4 ms·

How is 11% having electricity comparably to 75% having broadband? Feels like you’re really reaching to make this segway to politics.

zamnos 4y ago
Because the 11% became 97% via the New Deal and government investment, not through market forces. That's not reaching to bring up politics, that's the history of what happened. Rural areas are more expensive to run physical infrastructure for, for fewer people, compared to an urban or suburban environment; that underlying fact hasn't changed since the 1920's when electricity was being run. How it immediately becomes political is the question of who pays for what, and how much of my taxes are going towards something that doesn't direct benefit me.
- nonethewiser 4y ago
  But that proves my point. There was no “new deal” that got us to 75% broadband coverage. 75% is clearly way better than 11% therefore not a valid parallel.
  - paulryanrogers 4y ago
    75% broadband coverage is a generous interpretation, especially as the floor of what is broad has grown. 25MB down, 5MB up isn't actually that broad or useful as 4K TVs and multiple simultaneous video calls become the norm.
  - zamnos 4y ago
    There absolutely has been a ton of government money funneled to, basically Verizon and Comcast shareholders to try and provide rural Internet service via the Telecomms Act of 1996 along with everything else that came after that. That the government hasn't been getting good value for its money, and 75%, and at only 25 Mbit, compared to 97% for electricity is a whole other topic.
  - mauvehaus 4y ago
    Arguably, having broadband now is more important than having electricity then. The network effects of nearly everyone having broadband are reducing access to offline alternatives (e.g. bank branches closing), whereas anything you can do with electricity can likely be done without electricity or any additional infrastructure beyond what's on the farm.
  - photochemsyn 4y ago
    https://www.usda.gov/broadband https://www.usda.gov/broadband > "USDA has been investing in rural telecommunications infrastructure for decades. Hundreds of millions of dollars are annually available in the RUS programs both by loans and grants all to support modern broadband e-Connectivity in rural communities." > "In 2018, USDA introduced the ReConnect Program, which has invested over $1 billion to date to expand high-speed broadband infrastructure in unserved rural areas and tribal lands." We don't let shady private corporations squat on the roads and freeways and charge tolls to anyone who wants to drive on them, why should we allow such behavior on the internet trunk fiber optic cables either - or on the copper/aluminum electricity grid, for that matter?
- dsfyu404ed 4y ago
  >Because the 11% became 97% via the New Deal and government investment, not through market forces. That 11% wasn't a static state. Electrification was happening, government or not. The New Deal certainly sped it up but it takes a career politician level of dishonesty to take a government program that increased the rate of electrification and give said program credit all electrification after it's commencement.
  - photochemsyn 4y ago
    I think it's fairer to say that there was a rural demand for electricity, but that privately owned electricity grids saw no profit in meeting that demand. Electric appliance manufacturers did want to sell their product to people in rural areas, and they realized that if government built out the electrical grid, they'd benefit from it as would rural electricity consumers. That's why FDR's Rural Electricification programs were widely popular. The only opponents were the electric power companies who realized they might lose their captive markets if the idea spread to the cities. Hence they started buying lots of politicians.
