Yeah, they'll tell you their internet connection speed is shitty. Unless you live in Chattanooga, where the evil Department of Fiber Optics is busy oppressing them.
But this is entirely silly. EPB is great. More cities should run their own last-mile networks. What they do instead is impose regulatory frameworks that forbid companies that could run gig fiber networks from doing so unless they also serve markets where they would hemorrhage money.
But the success of public utilities in places like Chattanooga is not an argument that a public utility could have built the modern Internet. To see just one reason why, try to host Youtube or Netflix on EPB's network.
"What they do instead is impose regulatory frameworks that forbid companies that could run gig fiber networks from doing so unless they also serve markets where they would hemorrhage money."
Who cares if they're hemorrhaging money? The Public Works Administration hemorrhaged money electrifying the South. The Post Office hemorrhages money delivering to far flung rural areas. Society however has made the judgement that these costs are worth it because they promote inclusiveness and equality. You are making the opposite judgement. That judgement is inherently political.
Incidentally, you may be chuckling at the tenor of this conversation and where it's going, but as I've told you repeatedly, I am taking offense. I am not enjoying it, and I wish you'd stop.
I suspect others will notice that it is you who have been ignoring me.
This is my biggest problem with people in the tech industry. You can't divorce the systems you build, or the tradeoffs made by companies and policymakers, from the underlying political ideologies that inform those decisions.
I'm prickly about this, because, as you might know, this happens all the time here.
Edit: also, not having to constantly battle either a) trolls or b) what I feel to be right wing libertarian myopia is one of the reasons I've commented so little here, so, I Get It. I've been a reader/lurker for something like 7 years now. early 2009, I believe.
The arguments you are making, however, are dependent on the idea that markets are a necessary mechanism for the existence of the modern internet.
You have the right to withhold your political beliefs from anyone in any context.
You've gone astray by demanding that others de-politicize their language in a similar way.
I am fine with politics, as long as the political discussion doesn't take the form of "here is what I have inferred about your personal political beliefs".