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If they can charge for the fee, they should be by law mandated to tell me what it's for, and where it's going. Sick of these TelCos getting billions in subsidi
by NickC25 3y ago
If they can charge for the fee, they should be by law mandated to tell me what it's for, and where it's going.
Sick of these TelCos getting billions in subsidies, not spending it on infrastructure as promised (somehow they are allowed to act as a for-profit corporation!?), lobbying to get more taxpayer money, and then whining when we find out that half the fees on the bills they send out are just to pad profits. Greedy bastards, the lot of them. Time to cut the crap and just regulate them as utilities.
- germinalphrase 3y agoRemoving laws that enforce non-competition by municipalities would be a fine start.
- NickC25 3y agoBanning them from lobbying would also be a welcome change. How can a utility with a monopoly on services be allowed to buy favorable laws in government?
- mulmen 3y agoYou can't ban lobbying in a representative democracy.
- spicebox 3y agoYes you can, even if you don’t want to restrict lobbying on free speech ground you can place donation caps and increase transparency requirements which would both limit the power of corporate lobbying
- TylerE 3y agoThey'll just add another layer of rat finkery on top, making the whole mess EVEN LESS transparent. PACs were limited lobbying. That wasn't good enough...so we got super PACs with virtually no oversight what-so-ever.
- mulmen 3y agoDonation caps and transparency aren’t bans. Our system is based on representatives acting on behalf of constituents. When a constituent contacts their representative that’s lobbying. Lobbying is the system. So you can’t ban it.
- spicebox 3y agoThe issue is that lobbying has two different meanings. The literal meaning is trying to influence politicians but the common usage refers to when companies and special interest groups spend hundreds of millions of dollars on donations and advertising to get politicians to pass laws that benefit them. The first meaning, which is what you’re talking about, is fine. But the second meaning, which is what people mean when they talk about banning lobbying, is the opposite of democracy.
- wredue 3y agoHundreds of millions? In most cases, a vote that ends regulatory bodies and enables businesses to dump toxic sludge in your drinking water costs a couple grand. It’s actually embarrassing how cheap votes are.
- NickC25 3y agoYes, I've seen this firsthand. In some cases, you can buy a Federal Senator's vote for as little as $10k. Using this number on a larger scale, corporations can buy the entire senate for as little as $1 million. The ROI potential on a $1 million investment that nets you complete legislative control in your desired area is just insane. Granted, these deals are often backended and include a job promise down the road or some similar under-the-table stuff (jobs for relatives, etc), but I'm continually shocked by how cheap our legislators are. You'd think if a legislator knows a corporation is poised to make several billion dollars if a piece of legislation is passed, the legislator should demand a lot higher than $10k.
- pessimizer 3y agoYou can end donations entirely, and disqualify candidates who accept them. The government can put up a website where you can get information about candidates, send everyone bundles of information, schedule debates in a standard format with clear rules for participation, and throw events where candidates can give speeches, and distribute those speeches to everybody who wants them. You can give everybody a day off to vote. The reason government is corrupt is because we want it to be corrupt. If it weren't corrupt, nobody would pick this endless shower of dynastic creeps. There is no good democratic outcome for $175K a year jobs that cost half a billion dollars to apply for.
- spicebox 3y ago> There is no good democratic outcome for $175K a year jobs that cost half a billion dollars to apply for. I would argue that this is a reason to reform our electoral system rather than just resign ourselves to a corrupt system. If it didn’t cost half a billion dollars to become a politician and the pay better reflected the job responsibilities (along with other reforms) we’d probably see less corruption
- sdenton4 3y agoIs there a word for the situation where incumbents produced by a system try to maintain that system even though it's shite for everyone else? Politicians hate electoral reform.
- wredue 3y agoThey only cost half a billion to apply for due to lobbying…
- skykooler 3y ago> The reason government is corrupt is because we want it to be corrupt. The reason government is corrupt is because it is corrupt, and corrupt governments don't give their citizens an option for "stop being corrupt" in the ballot.
- xp84 3y agoTechnically you can do whatever those representatives will vote for. So far, it's mostly been "whatever the lobbyists want" though.
- briandear 3y agoBanning lobbying is banning free speech. Anyone should be able to lobby the government.
- derefr 3y agoWho's this "anyone"? Why are monopolies suddenly people?
- dragonwriter 3y ago> Why are monopolies suddenly people? Who else besides people would control a monopoly?
- throw0101c 3y ago> Who's this "anyone"? Why are monopolies suddenly people? Corporations have always been legal persons, going back to the Middle Ages (guilds, chartered cities, universities) and even Ancient Rome: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_person https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_person
- PrimeMcFly 3y agoWhat's amazing is how many people misunderstand this, and think the government treats a legal person as a full flesh and blood person.
- PrimeMcFly 3y agoLobbying isn't the issue. The corrupt politicians who just implement whatever telcos request are.
- UncleMeat 3y ago"Quid-pro-quo bribery isn't the issue. The corrupt politicians who accept bribes are the issue." This isn't how we do legal policy. We wouldn't say "all bribery laws are gone, we'll just make sure that we don't have any politicians that accept bribes some other way."
- PrimeMcFly 3y agoWell, you're kind of right. Bribery disguised as lobbying is the issue, not lobbying itself.
