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| 5/24 |
| 2005/2/25 [Politics/Domestic/Election, Politics/Foreign/Europe] UID:36416 Activity:high |
2/25 Wired, how far you have fallen:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.03/view.html?pg=5
\_ What the fuck are you talking about?
\_ Wired used to be techno-libertarian, this is written
by a Euro Socialist.
\_ Lessig is a Euro Socialist? Wow.
\_ Op-ed piece about tech stuff, mildly sensationalist, about
something of import to geek types? Sounds like Wired. -John
\_ Once again the invisible hand of the "free" market gives us
the finger.
\_ OK, dude, very basic again for those of you who were asleep
in Econ 100A&B: collusion, government lobbying, anything like
that is NOT the invisible hand, the free market, capitalism, or
anything along those lines. Thank you, you may now go back to
sleep. -John
\_ in other words, there's no such thing as the free market,
thus we can stop relying on it to solve our problems. -tom
\_ Haha. Let's play a game called 'spot the flaw.' -- ilyas
\_ w00t!
\_ How about "spot the twit." Hey, it's ilyas! I win! -tom
\_ w00t! You both get a "w00t!" for entertaining the
rest of us. A grateful motd thanks you both.
\_ This is how every implementation of capitalism has been.
\_ Yeah, this kind of sounds like the people who defend
communism. But in a perfect world...
\_ Whyis a regular op-ed column by one of the most respectable legal
scholars on constitutional and cyberspace law a problem? -dans
\_ An article showing corporate corruption in government, applicable
to tech stuff, this is inappropriate/wrong for what reason?
\_ I agree with the article. The government can do something
better than private enterprises because they are
fundamentally different. Private enterprises are there to
make money, governments are there to serve. If a company
can suck $100 out of you, they will not sell for $99.
Governments on the other hand just need to cover their cost.
\_ At the same time, governments are technically not
looking for max profit, so they have less of a incentive
to minimize cost and maximize efficiency. The company
may want to sell it for $100, but could sell it for $80
and a competitor is selling for $85 so it sells it for
$80. The author has a point that if the government CAN
do it cheaper/better and it is for a service/product that
makes sense, it should. Making laws prohibiting it from
doing that just because it eats into the bottom line of
some corporation is not a good enough justification for
not doing it.
\_ Thanks for the link, it is somewhat interesting. While we're on
this topic, may I suggest an excellent documentary that talks
about similar topics? "The Corporation" is an extraordinary film
about the creation of the American corporation, its legal
organizational model, its global economic dominance, and its
incredible ambition to influence every aspect of culture in its
unrelenting pursuit of profit. You can rent it in Blockbuster,
Netflix, or buy it on http://Amazon.com
\_ you can get a preview here:
http://www.mininova.org/get/4719/The.Corporation.DVDRip.XVID.avi.torrent |
| 5/24 |
|
| www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.03/view.html?pg=5 You'll be pleased to know that communism was defeated in Pennsylvania las t year. Governor Ed Rendell signed into law a bill prohibiting the Reds in local government from offering free Wi-Fi throughout their municipali ties. The action came after Philadelphia, where more than 50 percent of neighborhoods don't have access to broadband, embarked on a $10 million wireless Internet project. City leaders had stepped in where the free ma rket had failed. Of course, it's a slippery slope from free Internet acc ess to Karl Marx. So Rendell, the telecom industry's latest toady, even while exempting the City of Brotherly Love, acted to spare Pennsylvania from this grave threat to its economic freedom. For if you look closely, you'll s ee the communist menace has infiltrated governments everywhere. Ever not ice those free photons as you walk the city at night? Ever think about t he poor streetlamp companies, run out of business because municipalities deigned to do completely what private industry would do only incomplete ly? Or think about the scandal of public roads: How many tollbooth worke rs have lost their jobs because we no longer (since about the 18th centu ry) fund all roads through private enterprise? City police departments hamper the growth at Pinkerto n's (now Securitas). So let the principle that guided Rendell guide governments everywhere: If private industry can pro vide a service, however poorly or incompletely, then ban the government from competing. But this sort of insanity is raging across th e US today. Pushed by lobbyists, at least 14 states have passed legislat ion similar to Pennsylvania's. I've always wondered what almost $1 billi on spent on lobbying state lawmakers gets you. The telcos' argument isn't much more subtle than that of the simpleton wh o began this column: Businesses shouldn't have to compete against their governments. Or so the fall of the Soviet Union should have taught us. Although this principle is true enough in most cases, it is obviously not true in all. The government should certainly not do what private enterp rise can do better (eg, make computers). And the government should not prohibit private enterprise from competing against it (eg, FedEx). Bu t the government also should not act as the cat's paw for one of the mos t powerful industries in the nation by making competition against that i ndustry illegal, whether from government or not. This is true, at least, when it is unclear just what kind of "good" such competition might prod uce. At the beginning, we led the world in broadband deployment. There are many places, like Phila delphia, where service is lacking. And there are many places, like San F rancisco, where competition is lacking. The result of the duopoly that c urrently defines "competition" is that prices and service suck. We're th e world's leader in Internet technology - except that we're not. Communities across the country are experimenting wit h ways to supplement private service. And these experiments are producin g unexpected economic returns. Some are discovering that free wireless a ccess increases the value of public spaces just as, well, streetlamps do . And just as streetlamps don't make other types of lighting obsolete, f ree wireless access in public spaces won't kill demand for access in pri vate spaces. In economoid-speak, these public services may well provide positive externalities. Yet we will never recognize these externalities unless municipalities are free to experiment. That's why the bipartisan Silicon Valley advocacy group TechNet explicitly endorses allowing local governments to compete with broadband providers. City and state politicians should have the backbone to stand up to self-s erving lobbyists. Citizens everywhere should punish telecom toadies who don't. Let the market s, both private and public, compete to provide the service that telecom and cable has not. |
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