Techdirt reports that Seattle City Councilmember Kshama Sawant of Socialist Alternative is calling for municipal broadband for the city. Sawant writes, “Seattle would be the largest city in the country to implement municipal broadband. We should expect Comcast and CenturyLink to go to every length to keep their unchallenged duopoly in Seattle. Countering them will require a mass citywide movement, much like the one we needed to win $15/hour last year by successfully overcoming the financial and political clout of fast food and retail giants.”
Techdirt writes, “If Seattle as a whole isn’t willing to pay for service (and the tax-loathing public is easily swayed by ISP lobbyist and astroturfer vilification of such efforts), then the city’s going to remain locked in its Kafka-esque duopoly logjam in perpetuity. At least unless it can find a deep-pocketed and marginally altruistic private partner to eat much of the bill.”
“There is no real reason multiples providers can’t share parts of the same infrastructure, and that isn’t even uncommon in other areas.”
The major barrier to that sort of competition is probably the ownership norms in place that favor corporate monopoly.. If one company “owns” the infrastructure then they can use that privilege to exclude others from using it.
“I’m all for getting government out the public utility monopoly protection business, so that we can all get cheaper internet service. Saves the government some money, saves the users some money. Seems like a no-brainer to me.”
The status quo is that governments treat ISPs like natural monopolies but do not regulate or own them like a natural monopoly. It’s kind of like health care–in actuality the US government spends as much or more taxpayer money per capita in the USA on health care as any other nation but given the corporate monopoly control over the service and its pricing, the government spending ends up driving consumer prices up without corresponding gains in service quality or overall coverage.
These trends are the natural consequences of rampant economic inequality and the resulting control of government and its functions by monied interests.
According to the proposals of people like Sawant, there would still be private ISPs, but the non-profit municipal service would offer a fair rate (that is, at cost, or what the cost would be if there was fair competition). It doesn’t have to be free (and probably wouldn’t be free for people who use tons of bandwidth), but a city like Seattle would have strong economic incentive to offer a service that is both free (or as close as possible to free) and high-quality..
The “natural monopoly” argument for government-run utilities is, if not completely bogus, then at least vastly overstated. There is no real reason multiples providers can’t share parts of the same infrastructure, and that isn’t even uncommon in other areas.
If the power company wants to get into the ISP business, I’m fine with that, all else being equal. Can’t imagine why they would want to give it away for free though.
I’m all for getting government out the public utility monopoly protection business, so that we can all get cheaper internet service. Saves the government some money, saves the users some money. Seems like a no-brainer to me.
Addendum on that: of course Paulie cannot be held responsible for what the LP does any more than I can be held responsible for what the GP does. I’m just trying to make it clear that imho the LP’s position on private property is pro-government (in the sense the anarchists mean by it) and pro-status quo (that is, banker rule).
As for broadband, it’s pretty much a natural monopoly, especially when it uses cable. The choice is between a service accountable to the (voting and choosing) people or a service accountable to the profit margins of corporate oligarchs. Since eventually access to the Internet will be seen as an economic necessity, municipal broadband is a matter of time. So Socialist Alternative is smart to focus on this. But given the lack of consciousness in the USA, municipal broadband seems more likely to happen in foreign cities first.
“Don’t be silly. All kidding aside, corporate entities should not even exist, since there shouldn’t even be a regime to grant them their corporate personhood and noncontractual limited liability to begin with, much less all of the other ways governments prop them up. But then again I spent quite a bit of time and effort explaining all that in a lot of detail on a prior thread (at least one recently, maybe some others) and provided a lot of links to further details, and you just ignored all that and kept repeating the same stuff, so the only thing left to do is to talk about what the labor theory of value actually means if you take it seriously. And it does lead to some very ridiculous conclusions, which I’ll have to keep pointing out now.”
Honestly I think the labor vrs subjective value theory debate/discussion is a waste of time similar to arguing whether someone hears it if a tree falls in the forest. People advocating the labor theory of value are talking about where value originates from, and people advocating the subjective are talking about how commodities or products are priced. Been there, argued about that, moved past it. If you think there is some value in discussing it, show me why/how.
