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this post was submitted on 02 Oct 2023
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Honestly Star Link should be seized by the DoD for national security reasons and for suspicion of Musk aiding a foreign enemy.
The entire US internet should be run by the USPS.
Allow me to give you a reminder that, until quite recently, USPS was run by a Trump-appointed stooge who intentionally sabotaged mail service in order to try to reduce the impact of mail-in voting.
You really need to keep in mind, when proposing the government take over an entire industry, that in America a good 50% of the time that government will be run by hapless malicious morons. I, personally, would not want Donald Trump to be in a position to unilaterally decide what the American internet looks like and to arbitrarily ban whatever he thinks is harmful to his interests.
This is why you also have laws in place to protect the core functioning of an entity. It’s why even with an absolute hack trying to undermine it, the USPS still delivered mail almost completely uninterrupted (despite the losing of sorting machines, which was about all that stooge could do to hinder the USPS).
I’d much rather federal and local municipalities run fiber options. If you’re using a utility pole, you should be subject to utility regulations full stop. And compared to having a locally monopolistic private corporation that has much more unilateral freedom to do super shady shit, I’d really prefer an entity that at least can have government oversight and associated required disclosures.
I'd be all for some amount of public offering, but especially in the face of Republican's increasingly strong war against the mere existence of a lot of federal agencies, my faith in those laws and institutions is growing increasingly fragile.
Private companies, for all their faults, can at least by relied on to do what makes them the most money, and the collapse of democracy doesn't really line up well with that, whereas a lot of Republicans in government simply want to watch the world burn, which isn't exactly very profitable to Wall Street.
I actually disagree. Despite four years and their best efforts, they couldn’t even dismantle the USPS or ACA or the IRS. I’m actually a bit bullish on our government agencies. Are they under attack? Yes. How can we protect them? More democracy. If we have a healthy democracy, then we have healthy institutions. If we don’t have a healthy democracy, well, we have way bigger problems than whether internet is a government entity or not, because in a fascist state everything is essentially run by an oligarch anyways.
Democracy actually isn’t favorable to Wall Street. It favors labor far too much, and then the pesky issue of taxes. Corporate conglomeration actually wants oligarchy, not democracy. It’s far better for them to have absolute and total control to extort labor and consumers to drive wealth to a select few. Wall Street doesn’t care about democracy, it cares about funneling money to a small amount of people. They can do it in a democracy, but to say that they couldn’t also do it in an oligarchy they participate in is I think opposite what would actually happen.
I loosely agree with that in principle, but modern Republicans like the House Freedom Caucus are not the kinds of oligarchs Wall Street would want. They're motivated by raw resentment, anger, and a desire to hurt their perceived enemies, not profit. Wall Street doesn't care at all about "wokeness"; if that's what customers want, they'll gladly provide it, whereas you're increasingly seeing Republicans attack large corporations for not matching their own specific narrow ideology (see, the DeSantis v. Disney fight).
My point isn't that Wall Street is good - only that they're reliable and predictable. In a perfect world, I'd absolutely want to see a strong national ISP akin to the USPS that's completely isolated from political bullshit. In the current political climate though, I'm very concerned for the ability of our institutions to actually remain isolated from political pressures, which could be extremely strong given the power at stake. Pending SCOTUS cases have the potential to rip open a giant hole in the administrative state's ability to maintain some level of independence from the executive, for instance.
To be clear, I'm not saying you're really wrong, and I completely understand your position. I just don't think I'm quite as optimistic, or perhaps alternatively, I'm a bit more paranoid.
I appreciate the discussion!
I would say I’m actually just as paranoid. I just trust a government body in a democracy more than I trust a private for profit company in a democracy. If we don’t have a functioning democracy, then I don’t think it matters if it’s a private corporation or a government entity, because either way the government will enforce it’s whims on the utility (eg, surveillance and censoring).
So my argument is, while we still have a democracy we should expand public utilities. They’re not perfect, but I think socially more responsible, more auditable, than private companies who are not motivated by even a loose public good mandate. So given the choice between municipalizing or federalizing internet utilities and a private company, I’ll choose a public good utility every single time. I don’t worry about the USPS reading my mail as a standard of operation, but I know for a fact that a private company would try everything it could to open up that mail and take a peak (eg, you have to opt out of “prioritized mail screening” or something, and then you’d get degraded service). I know this, because private ISPs already try to packet sniff everything you do online and throttle select services.
So I guess my argument is, fear of losing democracy isn’t a good reason to oppose public utilities and social programs, because the realized harm of oligarchic fascism will be the same regardless if it’s a private or public entity (in fact, ironically, fascists will make it a “public entity” and then give its assets and control to whoever the oligarch for that “utility” will be). So since while we have a democracy, public utilities serviced by governments are better, and the results are the same regardless under fascism, we should instead try to bolster public utilities all the more while we can.
To the original suggestion in this thread, taking over a utility like space provided internet, which uses the public owned goods of spectrum and orbit paths, is actually a better benefit to consumers in this case, and honestly one we should support. What’s the alternative? Letting a fascist man baby run it how he sees fit? We already have that. If it’s a government service and our government is taken over by fascists, we’d still have that. But while we have a democracy, let us use it.
Even while Trump's idiot was in charge, tampering with the mail was a federal offense.
And I don't imagine it being totally public. USPS would own the network, and companies would pay them to sell access. This would allow dozens of ISPs, all offering different levels of service, without needing local monopolies. It would look a lot like dial up ISPs: You could use AOL, EarthLink, NetZero, or any of a handful of small, local ISPs.
The USPS would then contract with companies to maintain the networks, but since they own it they can regulate the ISPs a lot more closely on a host of issues. Plus it would give free access to all online government services.
I could get behind something like that, though I do wonder how big a difference that would really necessarily make. Cell phone network providers have to lease spectrum ranges from the government, but it's not as if that market is actually robust. Beyond that, Congress is perfectly able to pass regulation on ISPs, but doesn't for a variety of stupid political reasons. I'm not sure how those couldn't equally apply to USPS oversight (perhaps even more cheaply, since you'd have fewer people to ~~bribe~~ I mean, lobby).
I don't really have an issue with in in principle, but I'm not convinced it would inherently make things much better either.
DeJoy was appointed by the USPS board of governors, not Trump. He's still in charge. You'll notice that mail in voting worked and Trump lost, and also that even with a hideous bucket of fuck like DeJoy doing his best to cripple it in order to drive business to UPS and FedEx the USPS still delivers more places, faster and cheaper than all it's competitors. USPS is strong. It should function as a mail service, an official part of the electoral system and it's function as a bank should be restored. I wouldn't be mad if it ended up running a significant backbone of the US internet as well.
The internet should be more distributed than it is today.
Which will not happen in private hands always trying to get a monopoly even if only locally.
So level the playing field. Public infrastructure for all, let companies provide the last meters and/or the service only.
Idk if you meant for this to be funny, but I definitely got a laugh out of it
Why is that funny?
Not really sure, just seems like a maddening proposition. Internet should be run locally, not nationally.
If the USPS was in charge of internet, we’d be on DSL since it’s good enough.
It's not about local/national... in todays day and age internet and phone should be a public service for all.