hnhire_me

> Yeah, obviously it's a problem with the concept of government because companies can bribe/"sponsor"politicians. Is there too much regulation or too little?

You are over simplifying it.

The regulation is being done at the wrong level of government and is entirely the wrong regulation at the local & state levels.

So your argument is non-US ISPs are advantaged by greater competition because they get Y but US ISPs are not because they are too incompetent to clone foreign regulation in a way that benefits them?

Hint: There isn't a rebuttal you can make because if it is true, then your argument is false. If it is false, it is an admission that federal regulations do actually function to increase competition to the benefit of consumers. There isn't a third option.

You don't seem to acknowledge the existence of private sector collusion either.

> It seems to me that we're replacing bribing at the local level with bribing at the national level. This will make it much easier for large ISPs to thwart competition and defer innovation. Just another unintended consequence of government "solutions".

I'm curious, if you believe bribery works at the national level as well as the local level, how do regulations that are pro-consumer get passed?

In practice, I've found that the reason it works locally is almost no one is involved in local elections besides corporate sponsors. We literally had 10% turnout in my city, for instance.

Similarly, loop unbundling and other competition increasing regulation are almost always passed at the national level in basically every country that has such.

> Didn't the lack of providers in the majority of the US happen because municipal governments got to regulate rights-of-way for installing infrastructure (copper telephone and cable wires, fiber optic cables)?

Yes.

LA 2015 Election:

https://ballotpedia.org/Paul_Krekorian

AT&T - $14,400 Verizon - $7,753

2 of his top 5 contributors were the local ISPs.

Unfortunately there aren't any good data sources that provide country-wide coverage of this information but I'd be willing to bet its a very common practice.

> But if your idea of preserving maximum internet freedom is in effect to place a loaded gun to its head and then declare it is not a problem because it is the good guys who control it and who therefore will use it only for good purposes, then you have what you want with utility-style regulation of the internet.

The problem is with an oligopoly of effectively 0-2 providers in the majority of the US you really don't have a choice.

I'd prefer to have the gun in the hand of the government instead of a corporation who decided to stop investing in infrastructure and just milk the situation.

You really need substantial competition (10+ providers) for the free market to function.

> And now they get the largest investment yet from a party that is NOT interested in falling oil prices...

Uber's impact will be the same whether they invest or not.

Saudia Arabia needs to diversify its holdings and sovereign funding sources as oil is a very narrow and volatile vertical upon which they currently hang their hat (and almost all of their funding).

Saudia Arabia is like an investment portfolio where 90% of its income comes from a single stock. They need to diversify and hedge.

> But the banality of these ads makes it all seem quite commonplace and acceptable.

Yeah. Many bad things are commonplace and acceptable until progress marches on unfortunately. The majority has a bad habit of lacking empathy for those more vulnerable than themselves.

Slavery. Equal rights for minorities. Even the War on Drugs or providing access to proper care for women's health has abuses that are largely ignored because most people aren't regularly impacted in ways that motivates them to action.

The system has always been pretty wicked to those powerless to resist it.