4 ms·

It’s easier for me to switch which business I give my money to than it is for me to move or change governments. Most of the services I use are provided by priva

by bko 3y ago

It’s easier for me to switch which business I give my money to than it is for me to move or change governments. Most of the services I use are provided by private industry and I have choices. Everything from food, clothing, shelter. All private corporations I choose to buy from. I guess I can go get my food from a government soup kitchen or apply for government housing but my experience is these services are not competitive with private market even at the lower price (or free)

komali2 3y ago
Interesting. Personally I believe people should have total freedom to change governments, but I'm a utopian thinker so /shrug though I wonder in such a world whether you'd feel the same way. "Too Like the Lightning" explored this if you enjoy sci-fi. I'm hung up on something though - in this specific subject, there's been massive market capture in the USA by one to four ISPs, depending on region. For most of rural america (something insane like 80% of the geography) there's only one provider. In these situations, the provider provides subpar service, often asking for handouts from the government before being willing to build more infrastructure (hm.. is that still "private?"). On the other hand, some local governments have simply built their own broadband networks, with far better results: https://communitynets.org/content/community-network-map https://communitynets.org/content/community-network-map and they have some of the highest satisfaction ratings in the nation https://www.consumerreports.org/electronics-computers/telecom-services/best-and-worst-home-internet-providers-a2853390170/ https://www.consumerreports.org/electronics-computers/teleco... If the private market is better, why does Comcast, which routinely wins "worst company in america" awards, still exist, despite providing abysmal service to its customers? Surely a private enterprise could have eaten their lunch by now? If the private market is better, why are local governments providing the highest rated internet services in America? So basically, your feeling rests in the belief that you have more choice when it comes to private options - but in telecom, that doesn't seem to be the case, and of the options available, they're all widely considered to suck. Perhaps this isn't true for every industry, Stalin and Mao certainly showed us that it doesn't work for food, but does that mean the private option is better for everything we use? What does it mean to have a "private highway" system, or a "private fire department?"
- bko 3y ago
  I dont there's anything inherently different about Internet delivery. There's some last mile problems and some services no market exists because the cost would be higher than people are willing to pay. Internet service is expensive and maybe the high fixed cost makes it so only a few people can deliver and they can charge monopoly prices. There are also regulations that could make this expensive to provide too But you can't just look at final price with a lower price being good. If some municipal service costs half the price but it costs taxpayers the other half, is that better? Maybe if you think they have a right to this service and you're okay with subsidizing it. But there is no free lunch, someone is paying. I think ultimately you want it to be provided by private market if possible. So leaving it open at a high price encourages others to try and innovate. Think about starlink. If government was providing Internet to everyone for below market prices, no innovation would happen because they essentially crowded out private industry. So in the long run it would be much more expensive and opaque. You lose a market signal through artificially low prices
  - nobody9999 3y ago
    >But you can't just look at final price with a lower price being good. If some municipal service costs half the price but it costs taxpayers the other half, is that better? Where, exactly, is that happening? As I understand it, the vast majority of taxpayer monies for broadband doesn't go to municipally owned networks, but rather to private ISPs. And that's been the case for decades. And those monies are given with a pinky-swear that this time, we'll actually spend the money on expanding broadband to under-served areas, with a similar likelihood that will happen as the last four or five times taxpayer monies were given to those folks. Meanwhile, actual municipal broadband[0][1] pays for itself by charging multiple ISPs to access their last mile -- paying for the infrastructure and introducing (often for the first time) competition into the market. What's more, nearly a third of states have laws[2] blocking/hindering municipal broadband. Most of which are related to model legislation promulgated by groups like ALEC[3]. Many of the artificial roadblocks put up by such laws make municipal broadband (both implicitly and explicitly[4]) more expensive than private broadband [0] https://broadbandnow.com/municipal-providers https://broadbandnow.com/municipal-providers [1] https://www.theverge.com/23763482/municipal-broadband-biden-internet-funds-telecom-lobbying https://www.theverge.com/23763482/municipal-broadband-biden-... [2] https://broadbandnow.com/report/municipal-broadband-roadblocks https://broadbandnow.com/report/municipal-broadband-roadbloc... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Legislative_Exchange_Council https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Legislative_Exchange_... [4] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/01/virginia-broadband-deployment-act-would-kill-municipal-broadband-deployment/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/01/virginia-broadba...
ThePowerOfFuet 3y ago
> I guess I can go get my food from a government soup kitchen or apply for government housing but my experience is these services are not competitive with private market even at the lower price (or free) Because you have such limited experience with the world. Did you know there are countries out there — dozens of them even! — which are not American? https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/17/realestate/paris-france-housing-costs.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/17/realestate/paris-france-h...
- School-Cotton 3y ago
  We are talking about the U.S., though, not France.

