support Republicans see internet as a source of evil. https://www.technologyreview.com/2014/04/04/13684/how-the-internet-is-taking-away-americas-religion/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2014/04/04/13684/how-the-in... "the drop in religious upbringing, the increase in college-level education and the increase in Internet use—that together explain about 50 percent of the drop in religious affiliation."

CountDrewku 5y ago

Doubtful... it seems neither party is interested in breaking up monopolies. They'd both rather bend them to their interests is some selfish power move.

dylan604 5y ago
What's the point in the breaking up, if you just let the pieces reassemble a few years later?
- frockington1 5y ago
  Campaign buzzwords. It's the same reason neither party will actually do anything about 2A or abortion. Can't get your base riled up if the issue is resolved
  - dylan604 5y ago
    I would love to see an amendment passed that limits all campaigns to the 3 months immediately preceding an election. Campaign, get elected, go to work, and not campaign, get elected, immediately start campaigning again. It's never not campaign season. Except we can't pass an amendment because everyone is campaigning.
nobody9999 5y ago
>Doubtful... it seems neither party is interested in breaking up monopolies. They'd both rather bend them to their interests is some selfish power move. Except reality[0] doesn't comport with your statement. That's not to say that the bills proposed are perfect, but they are from one party (and not the one trying to block municipal broadband in OH). Just some food for thought. [0] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/06/five-new-bills-aim-to-break-up-big-tech-platforms-force-them-to-play-nice/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/06/five-new-bills-a...
- CountDrewku 5y ago
  >but they are from one party (and not the one trying to block municipal broadband in OH). Did you even read the article you linked? There's clear Republican involvement... "“Big Tech companies are stifling American innovation with their monopolistic behavior,” said Rep. Lance Gooden (R-Tex.), who co-sponsored two of the bills."" "Bipartisan movement It’s unclear whether any of these bills will pass. The last one, the Merger Filing Fee Modernization Act, appears most likely at this point since it’s a relatively incremental piece of legislation that already has bipartisan support in both chambers. But the fact that the other bills, which garnered bipartisan support in the otherwise highly partisan House, suggests that a major overhaul of antitrust law may be imminent, even if these specific bills don’t survive." >Except reality[0] doesn't comport with your statement. Let me know when they pass....

bionhoward 5y ago

There's a serious argument to be made to keep the government out of areas which ought to be free market territory. If there's not enough demand for internet in these areas to justify multiple service providers, perhaps that's OK, because to provide the service would be a waste of resources... Just because internet is a utility does not mean the government ought to be the one providing that utility. Also, this just reinforces the argument for projects like Starlink -- which could change the game in rural broadband. Conservatives have a lot of motivation to oppose government programs and that does not necessarily make them corrupt. What America needs is more intellectual + centrist + pragmatic conservatism to counter Trumpist BS, not necessarily more government programs....

natex 5y ago
A municipality's decision to implement common locally-owned internet as a public utility IS the free market. The State should not get to decide what's a "waste of resources" for me and my neighbors.
- bluGill 5y ago
  If your neighbor doesn't use the public internet for whatever reason, then making your neighbor pay for it is a waste of resources.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    And some people do not have cars or children in schools or use the food banks or go to community college. Not everything is about the individual cost/benefit, and individuals can benefit from society wide benefits.
    - taeric 5y ago
      Further in this direction. The neighbor that doesn't use this internet will still benefit from the value of new jobs and opportunity that it will bring.
5y ago

gaoshan 5y ago

It is totally pro-monopoly. I live in Ohio and many of our communities are only served by a single provider. Those providers offer fairly sluggish service as well as fairly high costs. People that I work with regularly complain about one or the other. My community discussed community broadband (going so far as to put at least exploring it to a vote on one of our ballots). It was shot down ("Why do we need to increase taxes to pay for this? I already have the internets... no one needs more") and shortly after that we finally got a second provider. Just that second provider caused prices to plummet. I went from being stuck with getting anywhere from 5 to 30 down (advertised as "up to 100") for $75 a month to getting gigabit internet for $65 a month.

mywittyname 5y ago
I heard a while ago that Ohio wrote into the Constitution a monopoly on casino gambling.\ Not knowing if I was remembering correctly, I read through the state constitution, and holy hell, they dedicate like seven pages of the constitution to casino gambling for four gambling facilities. For reference, most other sections are a few paragraphs, at most.
- crote 5y ago
  It's not that uncommon, actually. In The Netherlands, both running a lottery and running a physical casinos are reserved for two state-owned companies. By law, half of the profit goes to charity. The rest goes to the government. In Sweden, the government-owned liquor chain Systembolaget is the only one allowed to sell stuff containing more than 3.5% alcohol. Norway has basically the same thing going on. The idea is that things like gambling and alcohol consumption have an overall negative impact on society, but completely banning them will cause even more harm. Having a state monopoly makes it easier to promote safe and moderate consumption, as no profit is required and criminal figures are kept out - at least in theory.
  - charwalker 5y ago
    Oregon has a state run liquor board over distribution. It's great as technically they own all the product in a licensed liquor store so prices are identical. You can walk into any place, make a request for a certain bottle, and it usually arrives in a few days at the same price it would be anywhere else. If only we could apply that model to other services...

thayne 5y ago

It sounds like this is just one provision in a big budget bill. My guess is it didn't even factor into how most of the legislature voted at all. I wouldn't be surprised if some of them didn't even know it was in the bill.

JoeAltmaier 5y ago

Oh yes, this. In every small Iowa town they have private ISPs/ cable service. Hurray free enterprise! But they're all monopolies, given by the city to some favorite son. The biggest house in any midwest small town, is the cable guy. Gouging the highest prices the locals will tolerate. That's what Republican 'free enterprise' looks like.

jliptzin 5y ago

When Republicans say they are pro-business they actually mean they are pro-entrenched corporate oligopolies.

stronglikedan 5y ago
Replace "Republicans" with "Politicians" (at the state and federal level), and the statement is just as correct. I believe the problem is allowing private money to affect government, but I have no idea how to fix it.
axaxs 5y ago
This isn't clearly a R vs D issue, perhaps localized. TN has a surprising amount of gigabit muni broadband in very, very red areas. Though another R has done her damnedest to stop that.

WhompingWindows 5y ago

Pro-market and pro-monopoly are mere principles which don't matter when the sausage gets made. Politicians have no problem keeping their fingers on the scale, provided they get paid well for the service.

binaryblitz 5y ago

Because politicians in the US exist to accept bribes for personal gain. Very few of them seem to give two shits about anyone besides themselves. Especially on the right side of the aisle.

partiallypro 5y ago

No party is -actually- looking for a solution to the problem. The main problem is municipal monopolies which the federal government has no control over (ie Charter pays the city a fee to be their only cable provider in X neighborhood or AT&T won't lease line space to competitors on their utility poles, etc.) Local government have vastly more powerful controlling interests than Washington in terms of a company can just up and leave. Google tried to get around this but has ultimately failed the majority of the time.