This will sadly be the end of FCC/FTC and all the antitrust efforts that were graining steam over the last few years.
Not a Trump voter, but this is a huge area where many Democrats are flat wrong. Talking to some Democrats about the supply problem with housing is like talking to some Republicans about why a hard line abortion ban makes maternal mortality go up. It can’t possibly be true because the ideology says it can’t be true.
Here is an article [0] that talks about the issue. This is a real problem driven by this collusion, don't act like it isn't. And now that Trump is in office, these kinds of investigations are going to disappear and the housing crisis is going to get worse.
I think the argument above is that democrats are one of the drivers of building restrictions, leading to the ability to collude. If new entrants to the market were plentiful then the existing cartels would be undercut. Also, rent control puts a tight lock on the rental market by forcing landlords to keep their rents high lest they become locked into the low rents they may otherwise offer.
I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader whether to be on board with that assessment, but there is a reasonable argument to be made that a free-er market could actually benefit housing costs.
Where do LLMs come into this?
The most recent of which was BEAD (The Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment Program) which allocated 42.45 BILLION in broadband rollout funding.
If you think those companies are paying for the lines out of their pocket... you are very confused about the economics of broadband rollout.
The best case is that they are loans at sweetheart rates that translate into additional subscriber fees tacked onto the customers. Most times it's just literal grant cash, though.
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So to recap - you and I paid for those lines. Sure as fuck wasn't ATT.
For example, in my local (semi-rural) area, private companies are exclusively doing it, along with other things like wifi. If government dollars are available, they always have strings attached and take decades to roll out and are typically really only issued to large companies with substantial ability to roll out large programs (with the exception of a few co-ops that have made the news).
And this completely ignores Starlink, which was repeatedly denied government funding because the government hates the viewpoints of the guy who runs it, but nevertheless offers the best opportunity for high-speed Internet in rural areas. It's just like when Cornelius Vanderbilt completely beat the Post Office's own selected "winner" to connect the two coasts via steamships.
And the total boondoggle that is your best example -- BEAD -- has, by its own admission, connected ZERO people since it was enacted in 2021! It's another ridiculous example of picking winners and losers, but mostly losers.
Please feel free to read the sad story at the government's own websites (the .gov's below) as well as a DC thinktank:
https://www.internetforall.gov/program/broadband-equity-acce...
https://broadbandusa.ntia.doc.gov/funding-programs/broadband...
https://www.washingtonpolicy.org/publications/detail/the-42-...
It should not the government's job to fund things that have a definitive and obvious competitive advantage for private industry, because they're just terrible at it.
Look back at the almost literally trillions of dollars that the government wasted in the solar or wind industry for other examples of where taxpayers' dollars might just as well be shipped on pallets to China or flushed down the drain.
Private industry beats government investment every single time, because the government doesn't actually have enough skin in the game and is so easily corrupted and influenced by lobbyists. When government dollars get involved, it distorts the incentives and then we end up with terrible things like AT&T controlling a monopoly that they didn't even pay for (like Ma Bell in the land before time).
Stop it.
There are two exceptions though - France (partially) and Sweden.
The FCC should not have allowed this to happen on the public's airwaves, but I expect more of the same in Trump's second term.
And on a basic level everything transactional so if you were being in cheek it kind of fell apart.
Basically: it's because "Harris" is a county name in Texas.
(aqui means here in spanish)
Is there a difference? I thought Twitter was Musk's broadcast platform.
As they should! It's quite literally the whole reason they exist.
Email unsubscribe links have worked well, and click-to-cancel hopefully can too! The only opponents of these policies are massive companies who rely on predatorial dark patterns. Everyone with a brain should support these "wasteful policies" because they benefit consumers.
I absolutely LOVE having one link to instantly stop being emailed from mailing lists, and I can't be happier for click-to-cancel and related legislation.
"oh no, big tech company XYZ will make 0.0001% less money this year!!!" is the energy you're giving
Yes but that's not what my complaints about the FTC are. My complaint is about them trying to stop Microsoft from buying Blizzard or trying to stop Adobe from buying Figma. I don't believe there's such a thing as 'monopoly on video games' or 'monopoly on website design software'.
Them working on general, consumer-friendly, sane policies is fine! But they shouldn't be preventing M&As/investments unless critical goods are involved without a substitute - which Call of Duty and Figma clearly aren't.
Why can't monopolies instead be "very harmful for the tech sector", and Lina Khan's policies be "not a big deal"?
Speaking of abortion rights, I believe few people will even talk about it in the next election cycle, as it has become a state issue. I also find it interesting that many pro-lifers hate Trump for overturning Roe vs Wade because they won't get millions and millions of dollars every year for the sake of fighting abortion rights.
which ones?
Why do you prefer this over letting individuals decide for themselves? If the goal of democracy is to give power to the people, would this not be the most democratic option?
I don't. Let's be realistic: everytime we go "states rights" it's almost always so the state can control some sector of the population. We reworked the articles of confederation for a reason. We're one country. Not 50. Land of the free right?
Something as base as bodily operations should be a personal choice, just like any other religious belief out there. Not determined by the mood of your mayor.
If you want a purely logistical reason instead of moral: banning abortion doesn't ban abortions. It just increases infantcide, something we all disagree with. If someone doesn't want a baby, they'll get rid of it. Same ideas as prohibition. And do we really want to punish a woman for an operation she did on her body? In another state or in the backstreets?
>Besides, even Ginsburg was against the Roe vs Wade ruling. S
Yes, for reasons in that the Supreme Court doesn't enact laws. She instead wanted congress to make it a federal protection. But look how thars going. Almost like she knew a shift in the courts can remove it easier than a passed law...
>Another one is that ee pulled out of the Iran Nuclear deal.
I Guess it's nice we made up for Regean decades later. I'll give him that
They just have to re-align their mindset a little bit.
F** AG Paxton.
He was president before it was gaining steam.