- pessimizer 3y agoSo instead of regulating lobbying, it would be easier to eradicate all potentially corruptible people from the planet.
- robertlagrant 3y agoIf you think regulation is magically excluded from your own logic, you need to get another think.
- zakki 3y agoThe politicians corrupted because of the lobbying. How can we put them in separate basket?
- PrimeMcFly 3y agoThey're not corrupt because of lobbying, they are already corrupt and take advantage of lobbying. There are things that could be done but the people in office making the laws are not interested, and the population is too apathetic/indoctrinated to make the correct choices.
- robertlagrant 3y agoIt's not lobbying that's the problem. It's government corruption.
- TuringNYC 3y agoThere were rumors Amazon was entering the space. It would be awesome for incumbents to be disrupted and for the system to move towards actual competition. I wish Google was able to achieve this with their GrandCentral acquisition, but as usual they Google let their acquisition wither away.
- 2023throwawayy 3y agoPlease no. I agree disruption in the space would be great, but don't let Amazon enter the ISP space. They have enough money, and power over the internet, as is. I would have to think that would be an antitrust violation anyway.
- belval 3y ago(I work at AWS) I know this is close to whataboutism so I will try to choose my words carefully, but does Amazon really have that much power over the Internet? Realistically Amazon does not have a large advert network, footing in mobile, operating systems or web browsers? They have some control in the form of AWS/Route 53 but that's a far cry from some larger DNS, domain registrar and CDN providers. Not denying that they have a lot of money, but even when using that money to try and buy a user base (Alexa or Fire Tablet/TV) their success has been pretty limited overall.
- krono 3y agoWithout meaning to imply anything, I do suppose that powering much of the western internet does indeed equal having much power over the internet.
- mr_toad 3y agoI think you overestimate how much of the internet runs on AWS. In terms of websites it’s less than 10%. Their share of the overall cloud is about 35%.
- 3y ago
- eli 3y agoThey've been getting away for decades with labeling all sorts of their own costs as "taxes" and "fees" to customers. It's very misleading and IMHO should be illegal.
- dfxm12 3y agoIf I understand what you're saying correctly, I think the Junk Fee Prevention Act, which Joe Biden championed in this last SOTU address, is being marketed as doing this, more or less.
- darth_avocado 3y agoExactly my thought. This problem wouldn’t have existed if the ISPs didn’t for decades advertise a plan for $50 and then charge $100 by adding on items like “just because we can fee” and “fee for processing your fee”.
- tptacek 3y agoPer the NCTA's Ex Parte filing with FCC: they are objecting only to pass-through fees applied by federal, state, and local authorities. They don't have any choice about any of these fees, which are really just taxes.
- Gabrys1 3y agoThe choice they have (as is mentioned near the end of the article) is to pay them themselves (cost of running business) and include them in the advertised price (like it probably is anywhere in the world outside the US)
- tptacek 3y agoHow is that better? You're asking for a world where the list price of Comcast Internet service is just quietly lower or higher depending on which suburb you live in. That's strictly worse than the current situation. You should look at all these fees on your ISP bill and get pissed off. The issue here is that the taxing body's ploy worked: you got pissed at Comcast and AT&T instead of them.
- tptacek 3y agoNo, this is backwards. From the NCTA's Ex Parte filing: they're objecting to reporting requirements for pass-through fees from federal, state, and local governments. Importantly, none of these are fees ISPs "can" charge; they're taxes that public bodies collect through the ISP's billing system. In some cases, those "fees" are added by statutory mandate; in others, they're a condition of access to municipal last-mile infrastructure (as is the case with franchise fees). I generally think most middle-class people aren't taxed enough (yell at me somewhere else about this). But these taxes are frustrating. They're hidden on ISP bills, so you can't easily tell that they represent your local municipality milking you for fee revenue. And they're not even consistent; for instance, because Comcast runs copper television service, they've got a different history with many municipalities and different contract stipulations. In other words: your local government can tax you specifically for using (or not using) Comcast. That's messed up. It should be the responsibility of public bodies that levy fees to make sure that people are made aware of the nature of those fees. The ISPs aren't responsible for this stuff, and shouldn't be asked to do more work to further conceal decisions our elected officials are making for us.
- Konnstann 3y agoIf the fees they charge are due to specific levies the government places, and those fees depend on where the customer is located, why is it that much work to demote that in bills, considering they are already calculating who to charge what fee where? If my Internet bill had a bunch of line items that said "local city tax" or some such I can't really be mad at that can I? Sure every government body could make their own website listing telecom fees and then I'd have to go to at least 3 (local, state, federal) to figure out how much I'd be paying or the ISP could tell me since they already aggregate that info.
- tptacek 3y agoIt is listed in bills. The objection NCTA has is the FCC's requirement that the fees be catalogued to consumers at the point of sale, before a bill has been incurred. I don't blame them for objecting to this. These aren't Comcast's fees; they're municipal taxes.
- tnel77 3y ago[flagged]
- mcronce 3y agoIf charging for it isn't too hard, it sure as fuck isn't too hard to list it
- taylodl 3y agoYou are 100% correct - if they can put it on a bill then they can explain what it is.