Agreed, nobody should be able to preempt the law... however, what's crazy is that there are many anti-monopoly laws that exist for exactly the reason of increasing competition in favour of the consumer... what I don't understand is how none of these laws appear to apply to cable and telecoms providers. It's the same up here in Canada. Anti-monopoly laws prevent you from establishing a monopoloy, but it still appears to be fine for cable and telecom providers... and Government run businesses such as the LCBO... and in BC, ICBC and I'm sure a wealth of other monopolies that don't appear to fall inside the jurisdiction of anti-monopoly laws that literally apply to everyone else.
One law for one, one law for everyone else doesn't appear to be the way the law is supposed to work, I can't fathom why it works this way in this case.
There are a few reasons, but one of the most difficult is that federal legislators and bureaucrats (hell, we could even include those at the state level) are in a position where they don't actually see that there's a problem.
There are a number of telecom companies. Not a lot, but we're certainly not talking about the situation with Standard Oil. At a macro level, there's clearly competition: Comcast, Verizon, Google Fiber, etc. No one can deny that, and that's the level where legislators interact with them. But the problem is that consumers don't actually get to choose between companies; they're largely locked into a particular provider based on geographic location. Franchise agreements, high barriers to entry, etc. all see to that.
That's not really an antitrust issue. Utilities, by definition, are functional monopolies. The problem is that broadband is a utility, but a unique one. You can't really differentiate water service or sewage, for instance. But there can be a drastic difference between ISPs and the type of broadband service they provide. At the same time, it's still subject to the same economic factors as any other utility service, making new competition very unlikely. So you wind up with a very dysfunctional market, despite the competition at the macro level.
It's a somewhat counterintuitive distinction, but what you wind up with is basically an industry with multiple competitors that don't actually compete with one another at the consumer level because they're just like any other utility at that level. You don't get a choice in water providers, sewage, etc. Everyone is locked within the confines of their particular borders, and while those borders can and do shift, when they do it's more like the trading of pieces of territory than encroachment via competition. And all of this is made worse by the sheer scale of the barriers to entry. As Verizon FiOS and Google Fiber both learned, fiber rollouts are a capital-intensive proposition.
> I agree that the existing state laws are bad and clearly a product of cable lobbies, but
.. you don't believe anything should be done about it. Local monopolies were created because local and state politicians were paid to make it that way. The FCC was acting as one of the few groups that would be funded and large enough to stand up to that, but the laws of the land are for the corporations not the people. Here you are praising a move to keep it that way.
This proposed headline raises more questions than it answers. Which state laws? Does that refer, perhaps, to the state laws that forbid cities from building their own broadband? Where did the "Battle" take place? Gettysburg? What would it mean for an agency to "Loss" a battle anyway?
Indeed. It seems weird that Wickard v Filburn deemed that growing corn for your own use was "interstate commerce", but a city building a broadband network in competition with multi-state companies is not "interstate commerce".
The states-rights argument might swing more weight if each state had its own commercial broadband providers, rather than national companies locking up the market state by state.
> Indeed. It seems weird that Wickard v Filburn deemed that growing corn for your own use was "interstate commerce", but a city building a broadband network in competition with multi-state companies is not "interstate commerce".
That's not what the court found. The Sixth Circuit did not say that the subject matter here was not interstate commerce that Congress could regulate and preempt state law by regulating. They said that Congress had not acted to preempt these particular state laws, and that the regulatory authority the FCC had under laws passed by Congress did not extend to preempting the particular state laws in question.
There is a vast difference between finding that an action is not within the Article I powers of Congress and finding that an executive action, whether or not authorizing it would be within the Article I powers of Congress, is not, in fact, authorized by Congress. This ruling found the latter, not the former.
Now, I'm not saying that I agree with the finding, but it doesn't help to mischaracterize it.