by bko 3y ago

komali2 3y ago

Interesting. Personally I believe people should have total freedom to change governments, but I'm a utopian thinker so /shrug though I wonder in such a world whether you'd feel the same way. "Too Like the Lightning" explored this if you enjoy sci-fi. I'm hung up on something though - in this specific subject, there's been massive market capture in the USA by one to four ISPs, depending on region. For most of rural america (something insane like 80% of the geography) there's only one provider. In these situations, the provider provides subpar service, often asking for handouts from the government before being willing to build more infrastructure (hm.. is that still "private?"). On the other hand, some local governments have simply built their own broadband networks, with far better results: https://communitynets.org/content/community-network-map https://communitynets.org/content/community-network-map and they have some of the highest satisfaction ratings in the nation https://www.consumerreports.org/electronics-computers/telecom-services/best-and-worst-home-internet-providers-a2853390170/ https://www.consumerreports.org/electronics-computers/teleco... If the private market is better, why does Comcast, which routinely wins "worst company in america" awards, still exist, despite providing abysmal service to its customers? Surely a private enterprise could have eaten their lunch by now? If the private market is better, why are local governments providing the highest rated internet services in America? So basically, your feeling rests in the belief that you have more choice when it comes to private options - but in telecom, that doesn't seem to be the case, and of the options available, they're all widely considered to suck. Perhaps this isn't true for every industry, Stalin and Mao certainly showed us that it doesn't work for food, but does that mean the private option is better for everything we use? What does it mean to have a "private highway" system, or a "private fire department?"

bko 3y ago
I dont there's anything inherently different about Internet delivery. There's some last mile problems and some services no market exists because the cost would be higher than people are willing to pay. Internet service is expensive and maybe the high fixed cost makes it so only a few people can deliver and they can charge monopoly prices. There are also regulations that could make this expensive to provide too But you can't just look at final price with a lower price being good. If some municipal service costs half the price but it costs taxpayers the other half, is that better? Maybe if you think they have a right to this service and you're okay with subsidizing it. But there is no free lunch, someone is paying. I think ultimately you want it to be provided by private market if possible. So leaving it open at a high price encourages others to try and innovate. Think about starlink. If government was providing Internet to everyone for below market prices, no innovation would happen because they essentially crowded out private industry. So in the long run it would be much more expensive and opaque. You lose a market signal through artificially low prices
- nobody9999 3y ago
  >But you can't just look at final price with a lower price being good. If some municipal service costs half the price but it costs taxpayers the other half, is that better? Where, exactly, is that happening? As I understand it, the vast majority of taxpayer monies for broadband doesn't go to municipally owned networks, but rather to private ISPs. And that's been the case for decades. And those monies are given with a pinky-swear that this time, we'll actually spend the money on expanding broadband to under-served areas, with a similar likelihood that will happen as the last four or five times taxpayer monies were given to those folks. Meanwhile, actual municipal broadband[0][1] pays for itself by charging multiple ISPs to access their last mile -- paying for the infrastructure and introducing (often for the first time) competition into the market. What's more, nearly a third of states have laws[2] blocking/hindering municipal broadband. Most of which are related to model legislation promulgated by groups like ALEC[3]. Many of the artificial roadblocks put up by such laws make municipal broadband (both implicitly and explicitly[4]) more expensive than private broadband [0] https://broadbandnow.com/municipal-providers https://broadbandnow.com/municipal-providers [1] https://www.theverge.com/23763482/municipal-broadband-biden-internet-funds-telecom-lobbying https://www.theverge.com/23763482/municipal-broadband-biden-... [2] https://broadbandnow.com/report/municipal-broadband-roadblocks https://broadbandnow.com/report/municipal-broadband-roadbloc... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Legislative_Exchange_Council https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Legislative_Exchange_... [4] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/01/virginia-broadband-deployment-act-would-kill-municipal-broadband-deployment/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/01/virginia-broadba...

ThePowerOfFuet 3y ago

> I guess I can go get my food from a government soup kitchen or apply for government housing but my experience is these services are not competitive with private market even at the lower price (or free) Because you have such limited experience with the world. Did you know there are countries out there — dozens of them even! — which are not American? https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/17/realestate/paris-france-housing-costs.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/17/realestate/paris-france-h...

School-Cotton 3y ago
We are talking about the U.S., though, not France.