If you really don’t believe in government privileges for corporate entities, including property protections, then you aren’t doing a very good job making that position clear to your interlocutors and fellow posters around here. If you were, then surely they would be more knowledgeable about anarchism and criticisms of the state. But in general most of the posters at IPR are ignorant about such topics and parrot various orthodoxies peddled by the likes of Mises.org or LewRockwell.org, without ever being called out for promoting systems of control and hierarchy. These ideologies (eg Mises, Hayek, Rothbard, and their progeny) were funded by the banksters and billionaires that actual libertarians are supposed to be against, but we don’t hear anything about that.
Based on what you’ve said in prior threads about being unjustified government privileges, it could be that there isn’t a real substantive difference between us, but merely a semantic one. But I think there probably is a substantive difference–otherwise you wouldn’t be actively promoting the Libertarian Party. This is a party that seems ideologically committed to preserving property relations, including corporate property relations, as they are and strictly forbidding expropriation via taxation or any other means. Look, I abhor violence as much as any Libertarian. But I don’t see how there can be an authentic political revolution, leading to more substantive liberty, without at least the possibility of re-evaluating who owns what and how. But the Libertarian Party’s insistence on deontological voodoo in the interest of the ruling class, such as the non-aggression axiom, makes them in many ways even more conservative and pro-bankster than the duopoly parties on the issue of private property.
As far as broadband goes, municipal wifi may be the most realistic shot we have at tearing broadband away from entrenched corporate monopolies (just as single payer is probably our best shot at liberating health care from bankster monopoly). Municipalities could compete with each other to set up the best possible networks, thus spurring innovation (which may or may not happen under corporate monopoly–it depends if the corporations would profit from these innovations or not). Try to keep in mind that sometimes the rhetoric of the “free market” is deployed as an ideological tool for entrenched monopolies to stifle innovation and keep prices for services artificially high. When you are deploying that rhetoric of the free market in a way contrary to the real interests of the people, then expect to be called out on it.
Interesting. Anyone else have thoughts on the pros and cons of that?
I’m currently in a very informal process to try to convince the local Public Utility District (the electric company, with all its power poles) to realize that it is a “utility” not merely “an electric company”. Putting in a broadband service would be dramatically cheaper if the ‘last-100-yards’ to the user were linked through WiFi boxes mounted on power poles, each serving 10-20 houses. My (extremely informal) proposal is that they give 15 megabits per second free, and charge about $10-15 per month for 35 megabits/second service. In other words, the system actually has the prospect of paying for itself.
I think Soylent Green is prett easy to chew, even if you don’t have any teeth, right?
Don’t be silly. All kidding aside, corporate entities should not even exist, since there shouldn’t even be a regime to grant them their corporate personhood and noncontractual limited liability to begin with, much less all of the other ways governments prop them up. But then again I spent quite a bit of time and effort explaining all that in a lot of detail on a prior thread (at least one recently, maybe some others) and provided a lot of links to further details, and you just ignored all that and kept repeating the same stuff, so the only thing left to do is to talk about what the labor theory of value actually means if you take it seriously. And it does lead to some very ridiculous conclusions, which I’ll have to keep pointing out now.
Keep on keeping on with the knee-jerk defenses of the status quo. It only shows your devotion to maintaining monopoly privileges for corporate entities at the expense of consumers.
Too bad only the ultra lazy super rich can afford food chewers. Poor people, on balance, have worse teeth than the vulgar super rich societal parasites. Public access to FREE food chewers! It’s the only fair thing to do.
The cost of walking over to tell people whatever you have to say them would be very, very low, and much more valuable than all the dastardly shortcuts people have introduced to that process because of the foolish rejection of the labor theory of value. We could have 100% full employment as hunter-gatherers guaranteed all the time for anyone who doesn’t die of starvation or disease. Broadband, hell! Cup your hands and holler, or get to steppin’, literally.
If it weren’t for the profit motive, there would be no broadband. We’d still be on those 28K dial-up connections like we were 20 years ago.
+1. This might get people thinking about what municipal broadbad would cost if delivered (free from rent-seeking monopoly) at cost. I suspect that cost would be surprisingly low, particuarly in densely populated areas like Seattle.
Less is more.
On average, I’ve found that is more or less true.
Less is more.
Brng down that evil duopoly with a government monopoly.