I think a few state legislators have to be caught enjoying excessive telco/cableco bribery (e.g. "factfinding" junkets, jobs for relatives, etc.), and then they have to lose reelection over those misdeeds, in order for their legislative colleagues to perceive the opportunity that exists to help their constituents.
More and more unlikely to happen now that local newspapers and tv are no longer paying for investigative journalism. It's click bait all the way, and a story about local bribery is just not bringing in the clicks. As the creator of The Wire recently said, it's a great time to be a corrupt state or city politician.
Get the laws overturned through the democratic process. It is easier than trying to get the unelected bureaucrats at the FCC to stop doing stupid things like requiring radios use proprietary microcode (this is why ath10k's radios require microcode) or more recently, tightening rules on how people can adjust radio parameters due to a few people who did stupid things. They are the reason why Asus, TP-Link and others were locking down routers and rather than reverse their mistake, they are playing whack a mole trying to coerce companies to not take the easy road in complying with their requirements. It is easier to elect someone else into the local and state governments than to convince the FCC to fix things when it messes up.
Maybe offer broadband to people in the state next to yours. An "internet swap" between towns. Then it'd be under federal jurisdiction rather than state.
This would probably only work for towns close to the border and at best would demonstrate how stupid the legal landscape for competitive internet access has become.
Pass a federal ban on municipalities imposing build-out requirements. That's the #1 thing preventing the 1996 deregulation from being effective. If a fiber provider could walk into New York, Philadelphia, or San Francisco, and wire-up lucrative pockets of the city and steal the local incumbent's lunch, the whole industry would look totally different.
It would also help to ban municipalities from requiring franchise licenses to offer video service over their wires. At least until cord-cutting is more advanced, double-play packages are critical to the profitability of services like Google Fiber and FiOS. Municipalities tend to impose onerous terms on the acquisition of video licenses which make it unattractive for competitors to enter a market.
It's not like competition doesn't exist anywhere. Low-regulation southern cities like Atlanta and Austin are enjoying multiple providers offering gigabit service.[1] The only reason the same isn't happening in New York or San Francisco is the local government.
The 'last mile' networks are similar in nature to roadways; a service that is a natural monopoly and best supported through government and local community working together.
Meanwhile, cars (computers) and gas ('long distance' interconnect) are things that best compete on top of that local natural monopoly network.
You should have your choice of ISPs and other data services selling you their content across the local mesh network.
It's not actually that much work to run a few sets of fiber along existing utility poles or conduits (which are mostly owned by electric utilities). We're not talking about nuclear reactors here.
I think having a sunset clause on the sweetheart deals would be enough. You do want the municipalities to be able to offer the deals in order to get big projects done in the first place, but a lot of these deals go back to the 1970s and it's time for them to be gone.
But if, for instance, it becomes difficult/expensive to built electric car recharge stations for some reason and we as a society make a strong shift to electric cars, you want the municipalities to have some way to encourage somebody to make an investment in the infrastructure, and that may not happen without some kind of promise that after they build the infrastructure they can benefit from it (for a while anyway). I know that's not a great example, but hopefully you can abstract to my point, that is, that there could be some reason in the future to want to allow the deals. Just have them expire.
It's illegal for municipalities to offer "sweetheart deals" (i.e. exclusive franchises). Those were banned in 1996.[1] Current municipal franchise agreements don't stifle competition by giving anyone a monopoly. They do so by being so onerous that only the incumbent is willing to agree to the terms.
[1] In theory existing ones were grandfathered in, but they were of a fixed-term (e.g. 10 years), and exclusivity was lost when the original deal expired.
The ruling makes sense. FCC is about federal regulations, and municipal broadband is about local law. If a city wants to build its own infrastructure, then it should challenge those laws itself, not through a federal proxy.
However, since the FCC controls the airwaves, I could see localities getting started by using a wireless mesh with their help, and then once established branch into fiber.
"The Federal Communications Commission regulates interstate and international communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and U.S. territories. An independent U.S. government agency overseen by Congress, the commission is the United States' primary authority for communications laws, regulation and technological innovation."
