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The internet industry was already given tax money to implement infrastructure once. That money was distributed to shareholders as profit. And since there was no punishment clause, they never had to implement the infrastructure that they agreed to.

We already did that once and I've got relatives that still only get 9600 on dialup, no chance at DSL, and they live in a town with 1200+ people/sq mi, if only 10,000 or so people.

They'll take the money, kick out a fat dividend, and then spin off a paper company with the responsibilities, destined to fold.

There are, however, several things to consider especially when it's about telco's.

Lets say you've ordered a pizza delivery guy to bring you a big fat pizza with some coca cola, because frankly you've a little bit hungry. But what will the pizza delivery guy do if you're mean to him? That's correct, he will not give you the pizza. You might try calling a different pizza place, but you're out of luck if your area doesn't have one or they're already closed after 9pm.

It's basically the same thing with telco's. Only way to change that is to get government to do something about it.

Better than that - the letters patent are meant to protect and aid business ventures in order to promote the interests of society. If any company is unwilling to do that, we should revoke it and dissolve them.

We tried that already in 1996 in some parts of the country. I don't think it ever made it everywhere. The problem was, the State came in and said to the incumbant telco that they would permit other companies to use their lines for some payment (say $1 per line) ignoring what their own information and that of the telco said it cost to maintain the line. Say the real cost was $5 per line.

The result was a bonanza - lots of start-up companies formed to take advantage of this huge disparity in costs. They got plenty of investors because just dealing with the arbitrage between the $1 fee and $5 real cost could result in $4 getting passed around. Just collecting the interest on this money was worthwhile if there was enough of it.

Well, obviously nobody spends $5 on something and sells it for $1, at least not very long. Nearly all of the DSL start-ups failed when the real terms of the deal becaome known to everyone. We still have some folks trying to play at this game of paying less than what the service they are getting costs. Vonage is there because of this play and the bones of the whole Sprint ION fiasco. End result is that there is a real cost and if you separate by force the profit from the cost the cost has to be paid somehow.

Nobody wants that. We have been hiding the cost of physical line maintenance for a long time, probably since around 1960 or so. And the structure of the incumbant phone companies allowed these costs to be very effectively buried. So effectively that today nobody knows where the real cost-sinks are.

The end result of this is likely another stab at state-mandated fees for line use. And whatever the fee is, it will be too low for reality. My guess is this time around they will really break the system and the lines will simply not be maintained for years.

If we've always been a fascist nation, and we're the sole remaining superpower, the whole welfare-welfare state thing has a pretty good track record, huh?

The only quibble I have is that corporate welfare really only came into vogue with Reagan after our ideological rival, the soviet union's fate was pretty much sealed. We should probably try to figure out if corporate pandering is good for an economy, like social safety nets are. Personally, I'm putting my money on bad - and think we should return to a single welfare state.

you have the emotional appeal down solid, its pretty good chest thumping stuff

but you're underpinning your inflammatory rhetoric with poor a set of facts

good propaganda never lies, it traffics in half truths. so, for example, you don't want to say the usa has ALWAYS been a fascist state. not mainly because thats a lie, but also because you undermine your final appeal for a return to constitutional roots... well, if those roots are so strong, how come the usa has "always" been a fascist state? its a contradiction. you can't refer to a strong set of principles that never actually worked

no, you need a sympathetic narrative, a demagogue's best friend: its better to refer a mythological past where everything was perfect, the founding fathers reigned supreme. then evil influences crept in. in your particular fantasy, that would be corporations, and they subverted and ruined the garden of eden

so instead you want to say the usa WAS ONCE a solid strong democracy. instill chest thumping patriotism here with strong quasihistoric visions, you know the drill. then change the tone and talk about how money was thrown around and morals and integrity were corrupted, the founding fathers betrayed... good hollywood stuff

good luck to you sir, you're well on your way to being a solid propagandizing demagogue. you have the emotional appeals down solid. now just hone up on the half-truths and you'll be a rabble rouser supreme!

War and weapons define the American economy. Boeing and Raytheon and Xi could be considered the ultimate achievement of which a fascist society is capable.

When I was a child, President Eisenhower warned of the "Military Industrial Complex". Apparently we didn't heed his warning.

We should abandon this socialism

Corporatism is NOT socialism. Socialism is the polar opposite; socialism tries to make a better society (usually failing, however). It is facism, though. What kind of people rail against giving welfare to the poor but have no problem giving it to the rich?

Why not more regulation?

Telecom is by all appearances a natural monopoly, like other utilities. If you take AT&T and Verizon and break them up into little pieces, in about 15 years you'll be right back to where we are now in this market. We know this because we tried breaking up Ma Bell, and within about 15 years we were back to an oligopoly (and probably would have been back to a monopoly had the FCC and FTC allowed it).

The ways to handle utilities, in order of my preference at least, based on the experiences of residents where each of these are applied:
1. Publicly owned and operated: This isn't perfect, but by all appearances can do a really good job. When was the last time you thought about your municipal water and sewer service? That's the sign of a well-run utility.
2. Heavily regulated monopoly: This is the electricity market in a lot of places. Again, far from perfect, but customers generally aren't bilked and service is usually pretty decent.
3. Less regulated oligopoly: This can be decidedly unpleasant if the various players realize that they can earn more by both of them bilking their customers rather than trying to take market share away from each other. The regulations can help prevent problems, but are generally less extensive than the regulated monopoly.
4. "Free-market" free-for-all: Think California during the electric deregulation. This typically is really an unregulated oligopoly.
5. Unregulated monopoly: Standard Oil et al. Typically, the monopoly makes a huge bundle of cash while all the customers (who often have little choice but to pay) get bilked.

Right now, telecommunications is sitting at option 3. AT&T and Verizon would both love option 4, and whichever one is capable of buying out the other would really really like option 5, but for the purposes of serving customers you're typically better off with option 1 or 2.

Yup. Plenty of small companies would be willing to do it though. Hell, if the govt wants to pay for the fiber and install, I'll start a small company to manage it and happily take $105K/year to do so. And I'll run it with an open access policy.

There isn't one. But that doesn't mean the monopoly telecoms won't play make-believe (eg OMG customers will have to choose between 'all these confusing options', as opposed to having only one choice, made for them by the single telecom serving their area)

"We can't hear you now"
-Verizon

The taxpayer gave you Millions if not Billions back in the 90's for infrastructure upgrades

That's over 200 billion [newnetworks.com].