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| reply to sonicmerlin
Re: Nicely biased reporting. said by sonicmerlin:You do realize there are numerous rural fiber providers out there that are profitable, right? The issue has always been the rate of profit, not whether one can actually make a profit. Companies like Verizon are forced by shareholders into considering only extremely short-term gains. And their ownership structure is what? How many of those are shareholder owned, as opposed to either municipal, private, or cooperatives?
In fact, name five RURAL fiber providers that are both shareholder-owned and profitable.
Whether anyone likes it or not, public ownership (through stock and debt, which is how any public corporation normally operates) pretty much limits what the operations of a corporation are geared toward. The original AT&T (Bell System) was a VERY long-term-geared company by design because its mission was straightforward - provide dial-tone-based local phone service throughout the United States. However, in order for a Bell System to be feasible, it could NOT be competed against. (It is why the term *natural monopoly* was coined - the creation of the Bell System was a National Priority.) AT&T, while a public corporation, paid a pittance for a stock dividend (and a similar pittance for interest on senior debt); however, that pittance was as reliable (if not more so) as the sunrise. (AT&T stock and senior debt was the ONLY corporate stock or debt purchased in the early days of the California Personnel Retirement System because of the reliability of those dividends and interest paybacks.) The sort of thinking that permitted that to happen does not exist in corporate America today, largely because that sort of thinking doesn't exist in the government of the United States today, either. (Nowadays, the thinking in the government, especially Congress, is that the ONLY long-term national operations allowable must be owned/operated by the government itself. Yes; that also implies that the 2008 failure of AIG/Lehman Brothers/FNMA/Freddie Mac was planned. Consider that, for all intents and purposes, we have indirectly nationalized the banking and financing system for personal property. How did those entities that are now majority-owned/operated/influenced by Congress get there? Don't JUST *follow the money*; follow the law, too.) |