- oatmeal1 4y ago
  Market forces would have correctly restricted the number of people living in inefficient places to live. Rural communities are massively more expensive to create infrastructure for. Instead we have locked ourselves into supporting an abnormally large number of people away from where infrastructure can efficiently be provided.
  - DangitBobby 4y ago
    And those people living in rural areas (which are required to sustain societies, unlike urban areas) would become poorer and less educated as time went on due to the economic inefficiencies of serving them well. You are arguing for the emergence of class stratification as if that's somehow the desired version of our society, which is just insanity. There is a _reason_ we share costs as a society! Free market thinking is shallow and should not be applied here, full stop.
    - ghodith 4y ago
      Or some of them would would have moved, or not moved there in the first place, or increased the prices of their goods. Something so cynical about such low expectations. "If we weren't in charge, they would all devolve into savagery!"
      - DangitBobby 4y ago
        Not sure I'm the cynical one here. Even so, bad things really do happen sometimes.
photochemsyn 4y ago
https://www.broadbandsearch.net/blog/digital-divide-urban-rural-internet-speed https://www.broadbandsearch.net/blog/digital-divide-urban-ru... The issue isn't politics (though it is true that the ISPs have bought both political parties in Congress), it's economics. Building out basic infrastructure is one of the core necessities for widespread economic growth, and that includes roads and bridges, the electricity grid, the water supply, and the fiber-optic network. It's not a very complicated issue, and I've never seen anyone present a coherent argument that privatized infrastructure improves economic activity overall, it's generally the opposite isn't it? I suppose if your metric is the concentration of wealth in fewer hands, then yes, private infrastructure facilitates that outcome, but it shrinks the overall economic activity in terms of production of goods and services (i.e. consider the farmer who can't get to market because the bridge is washed out, the washing machine manufacturer who can't sell to the farmer who has no electricity, and so on).
- revelio 4y ago
  There's plenty of arguments for privatized infrastructure, if you never heard them then you weren't looking for them. For example telecoms, energy and TV monopolies have been broken repeatedly in the 20th century in countries around the world, nobody wants them back. There were way more infrastructure monopolies in the early parts of the 20th century than there are now.
  - photochemsyn 4y ago
    I'm sorry, isn't that an argument against privatized infrastructure, which always becomes monopolistic control of infrastructure by private interests? It's not like competing systems of basic infrastructure are at all plausible, we're not going to have multiple private roads systems are we?
    - revelio 4y ago
      No? Private infrastructure doesn't always become monopoly, that's why most infrastructure monopolies were created by nationalization at a time when that was all the rage. Railway monopolies, radio (e.g. BBC), telecoms, steel, water, electricity ... lots. > we're not going to have multiple private roads systems are we? Toll roads exist but indeed, roads are one of the cases where building and maintaining them is easy so you don't lose much from a state monopoly, and they take up a lot of space so duplication is unfortunate. But there are relatively few cases like that.

