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Re: Funny Stuff said by pnh102:I hope this bill comes back with a vengeance and is extended to every possible instance in which government can compete with private business. Every possible instance? OK, let's see here...
City water competes with bottled water.
Public transit competes with taxicabs.
Police compete with private security companies, especially on private property.
City garbage collection competes with private trash haulers.
Public schools compete with private schools.
State colleges and universities compete with private colleges and universities.
The USPS competes with UPS, FedEx, etc.
PBS and NPR compete with commercial broadcasters.
Public roads compete with toll roads.
Public hospitals compete with private hospitals.
State and county jails compete with those managed by private companies.
So I'm guessing you want all these things eliminated. After all, you said "every instance", so you can't pick and choose.
Oh, one more thing. The underlying protocols that make the Internet possible were developed with government funding. Without those protocols, we'd likely have online services that are walled gardens, with all their content provided and managed by the company running the service and with no way for subs to see anything outside that service, since each one would use its own protocols, all incompatible from the rest, just like we had with CompuServe, AOL, and Prodigy. And do you think a service owned and operated by a company like TWC would even allow the kind of discussion we're having here? Muni fiber? That term would be scrubbed from the boards as quickly as AOL removed any instance of the word "breast", even when it referred to breast cancer. |
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 pnh102Reptiles Are Cuddly And PrettyPremium
join:2002-05-02
Mount Airy, MD | You do list some great items. I would be inclined to agree with many of them.
However, you also pointed out that there are certain things that government is already tasked with handling. There's no way anyone can claim that municipal broadband ranks up as something that important.
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Blagojevich / Madoff 2012! |
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| said by pnh102:You do list some great items. I would be inclined to agree with many of them. However, you also pointed out that there are certain things that government is already tasked with handling. There's no way anyone can claim that municipal broadband ranks up as something that important. At some point in history, the services we now consider important seemed pretty non essential also.
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Obama '08. Will help resolve the terrible broadband issues we have that put us so far behind other countries. |
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1 edit | reply to pnh102
said by pnh102:However, you also pointed out that there are certain things that government is already tasked with handling. There's no way anyone can claim that municipal broadband ranks up as something that important. I'm glad you said that, since it reminded me of one I missed.
Public libraries compete with subscription libraries.
If that sounds a bit odd, let me explain. Up until the early to mid-1800s, there really weren't many public libraries at all. What libraries there were operated on a subscription basis. If you had the money, you could join one and pay a recurring fee to get access to its collection. Problem was, few people could afford it. During the 1800s, people started to come to the conclusion that libraries should be open to everyone so that ordinary citizens who wished to do so could educate themselves. Libraries were viewed as an uplifting influence, something that could raise the educational and literary standards of the public at large. One of the big debates was whether or not to have these libraries keep popular literature in their collections. At first, many people said no, since mass-market books were viewed as trashy and not uplifting enough. However, others, who prevailed in the end, felt it was better that people read anything, even popular novels, than nothing at all. And this is why you can go to your local library and borrow a good book to read, either between patients if you're a neurosurgeon or while you're lying in bed at the homeless shelter you live at.
So yes, the things society views as essential services can and do change. Libraries went from being something reserved for the wealthy to a service for everyone. And if you think that most of the public documents in, say, their government documents collections can be accessed online, then have another look, especially at the older ones that were never offered in electronic form. And I challenge you to find decades-old newspaper content anywhere but on microfilm at a local library.
So don't be so quick to make broad statements about what is and isn't essential. |
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said by pnh102:However, you also pointed out that there are certain things that government is already tasked with handling. There's no way anyone can claim that municipal broadband ranks up as something that important. If this country expects to move forward technologically, then there needs to be a point where advancements in technology are taken very seriously and invested in very heavily. Not just by private organizations but also by the government. The private sector has its place but let's not negelct the good that can come when the government does get involved. |
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pnh102Reptiles Are Cuddly And PrettyPremium
join:2002-05-02
Mount Airy, MD | reply to sturmvogel
said by sturmvogel:At some point in history, the services we now consider important seemed pretty non essential also. Broadband will never be one of those services.
You can't tell me that it is better for a community to spend money on broadband when it has more pressing needs that have to be dealt with first.
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Blagojevich / Madoff 2012! |
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pnh102Reptiles Are Cuddly And PrettyPremium
join:2002-05-02
Mount Airy, MD | reply to ISurfTooMuch
said by ISurfTooMuch:And I challenge you to find decades-old newspaper content anywhere but on microfilm at a local library. Interesting history of the library in the USA.
Now the question is... should our taxes fund libraries, which you have brilliantly defended, or should they be raised to fund broadband?
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Blagojevich / Madoff 2012! |
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1 edit | reply to pnh102
said by pnh102:said by sturmvogel:At some point in history, the services we now consider important seemed pretty non essential also. Broadband will never be one of those services. You can't tell me that it is better for a community to spend money on broadband when it has more pressing needs that have to be dealt with first. Communications companies have become too large and greedy. They must be broken up wherever is possible to create true competition and in other areas government must invest in infrastructure to help communications for communities held hostage by these companies.
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Obama '08. Will help resolve the terrible broadband issues we have that put us so far behind other countries. |
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said by pnh102:said by ISurfTooMuch:And I challenge you to find decades-old newspaper content anywhere but on microfilm at a local library. Interesting history of the library in the USA. Now the question is... should our taxes fund libraries, which you have brilliantly defended, or should they be raised to fund broadband? Maybe both, since both are similar in function.
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Obama '08. Will help resolve the terrible broadband issues we have that put us so far behind other countries. |
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Thanks. Actually, I have my MLIS in Library and Information Studies (though I'm not currently a practicing librarian), so I'm a little ashamed that I couldn't provide more specifics.
As for spending our tax dollars, I don't think it has to be a zero sum game. Look at it this way. First, broadband doesn't have to be just Internet access. If I were building muni-fiber, I'd offer several free services on it, then sell other services at a break-even price. For free services, I think some good ones would be phone service that connects you to 911 and city, state, and federal government agencies, Web (and other protocols, as needed) access to local government, with an emphasis on drastically improving these services so you can conduct as much business with them as possible, avoiding trips to city hall, a high-speed connection to local colleges so they can offer media-rich educational services off campus, and (of course) a connection to the library so maybe we can get those old newspaper films digitized and available from anywhere on the network. This is just the stuff off the top of my head, so there may be others. And as I said, if you need access to the Internet, TV, or phone, you can pay for that at a price that will not be at a loss for the muni provider.
I look at it this way. If a city can find a way to offer these things, it becomes a quality-of-life issue. I grew up in a tiny town in Mississippi. It's a nice place, provided you don't need a good job. If a place like that had a network like I described, businesses might locate there, especially those who only need cheap land and a fast network, such as, say, a company looking to build a data center. And if the jobs are there, the professionals to fill them will also come, and local people might retrain to get in on the new opportunities. |
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pnh102Reptiles Are Cuddly And PrettyPremium
join:2002-05-02
Mount Airy, MD | reply to sturmvogel
said by sturmvogel:Communications companies have become too large and greedy. They must be broken up wherever is possible to create true competition and in other areas government must invest in infrastructure to help communications for communities held hostage by these companies. All businesses are greedy. All people are greedy. This is human nature.
As for people being "held hostage" by communications companies, as long as they pay the monthly bill, it means that at some level, the ISPs are providing a level of service that is acceptable to the customer. People who believe that they are not getting a good value for their money can and should cancel.
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Blagojevich / Madoff 2012! |
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