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Nationalize the internet

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Re: Nationalize the internet

#31

Post by ams6110 »

jayd16 wrote: post #18
wslh wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Most people in the US have very little choice in health insurance providers, and very little involvement in the transaction between the insurer and the health care provider. It's technically private but really the customer (patient) is almost excluded. It has lost almost all the attributes of a normal private business.

Re: Nationalize the internet

#32

Post by erikpukinskis »

TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #15
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 somewha…

> Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it. Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead. If you flag something, please don't also comment that you did.

> Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.

Re: Nationalize the internet

#33

Post by jquery »

skywhopper wrote: post #19
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.

> skip to nationalization so we can start talking about how we reprivatize it in a new, competitive fashion.

Can you give an example of this successfully happening with other industries of comparable size? It seems like a pipe dream to imagine giving our government total China-like power over the internet only for them to benevolently hand it back later.

Re: Nationalize the internet

#34

Post by astrodust »

ams6110 wrote: post #22
astrodust wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do you remember the monopoly ATT "ma bell" when a long distance call to friends or family was so expensive that it was reserved for emergencies or very special occasions? Maybe they weren't actively hostile in their pricing but compared to today when you can talk to anyone in the world for no cost, it's not something I'd want to return to.

Data services back then like frame relay were so slow they could barely carry a single voice conversation over them. Long distance switching involved physically connecting together circuits over vast distances, the equipment involved was fantastically expensive and extremely intricate, in many cases all mechanical.

So yeah, it was stupidly expensive to make long distance calls because the equipment itself was stupidly expensive. Now the net cost of adding a phone circuit is almost zero, they just provision it on the digital switch. That today they charge for long distance is the criminal thing: We can video chat to anyone in the world for basically free.

The singular reason for declining prices is not deregulation, but the simple fact that as technology improves the cost of data goes down. First it became practical to transmit voice over IP, then later video, and now it's trivial for both cases.

The world you don't want to return to is where IP isn't omnipresent and bandwidth is crazy expensive because the equipment to handle it at scale hasn't been invented yet.

Re: Nationalize the internet

#35

Post by jquery »

api wrote: post #25
skywhopper wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Telecom is like health care. What we have now combines all the worst things about a private system with all the worst things about a state run system.

If you think we have the worst things about a state-run system, you haven't tried using the internet in certain countries which do not need to be named.

It's far from as bad as it can get.

Re: Nationalize the internet

#36

Post by [deleted] »

TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #15
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 somewha…

[deleted]

Re: Nationalize the internet

#37

Post by AmIFirstToThink »

So Hillary or Obama or Trump or Cruz can decide what goes on internet? No, thank you.

I would rather take the chaos of AT&T/Verizon/Comcast/Charter/TimeWarner. At least those can be defeated, the way AOL went away.

Is less regulation the problem today, or is it less competition?

Better approach would be let cities and towns compete the way water and gas or electricity is provided. People will vote locally and the best approach will win. People will vote with their wallets, their feet and at the ballet box. Megacorps or MegaGovs are not going be the answer.

Re: Nationalize the internet

#38

Post by rjeli »

Hm, I’m interested to see a good proposal for this -

>Last Tuesday, the Federal Communications Commission, led by deregulation zealot Ajit Pai

Never mind. Unsubstantiated ad hominem in the first sentence. Move along.

Re: Nationalize the internet

#39

Post by badminton1 »

The problem with making the government larger (in terms of responsibilities and influence) is that the incentive to be corrupt grows.

Then, when your government is large, the performance of your country starts depending on having a long interrupted sequence of perfect administrations, something that is very unlikely.

The idea of government is to have an entity that represents the best interests of people, to preserve and grow social capital, and achieve balance, not absolute control.

Re: Nationalize the internet

#40

Post by [deleted] »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #32
TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 somewha…

> Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it. Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead. If you flag something, please don't also comment that you did. > Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.

[deleted]
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