Comcast is donating to defeat mayor who is bringing gigabit fiber to Seattle

People/entities can donate to Super PACs that cannot donate to candidates, but that's because Super PACs -- or "independent-expenditure only committees" -- are not controlled by and do not coordinate with candidates

Whatever their interests are, I'm certainly not knee-jerked opposed to them since I like their products and I like the effects that companies with good products provide to the economy.

At very least I think that corporations serve as a contrast to the inordinate megaphone that politicians, celebrities, and the mainstream media have.

Really, I don't think that the protestations against corporations contributing to the political process are all that well thought-out. Should Michael Moore no longer be allowed to make his documentaries? They're blatant political commercials. How about Sean Penn? Should he be muzzled from being a political spokesperson since he has such an inordinate amount of influence vs an individual citizen?

How about news organizations? Every single one out there has some sort of political bias. Should they be allowed to blatantly support political parties and candidates?

Unions aren't exactly geared toward the best interest of its members either, even though they pretend to be.

... 90% of whom don't care if the product is any good or not.

In each case, additional competitors would increase average total costs for services by lowering economies of scale. But there's a far more significant characteristic: there's no differentiation between services. Combined with their being natural monopolies, you have the primary reasons for their status as government-granted monopolies.

Broadband services, on the other hand, have seen an explosion in product differentiation. We're using one word, but what we're actually referring to are a variety of separate services with significant differences (speed, quality, manner of delivery, etc.) that offer different degrees of utility relative to each other. Whether a municipality grants exclusive or even just preferential rights to a provider, the end result is that the service provided is isolated from competitive forces outside the service region.

Even if Google Fiber is in the next town over and offering an indisputably better quality service (such as endless speed and a free magical Genie with every install, wishes included), it has no consequence on the service available in your town.

That's one of the sticking points when you're dealing with coercive monopolies. When you're talking about other utilities, the negative consequences of that coercion (in an economic sense and not the pejorative) pale by comparison to the efficiencies stemming from lower production costs. The analysis for broadband, however, isn't nearly as static.

Municipal broadband certainly isn't a silver-bullet. Some have knocked their rollouts out of the park; others have bungled them. But dx4100 is missing the point by comparing municipal broadband to private firms. The status quo doesn't consist of competitive markets; it's a collection of non-contestable markets. When entry to the field is effectively closed with no competitive forces, municipal broadband and other alternative ideas represent some of the only real options available to us.

In other words, what a sad little fucked up situation we have on our hands.

Ex: In Georgia if you have a gas line to your house you can purchase gas from any gas provider in the state. This style of legislation is probably more inline with what the constituents want than the municipally owned solution or the single provider solution.

That being said, I hope they lose.

Many people think this is buying, it is simply helping the candidate you agree with the most win the election.

I've seen a lot worse than what happens in downtown Seattle, and yeah, SF has it a lot worse. A lot worse.

I also have an intense dislike for the urban one-upsmanship that seems uniquely American in my experience. As if having seen/lived through worse crime is a badge of honor, and that people living/working in elevated crime areas (just less elevated than some other places) should just suck it up. SF is the absolute worst in this regard (far worse than Seattle), where any criticism about the state of poverty and crime in the city elicits a "hurrr go back to the midwest then hurrrr".

A spade is a spade, even if there are bigger spades out there. The fact that Seattle's urban planning cockups are less severe than San Francisco's should come only as a very mild, very cold comfort.

Part of Seattle's problem - one that I touched on but didn't expand on earlier - is that it feels less safe than it actually is. When it comes to quality of life though, perception of safety is equally important as actual safety. The vast stretches of nothingness at night presents a huge perception problem that I don't think can be conquered by simply telling people "yeah, that nearly empty street with no businesses and a lot aggressive panhandlers making catcalls at you isn't so bad, statistically your odds are good!".

Seattle isn't that dangerous of a city - I made that clear earlier. The downtown is mildly sketchy, the homelessness problem is acute but not as bad as some other places, but the complete void that fills downtown after work is a huge problem that prevents any major progress on this front.

By the way, Seattle is a pedestrian ghost town. Even Pioneer Square on a busy night is ghostly compared to every other urban core in North America I've ever been to. Downtown Seattle (qualified as Olive/Pine all the way down to Yesler or Jackson, and west of I-5) is completely f'ing deserted at night.

I completely agree that SPD is petrified. I've live/worked in downtown Seattle for a while - and while I think some of the 'scaryness' is overblown, it's hard not to see a change in the trend over the past few years.

How many of those homeless people are on the streets because they lost their factory jobs and the bank kicked them out of their McMansion? I am guessing very few.

The recession didn't make these people heroin addicts or mentally ill. The homeless people that make people concerned about walking around downtown Seattle during the evening aren't the "couchsurfing until I can find a new job" kind of homeless people.

Pointing at the state of healthcare, mental or otherwise, hits the nail on the head. That is a problem larger than Seattle though.

The laws of economics (Incentives 101) care not for the intent of the lawmakers.