I used to live in middle-of-nowhere central WA, and they had fiber internet all the way back in mid 2000’s. This was a town of <20k people. Other smaller towns around the region also had access to fiber as well. Basically it worked like this: the county public utilities district was responsible for laying the fiber and connecting it to the building. Once the fiber is hooked up, you can call any one of a dozen or so ISPs to provide you with service.
As a side note, because of this relationship between the ISPs and the public utilities district, some ISPs also operated point-to-point wireless networks to reach customers outside of the fiber network. The ISPs would typically place a tower with several radios at an existing customer’s site, in exchange for free service. These tower sites were usually connected directly to fiber for minimal latency. I mention this because I don’t see how these wireless networks would have been viable without a public fiber network backing them.
All I want is good service, on the cheap.
If the government can provide good service, and have zero-profit margin, that's fantastic. That's actually the best possible outcome. If the government service sucks, then their zero-profit margin should not be a significant enough competitive advantage to drive out competitors.
In addition to all that, all the criticisms of the zero-profit margin model fall apart in a world where VCs and conglomerates frequently operate local services at a loss, in an effort to capture market share (So that they can later raise prices).
If you had a choice of 10+ ISPs you could choose between a low-low-prices ISP that sells your browsing data to marketers, has a contention ratio of 50:1, and tries to shake down Netflix for peering money; a premium ISP with a great contention ratio and good speeds for netflix and youtube; an uncensored, privacy-loving ISP; a family-friendly ISP with powerful porn-blocking options; and so on.
Except it's not just a zero-profit margin; it's the money that you pay in taxes for that municipal ISP, which you cannot decide to allocate instead to another ISP. If you want to use an alternative ISP, you have to pay both.
If the public ISP doesn't actually receive tax money, then why would the government need to start it? Anyone can start a non-profit ISP.
(Note: I'm not saying I'm against the idea, just arguing a specific point)
I've seen this too, and my reaction is always to ask why that's unfair. The "free" market is supposed to be open to competition. Why is it "unfair" for public bodies to compete? Public bodies are, after all, funded by tax payers. Who in this case would be the recipients of the service. So we have individuals desiring of a service, funding said service through a public body. Now, the public body is not set up to pay a dividend to shareholders - instead it implicitly returns all profit to its consumers (presumably through reduced costs/better service/whatever).
Why is that unfair? It's not preventing commercial entities from competing. If their business model is such that they can't do so - e.g. because of the need to pay away dividends - then that's their problem.
Now: I know there's a lot more to it than that, e.g. public bodies accused of being propped up unfairly. And I know Govt in the US is treated very suspiciously by a large cohort of society.
But that notwithstanding, why is it "unfair" if a community-oriented entity decides to compete with a commercial organisation?
> Public bodies are, after all, funded by tax payers. Who in this case would be the recipients of the service.
Not all tax payers are recipients of the service. The government run entity can collect revenue from all taxpayers regardless of which ones are their direct customers.
That's what makes it "unfair." The private entity has to turn a profit or break even on their sales alone. The government run entity can subsidize their operation by taking funds from general tax revenue.
If one entity is allowed to take always take a loss on their operations how could another entity that needs to pay their employees ever be able to compete?
So, you're saying that regional loss-leading, and the typical VC business model should not be allowed to exist?
A city's constituents have democratic control over their budget. If they want to use that budget to buy broadband for everyone from a local supplier, that's their prerogative.
Who is the private sector to dictate how I, as a constituent, choose to spend my tax dollars? If I want them spent on a vanity sports stadium project, they'll be spent on a vanity sports stadium project. [1] If I want them spent on providing better broadband to the city, they'll be spent on providing better broadband to the city.
[1] For some reason, nobody ever complains that cities subsidizing the construction of sports arenas is bad anti-competitive behavior that destroys the business model of private sports-arena owners...
They certainly do. Many people object to this sort of thing, and say "if it's such a good idea, a private business should be willing to do it." Strangely they tend to not make this argument about things like public transport, even though it's exactly the same thing.
The arguement is that these arenas, convention centers, transit systems, etc. enable more economic activity and generate more tax revenue than they cost. I don't know if that's always (or ever) the case but that's the rationale and it's not insane.
The private sector has pretty conclusively proven that in the absence of municipal competition, their offerings are expensive, and provide terrible service.
In fact, it has proven it so conclusively that people are clamoring for a public alternative.
There is zero reason to oppose unsubsidized, zero-margin municipal broadband.
There are some reasons to oppose subsidized, negative-margin municipal broadband, but if >50% of the electorate supports it, that's a pretty strong signal that its better than the private alternatives.
