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Nationalize the internet

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Re: Nationalize the internet

#11

Post by astrodust »

aaron-lebo wrote: post #8

I genuinely struggle to understand proposals like this. The current political system is broken - the FCC is symptomatic of that. In what world does it seem like a good idea to give more power to that broken system?

Then it's equally broken for everyone.

Nationalized or quasi-nationalized (heavily regulated) telecom companies used to be dysfunctional and sometimes comically inept but at least they weren't actively hostile against consumers and businesses.

Re: Nationalize the internet

#13

Post by mungojelly »

aaron-lebo wrote: post #8

I genuinely struggle to understand proposals like this. The current political system is broken - the FCC is symptomatic of that. In what world does it seem like a good idea to give more power to that broken system?

We all want to move power to the people and away from the system. The question is what path could give the system less power. The existing power structure has plenty of control over the current arrangement, it's not like this is an idyllic state of nature we shouldn't disturb. We currently have state-mandated "private" monopolies, that is, fiefdoms. It'd be hard to do worse than that.

Re: Nationalize the internet

#15

Post by TheAdamAndChe »

aristocles wrote: post #5

I registered just to say this is literally the worst idea I've ever seen.

Hello, friend. Welcome to the site. I see you're new here, so I thought I'd let you know why you're being downvoted.

Your post isn't very substantive. You express your opinion, but you don't explain the thought processes behind your opinion. When combined with the snarkiness, it just wasn't a productive comment.

If you haven't yet, read up on the Hacker News Guidelines[1], that may help when posting something somewhat controversial.

We try hard to avoid forming an echo chamber here. Overly emotional and unsubstantive comments are downvoted, and controversial comments with a lot of substance to them are often(but not always, unfortunately) upvoted.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

edit: The irony of being downvoted for trying to maintain a positive, productive culture on this site is not lost to me. I won't bother to do so in the future.

Re: Nationalize the internet

#16

Post by skywhopper »

hanklazard wrote: post #7

I would love for this to work, but im afraid the temptation for the government to control / censor information would be too great.

I agree this is a dumb proposal, but what's interesting is that we're at a point where we have to decide whether the government or handful of huge corporations with local monopolies should be in control of the Internet. If that's the choice, I personally would favor the government which is at least notionally somewhat under our control. It's not like the Internet monopolies have any incentive whatsoever to push back against government attempts to assert control or censorship.

The better solution is a breakup of the massive telecoms into many, much smaller companies, including forbidding local monopolies on home Internet access. But I have no hope of that happening anytime soon.

Re: Nationalize the internet

#17

Post by benjohnson »

astrodust wrote: post #14
hanklazard wrote: post #7

I would love for this to work, but im afraid the temptation for the government to control / censor information would be too great.

Either the corporations are going to do it, or the government is going to do it. Pick one.

The former please - it's been my experience that switching from Verizon to AT&T is somewhat easier than a bloody revolution.

Re: Nationalize the internet

#18

Post by jayd16 »

wslh wrote: post #6
jstanley wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I strongly disagree. I think if you want something to remain free from coercion or interference, giving it to the government is the last thing you want to do. If you want something to remain free from coercion or interference, decentralisation is the way to go. Edit: Oops! I totally misread your comment ("is" vs "isn't"). Turns out I'm agreeing :)

Governments inflate agency costs ad infinitum without increasing the QoS. This is not a law but based on statistics around the major countries.

Is that why America's private healthcare system costs more than any other country and yet we do not have any where near the top outcomes?

What statistics are you cherry picking to make your argument?

Re: Nationalize the internet

#19

Post by skywhopper »

aaron-lebo wrote: post #8

I genuinely struggle to understand proposals like this. The current political system is broken - the FCC is symptomatic of that. In what world does it seem like a good idea to give more power to that broken system?

If we have to choose between direct government control or government-endorsed cartel control that will just ease towards full monopoly sooner or later, I would rather just skip to nationalization so we can start talking about how we reprivatize it in a new, competitive fashion.

Re: Nationalize the internet

#20

Post by natural219 »

I'm surprisingly sympathetic to idea of nationalizing the internet, but the paragraph about "deregulation in general is bad" seriously baffles me. Not only because taking a principled stance on "regulation as a whole" is abhorrently coarse for me, but they specifically reference the airline industry -- and then links to an article talking about how good deregulation was? -- without blinking an eye or realizing that a vast majority of people view the 1978 airline deregulation as an obviously good thing.

I'm now slightly less convinced that nationalizing the internet would be a good thing.

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