zamnos 4y ago

Because the 11% became 97% via the New Deal and government investment, not through market forces. That's not reaching to bring up politics, that's the history of what happened. Rural areas are more expensive to run physical infrastructure for, for fewer people, compared to an urban or suburban environment; that underlying fact hasn't changed since the 1920's when electricity was being run. How it immediately becomes political is the question of who pays for what, and how much of my taxes are going towards something that doesn't direct benefit me.

nonethewiser 4y ago
But that proves my point. There was no “new deal” that got us to 75% broadband coverage. 75% is clearly way better than 11% therefore not a valid parallel.
- paulryanrogers 4y ago
  75% broadband coverage is a generous interpretation, especially as the floor of what is broad has grown. 25MB down, 5MB up isn't actually that broad or useful as 4K TVs and multiple simultaneous video calls become the norm.
- zamnos 4y ago
  There absolutely has been a ton of government money funneled to, basically Verizon and Comcast shareholders to try and provide rural Internet service via the Telecomms Act of 1996 along with everything else that came after that. That the government hasn't been getting good value for its money, and 75%, and at only 25 Mbit, compared to 97% for electricity is a whole other topic.
- mauvehaus 4y ago
  Arguably, having broadband now is more important than having electricity then. The network effects of nearly everyone having broadband are reducing access to offline alternatives (e.g. bank branches closing), whereas anything you can do with electricity can likely be done without electricity or any additional infrastructure beyond what's on the farm.
- photochemsyn 4y ago
  https://www.usda.gov/broadband https://www.usda.gov/broadband > "USDA has been investing in rural telecommunications infrastructure for decades. Hundreds of millions of dollars are annually available in the RUS programs both by loans and grants all to support modern broadband e-Connectivity in rural communities." > "In 2018, USDA introduced the ReConnect Program, which has invested over $1 billion to date to expand high-speed broadband infrastructure in unserved rural areas and tribal lands." We don't let shady private corporations squat on the roads and freeways and charge tolls to anyone who wants to drive on them, why should we allow such behavior on the internet trunk fiber optic cables either - or on the copper/aluminum electricity grid, for that matter?
dsfyu404ed 4y ago
>Because the 11% became 97% via the New Deal and government investment, not through market forces. That 11% wasn't a static state. Electrification was happening, government or not. The New Deal certainly sped it up but it takes a career politician level of dishonesty to take a government program that increased the rate of electrification and give said program credit all electrification after it's commencement.
- photochemsyn 4y ago
  I think it's fairer to say that there was a rural demand for electricity, but that privately owned electricity grids saw no profit in meeting that demand. Electric appliance manufacturers did want to sell their product to people in rural areas, and they realized that if government built out the electrical grid, they'd benefit from it as would rural electricity consumers. That's why FDR's Rural Electricification programs were widely popular. The only opponents were the electric power companies who realized they might lose their captive markets if the idea spread to the cities. Hence they started buying lots of politicians.
oatmeal1 4y ago
Market forces would have correctly restricted the number of people living in inefficient places to live. Rural communities are massively more expensive to create infrastructure for. Instead we have locked ourselves into supporting an abnormally large number of people away from where infrastructure can efficiently be provided.
- DangitBobby 4y ago
  And those people living in rural areas (which are required to sustain societies, unlike urban areas) would become poorer and less educated as time went on due to the economic inefficiencies of serving them well. You are arguing for the emergence of class stratification as if that's somehow the desired version of our society, which is just insanity. There is a _reason_ we share costs as a society! Free market thinking is shallow and should not be applied here, full stop.
  - ghodith 4y ago
    Or some of them would would have moved, or not moved there in the first place, or increased the prices of their goods. Something so cynical about such low expectations. "If we weren't in charge, they would all devolve into savagery!"
    - DangitBobby 4y ago
      Not sure I'm the cynical one here. Even so, bad things really do happen sometimes.

photochemsyn 4y ago

https://www.broadbandsearch.net/blog/digital-divide-urban-rural-internet-speed https://www.broadbandsearch.net/blog/digital-divide-urban-ru... The issue isn't politics (though it is true that the ISPs have bought both political parties in Congress), it's economics. Building out basic infrastructure is one of the core necessities for widespread economic growth, and that includes roads and bridges, the electricity grid, the water supply, and the fiber-optic network. It's not a very complicated issue, and I've never seen anyone present a coherent argument that privatized infrastructure improves economic activity overall, it's generally the opposite isn't it? I suppose if your metric is the concentration of wealth in fewer hands, then yes, private infrastructure facilitates that outcome, but it shrinks the overall economic activity in terms of production of goods and services (i.e. consider the farmer who can't get to market because the bridge is washed out, the washing machine manufacturer who can't sell to the farmer who has no electricity, and so on).

revelio 4y ago
There's plenty of arguments for privatized infrastructure, if you never heard them then you weren't looking for them. For example telecoms, energy and TV monopolies have been broken repeatedly in the 20th century in countries around the world, nobody wants them back. There were way more infrastructure monopolies in the early parts of the 20th century than there are now.
- photochemsyn 4y ago
  I'm sorry, isn't that an argument against privatized infrastructure, which always becomes monopolistic control of infrastructure by private interests? It's not like competing systems of basic infrastructure are at all plausible, we're not going to have multiple private roads systems are we?
  - revelio 4y ago
    No? Private infrastructure doesn't always become monopoly, that's why most infrastructure monopolies were created by nationalization at a time when that was all the rage. Railway monopolies, radio (e.g. BBC), telecoms, steel, water, electricity ... lots. > we're not going to have multiple private roads systems are we? Toll roads exist but indeed, roads are one of the cases where building and maintaining them is easy so you don't lose much from a state monopoly, and they take up a lot of space so duplication is unfortunate. But there are relatively few cases like that.