50%+1 of the population voting for something doesn't make it good; the public overwhelmingly supports farm subsidies, and those are terrible.
The same can be said about private providers. Even if they temporarily lower rates and improve service in your area, to prevent entry from competitors, they will ratchet the rates up, and start cutting corners on customer service as soon as they no longer feel threatened. This is not a theoretical concern - this has happened over and over and over again, across the country.
> Farm subsidies
That's not a great comparison.
1. Farm subsidies are terrible for economic efficiency, but fantastic for economic and political resiliency. [1] Lack of bread very quickly leads to regime change. It's why every single country in the world subsidizes their agriculture and encourages overproduction.
2. The reason farm subsidies exist is not because 50%+1 of the public supports them. The reason farm subsidies exist is because the federal government was designed to give excessive amounts of political power to rural states. This means that something supported by ~20% of the public can easily turn into national policy.
3. Municipal referendums are nothing like it - they are direct democracy.
4. Municipal governments are not direct democracy, but they do not have multiple layers, or were designed to give disproportionate amounts of political power to regional minority groups. What a municipal government wants is a lot closer to the pulse of their constituents.
[1] Efficiency (which is what marketeers want) is often at odds with resiliency (which is what anyone looking past the next quarter's financials wants). Remember the start of the COVID pandemic when all of our incredibly efficient just-in-time global supply chains went to hell? Efficient systems have no built-in slack to absorb temporary shocks. When it comes to food supplies, a temporary shock can leave us with millions of emaciated corpses.
I am not a democratic fundamentalist. This is to say that I don't value democracy as an ends; it is a valuable means, but saying that something is democratic doesn't change my view on the policy. I don't care how direct it is.
[1] https://www.politico.com/story/2018/07/30/poll-indicates-som...
But it is also correct to say that when a when a decision was reached democratically, it is generally speaking, not the business of anyone outside that group to second-guess it.
There's a very high bar that you have to clear in order to tell some other group of people what they can't spend their communal funds on.
There are two halves to a business - how much value it creates for its customers (which can be roughly estimated from its revenue) and how much drain it places on society (represented by the cost of running the business). There are arguments that revenue doesn't measure the full benefit and costs don't measure the full drain. Disregard them for the moment, because this part of the thread isn't arguing about that and revenue/costs catch a lot of the value/drain.
The government can compete unfairly because they aren't constrained by costs - a government body can provide marginally better service by placing vastly more drain on the community. They have a lazy option which is (1) damaging to the community and (2) unfair because their competition can't legally force taxpayers to cover their inefficiencies. Thus it is unfair, and also bad.
As an example, the Australian government in 2008 decided to roll out fiber-to-the-premise to around 90% of Australia, an expensive undertaking that no private company would attempt in one big push. All the telecom companies cancelled their infrastructure upgrades and rollouts effective immediately and I got to spend 2 years without internet because I was moving to a newly constructed area. The telecom companies couldn't compete fairly (they couldn't justify a gold-plated rollout based on actual projected demand) so they just left the market. Access was prioritised to rebuilding existing infrastructure in swing electorates.
It is possible, but very unclear, that the Australian government offered the best option. I personally as a customer would much rather have spent less on the network and lived with a cheaper, more quickly available product. So I would rather have gone with other providers, but they had left the market because they couldn't fairly compete.
Has James Clapper been punished for lying under oath to congress? Is he paraded around as an example of what happens when those in senior leadership have violated the rights of millions or is still acceptable to interview on TV or have politicians reference?
There's basically no way a city could create the NSA on their own. If you think a city is violating your constitutional rights, you sue the city (which is way easier than suing the State or National Government).
With luck, you can get national forces on your side. If anything, if the city is violating civil rights, you might be able to get FBI on your side (Department of Justice after all) to leverage the heavy-lifting.
They can get away with it because it's for children. I would not be surprised if you see something similar to what was tried in the UK - block pornography by default and require an embarrasing support phone call to lift the block.
The real threat is tracking that will exist but "wink wink" protected under the rule of requiring a court order to reveal; or if your in the political arena just someone who doesn't like you and leaks it.
At least with a private provider there is a remote possibility of suing them or using the government against them. Against the government there are just too many barriers and would require very robust legislation to protect us.
Additionally, there is no constitutional right to municipal utility services.
Just to note: the government has whims and conflicts of interest also, as demonstrated over the last decade or two with recent wild swings in high-level elected office and shifts in the courts.
People vote for who is in elected office and for some judges. Elected officials also have to re-earn their job every 2-6 years, or thereabouts.
People have no say in who runs a private media company or how.
Especially not for monopolies. Plus, as folks in tech from the days of IBM/Microsoft dominance can attest to, simply having multiple options doesn’t necessarily create the same kind of level playing field that we (imperfectly) inspire to in the electoral process.
