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> With a name like

Nominative determinism is for fictional worlds.

> I guess my point is, if there was every anything that has done more to liberate the average human being, it is the internet. I just don't buy the argument that any of this would have happened without free market competition, or that the state of the internet not is somehow worse than it would be otherwise.

The Eternal September is a real phenomenon. That's a particular "worse" aspect, even if the overall effect of that sharing of the wealth is massively positive.

Care to elaborate?

While that is true, and the author seems biased supporting some degree of federal/international government ownership of the internet while also having borderline satirical levels of tracking, popups and subscriptions on their site. I think saying that the internet is completely healthy at the more abstract level of humans communicating to each other without borders would be incorrect.

Search engines funnel the typical 'surfer' into platforms rife with newsfeeds algorithmically curated to influence them for engagement or garbage SEO spam networks attempting to get every last cent of advertising revenue they can acquire. There is a genuine issue with discoverability on the internet directing people towards content that is meaningful.

Oh to be sure there are all sorts of problems with the internet today. And the government certainly has a role to play in making the internet better. I’m just not convinced that the solution is centralizing and socializing the tech giants.

> While that is true, and the author seems biased supporting some degree of federal/international government ownership of the internet while also having borderline satirical levels of tracking, popups and subscriptions on their site.

It isn't "their" site. They are the author of an article published to that site, not the site's owner. They aren't responsible for whatever tracking/popup/what have you Jacobin chooses to employ.

The author has some agency in the quality of the website due to his expertise and subject matter of the article. Food for thought https://motherfuckingwebsite.com/

You would prefer the author refuse a platform which gives their work an audience? Because that platform uses methods of advertising which have become perfectly standard across the web? Their job was to write a book review, which they did.

> With a name like Paris Marx you hardly need to question where this author's bias lies

Surely. Look at all these confirmed Marxists: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx_(surname)#Notable_people_...

So many in entertainment. I guess people were right about communists running hollywood. And some people were so clever they had the name before Karl Marx was even born!

Well I mean obviously political beliefs are not heritable. But this guy does seem to have made a name for himself as an internet socialist, judging by his other publications

jacobin.com is a notable far-left website in general

Come _on_ Marx is just a last name. You gotta make a better argument than that.

You mean like the entirety of my post after that quip?

Like "Adding in 7 layers of government bureaucracy sounds like a good way to have the whole edifice come crumbling down, not to mention stifling any sort of innovation that might be left in tech."? I don't agree with this article but you gotta have something better than "government slow, private fast".

Why, to please you? You aren’t really adding anything to this discussion

What makes the government more bureaucratic than a business? Have you looked at the corporate structure of the telecos, like Comcast or Verizon? It's layers upon layers of bureaucracy. Can you explain why the government is somehow guaranteed to be worse than a business?

>What makes the government more bureaucratic than a business?

It's telling that you rattled off a list of companies that have local monopolies or duopolies where they operate.

Look at the incentives at various points in these organizations and the answer should be glaringly obvious.

The government lacks big stakeholders at the top insisting upon being in the black. Bureaucracy always wants to expand. A C-suite who wants to make a fuckton of money counterbalances that more directly than the feedback loops that control costs in government.

If you want to reduce the number of variables further look at the contrast between local governments (who are less abstracted away from the source of their money) across municipalities of varying wealth.

> It's telling that you rattled off a list of companies that have local monopolies or duopolies where they operate.

... No I listed telecom companies. This whole thread is about telecoms after all. Your arguments apply to generic businesses. But let's focus on the actual industry at hand.

I don't think the populace will ever gain enough education to be able to democratically steward the internet properly, leading to a value captured internet strictly worse than our current private one, so I disagree with the article (and its selective retelling of history claiming the internet was invented by the government). But there's the reality that the internet is mostly run by oligopolistic telecos that your arguments ignore to make a generic "business good government bad" argument. Can you come up with something more specific to this market?

It is, but you'd be pretty naive to think it has no connection to Karl Marx. He even introduces people to his website with "Welcome comrade!".