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  • From: "Andrew C. Oliver" <acoliver AT buni.org>
  • To: "Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/" <internetworkers AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [internetworkers] The Local Gov't Fair Competition Act.
  • Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2007 11:18:02 -0400

Phillip Rhodes wrote:
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Reading the article you linked to, Andy, it sounds like private roads
were actually quite successful. Of course once we went to taxpayer
supported roads this would drive private roads out of business, as
how can an entity compete against one that can collect subsidies in
the form of taxes?


Read: they lost money
Read: required wealthy contributors who valued their social value
Read into: required the 18th-19th century social pressures that reinforced such things.
Proof: Name the civic clubs you belong to. For instance the founding fathers were all Masons. You belong primarily to trade organizations related to your career but not much for the "public good". I don't because the few times I've joined its all white haired folks and they're concerned with entirely different things than your average 20-30 something with 2.5 kids.

And when the fly-by-night goes belly-up, their competitor couldn't just
buy out their existing infrastructure? I really don't see this
scenario you're talking about where your yard is being ripped up weekly.
And Wi-Max technology should make that even less of an issue as it develops.

Two words for you: Dark fiber.

As I've already said, as long as participation is voluntary, I don't
object to it. If all the people in a given geographic area want
to pool their resources to build a high-speed network, I say
more power to them. I just don't think they should be able to force
unwilling participants to subsidize it.


So for you the sidewalk ends at every house that doesn't feel like putting up a sidewalk. That blows dude.

And actually, from what you're saying, it almost sounds like your
arguing more for something like what I am talking about when
I speak of a "non-profit, voluntary, cooperative" than what I
typically think of when you say "local government." As far as
the County or a City/Town doing this stuff, my objections to it
are based on a couple of issues:

1. Any business which is subsidized by taxes is going to have
an automatic (and IMO, probably insurmountable) advantage over
a "pure" private business. So once you have this tax-supported
business in place, it becomes a de-facto monopoly as no private
business is going to try and compete with that. This limits choice
in the long run.


Yeah... USPS kicks the crap out of UPS and Fedex...oh wait... However the USPS serves/served parts of the country/world that were not developed first. Infrastructure has a social interest that requires you surrender some rights.

2. What if the City/County/Town simply makes a bad decision, like
rolling out a network based on crappy technology? Wouldn't you like the
option of not participating if they wanted to deploy GPRS as their
networking solution?


Vote against them, run for city county town...

3. What if their decisions are just bad economically? How many times
does a local government give a contract for building something like
this to one company, instead of one offering a better deal, because
the County Commissioner is buddies with the owner of the one outfit? Or
because of outright kickbacks, bribery, etc? If the local government
is spending "our" tax money unwisely, wouldn't one want the option
to not support that entity?


Often they are. It is not profitable for time warner to put cable in rural communities to support their development. IT may be profitable for local government but it may not be directly attributable (because it is in the form of tax revenue).

And now that we're back to this, let's revisit the "Local Gov't Fair
Competition Act." All it does is require local government entities to
publish a written business plan for their network, have public hearings
before doing it, and - in an older revision - mandated a popular
referendum to approve such a plan. So why are you opposed to these
things?


I'm opposed to them being profitable in the first 2-5 years. Most infrastructure heavy companies aren't profitable for far more years than that.

-Andy


TTYL,

Phil



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