Plus of course there are the non-customers of said private firm, who, in the case of massive companies like Amazon, Google, telecoms, etc.
While with voting the only barrier is (ideally) being a citizen of voting age.
Not sure if that has happened previously on the individual level, vs the organizational/corporate level though.
Technically, though, if they offer commercial service, the organizational/business orgs taking it up would be protected completely in any of their speech (other than things like child porn.)
For example, the Fourteenth Amendment protects against discrimination by States, not private actors: https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-14/...
And note 1338 calls out that the federal laws prohibiting businesses from discriminating against individuals are instead rooted in Congress's broad latitude to regulate interstate commerce.
And here's another similar reference:
> As a general rule, the Constitution does not give power to the federal government to pass laws to protect people against private actions. For example, the Equal Protection Clause guarantees equal protection for all – it protects against discrimination. Under this protection, the federal government may pass laws to enforce this guarantee. However, while Congress may pass a law to regulate states or other public actors, it may not pass a law to regulate private citizens. Your police department cannot discriminate against you on account of your race. However, your neighbor in the house down the block can be as bigoted as he so desires.
https://constitutionallawreporter.com/amendment-14-01/the-qu...
Here is a nice timeline: https://billofrightsinstitute.org/educate/educator-resources...
Meanwhile, our other public services kinda suck. I used to ride the Metro to work before pandemic hit. It was designed in the 1970s to be a fully automated system, but the equipment was allowed to deteriorate so much that the automation was turned off permanently in 2009. What used to be a smooth, fast ride when I grew up in DC in the 1990s is now a slow, jerky one. Trip times are also 20-25% longer than they used to be. What used to be 6 minute headways is now 8, because it was too hard to keep up 6 with the manual system. And DC is a very well funded system.
Government Internet would be built by basically the same people. Why would I expect it to be any better?
I don’t know how convincing this argument is. Certainly local law enforcement will, on average, have an easier time accessing these data.
A better argument is this is a temporary measure. Broadband is expensive to build out. Once built, it is cheaper to operate. I imagine these municipal operations will be built well and privatised when the next municipal finance downturn rears its head.
Whoever it is I would like their behavior to be meaningfully regulated under the law.
The government can throw you in jail, seize your assets, raise your taxes; AT&T can't.
With that extra power comes additional scrutiny.
The evidence so far suggests that government agencies are better stewards of personal data.
I am too old to hold politicians in high regard.
Many places have government broadband or phone, has there been abuse on the scale of US carrirers selling location data?
The irony being that, if there wasn't a government (of the people) enforcing law, then, AT&T would have zero issues/problems with doing any of those things.
I'm not saying our government works great. I'm just saying it's, flawed as it is, run by the people. While a company is not.
Whenever I bring this up, I'm accused of being "for hate", when I really just am a big fan of Snowden and don't people to give up safety for security. Most people would see a measure to combat hate on the internet and vote for it, not realizing its giving the govt the right to monitor all data or crack down on something that isn't even hateful (e.g. Free Palestine, Hong Kong etc).
Give the local "community government" the right to run the internet and now the federal govt will be spidered throughout all local govt ISPs.
> The bar for restricting what you can access, and for what reasons your service can be cancelled, becomes much higher when it's governed by the constitution
I wouldn't put it past Biden or Harris to issue and executive order for the sake of "hate speech". I couldn't imagine Sanders or even Trump doing that.
Welcome to a community that powers a lot of open source software, which powers a lot of the world.
> if the government is providing your Internet service, then your service is protected by the constitution
Nope. Did you know the constitution is a document, and not "stuff the government currently pays for"?
Is that actually accurate? My impression is intersectuon between tech entrepreneurs and folks that maintain linux kernel is not that high.
Which would be fine but isn’t the same thing.
And SCOTUS declining a case doesn't mean they don't care either, their decision not to accept the case is a choice in and of itself and a reading of the law.
More so than "not caring", IMHO, what you are describing is disagreement.
Now, you may disagree with what I just said, but that doesn't mean that either of us don't care ; ).
https://bearingarms.com/cam-e/2020/10/20/two-more-guilty-ple...
Most rights guaranteed or actions forbidden by the Constitution only restrict the government. The First Amendment is one of those.
That's probably the worst example, since most of the restrictions that apply when that occurs are via special law (e.g., the UCMJ) applicable only to that situation, not contract law to which private parties have recourse.
That's blatantly false. The Constitution only protects against government action. Until the civil war amendments, it did so almost exclusively for the federal government; it now also does so for state governments, but it doesn't extend beyond that.