What is to prevent that from becoming privatized and incentivized by whoever owns it?

Why rebuild the wheel?

We have decent infrastructure already. We just need society to not mess it up.

It's hard to privatize a system of radio links. When everyone's network is owned by themselves no one can really take that away from them.

The only reason most networks are privately owned right now is the extremely high cost of laying down physical infrastructure. We saw that severely slow the progress of Google(!) Fiber. If a giant like Google has troubles with the cost of laying down cable on ciy-land then imagine what you or I have to deal with?

This goes away with radios and building interconnects.

Aren't radio frequencies regulated by the government, which can be lobbied by private interests?

I still think focusing on net neutrality is best. If someone out there would rather work on a radio system, that's great!

Personally, I feel the government could take that away by punishing people who operate using rogue waves, so, why not work together and get it right in our existing society and infrastructure.

Yes. The underlying systemic issues do not get addressed or solved by "well let's just get to the next tech revolution first", that is simply a lazy idyllic 'solution' for those who don't think through their proposals.

In this case, meshnets would likely be lobbied into only being operable by licensed entities as radio waves are now.

- Lobby to quickly fabricate and sell appropriate talking points (ensure some anti-terrorism or anti-CP laws in there to gain mass support) to congress and the media

- catch a few mesh operators and bring the hammer down on them, quickly making an example that kills off support for the niche community

- provide the alternative; enumerable 'licensed' operators to exist that sap demand for unregulated comms ('not worth the effort' or consequences of point 2) and maintain the same (or likely evolved - there'd probably be a smarter way to profiteer off meshnets than trying to meter mesh devices for 'fastlanes' but maybe they'd start there) regulations that maintain your profit margin

And there goes your 'fix'.

The reality is that whatever technology you develop, the monkeys with big sticks will always be able to skewer you, so it's up to you and everyone to collectively agree what we decide are skewerable offenses, not merely to say 'well let's just get to the iron age first so we don't have to worry about it'.

You could make transport-nodes illegal, as in a cellphone-virus which silently does transport duty?

I also wonder if people in non-democracies wouldnt be willing to have this app- aslong as there is a chance to provide ability to deny installing it.

Unfortunately that would require people's money and time. We'd also have to put our differences aside about each other and work for the greater good. A person is reasonable, people are dumb.

I often see a lot of people signing silly things like petitions.

I've got two towers that I can get to and put systems up on. One in Newark, NJ and the other in Montclair, NJ. I've been emailing different mesh networks attempting to get someone to tell me what to put up to be part of their network and no one is interested.

I'm also a ham so I can operate part 97

I'm working on altheamesh.com. The idea is to allow routers in mesh networks to collect payments in a decentralized, ownerless way. I'm hoping to start doing some testing of it in the next couple of years. Email me at [email protected].

Hackers are not enough, you would also need lawyers. Many many lawyers.

Because ATT and Comsat would probably sue everybody and their uncles to stop such a project.

> Why don't these 800 startups...start a...network?

It just isn't that simple.

Your solution is for a minority to create an infrastructure that covers the entire continental US. Essentially what you are asking is for a "hacker"-founded Verizon.