Exactly what part of that means the FCC has no place in regulating internet access?
> I could see localities getting started by using a wireless mesh with their help
That would be illegal in NC, the law the FCC was challenging explicitly states "it is against the public policy of this State for any unit, department, or agency of the State, or any division or subdivision of a unit, department, or agency of the State to engage directly or indirectly in the sale of goods, wares or merchandise in competition with citizens of the State and Whereas, to protect jobs and to promote investment, it is necessary to ensure that the State does not indirectly subsidize competition with private industry through actions by cities and to ensure that where there is competition between the private sector and the State, directly or through its subdivisions, it exists under a framework that does not discourage private investment and job creation"
The fact that Time Warner wrote the law and got it passed would be hilarious if it wasn't so disgusting.
There are states that have that type of law far before Time Warner. The original purpose was to keep corrupt politicians from using the power of the state to destroy opponents. Some states actually have specific businesses the state can engage in their constitutions.
Allowing a business owned by someone who can regulate / inspect every competitor out of business isn't seen as very fair.
That's irrelevant since we are specifically talking about the NC law.
The NC law was very specifically targeted at municipal broadband projects and was effectively written by Time Warner to prevent underserved customers from having another option. It's as simple as that and it's disgusting.
Time Warner didn't pass the law. A legislature passed it and a governor signed it. Looking at the part you quoted, other states have passed similar wording (which doesn't have words targeting a specific industry) and considered it good governance to keep the state from competing with their citizens. Unless you believe Time Warner bribed half the legislature and the governor, its very relevant to know why the politicians found the wording acceptable.
Why the found the wording acceptable? Its called lobbying. And the poster before you said that Time Warner wrote it. Not that they passed it and signed it. The state wouldn't be competing with its citizens. The municipality they live in would be.
Seems like the principals of a municipal corporation could easily form a shadow corporation for the specific purpose of providing communications infrastructure within a specific municipality/county and any necessary backhaul, then issue one voting share to each resident, and non-voting, dividend-granting, preferred stock to the municipality.
Then the residents-of-the-city can vote for the city-as-municipal-corporation to grant that privately-owned, non-municipal corporation the sweetheart local monopoly deal that Time Warner was hoping to force upon them.
It isn't quite as disgusting as failing to provide biologically sterile and non-toxic drinking water to your utility customers, but quality network access is still important economically.
I'm not a lawyer, but as I understand it, the states' justifications aren't important to this appeal. The decision that "the FCC is not able to, essentially, remove state laws that prevent the construction of municipal broadband networks" (from the article) doesn't say anything about the legality of the state laws, just that the FCC doesn't have the authority to change them.
Fair enough. I wasn't suggesting it was relevant to the decision.
Just, considering the democratic ideal of the government serving the people, I struggle to come up with a plausible justification that the states might give for denying municipalities and I'm hoping someone more familiar with the matter here at HN can shed some light.
I live in Chattanooga, home of EPB, which was one of the municipally owned ISPs that was hoping this case went the other way. The common argument we hear for the laws that restrict EPB from expanding is that it's "anti-competitive," since they aren't a private business.
Yeah, I hear this all the time: "municipal broadband services would be anticompetitive", while ignoring the fact that there is a de facto monopoly in place and municipal broadband would actually introduce competition.
I noticed that line of argument seemed more common when I lived in the south (NC).
It doesn't need to give one. Just like how they can arbitrarily declare things like "You can't sell alcohol on Sunday"[0], unless they're violating a federal law/the Constitution, states can do almost anything they want.
Right. Maybe that's a bad example because that does represent the will of the churchgoing populous, though.
I can come up with a plausible explanation for that since it does seem to serve the will of a lot of people who also happen to be people that vote heavily -- especially considering the time period the law was made.
For banning municipal broadband, though? I can't think of any way that serves any significant bloc of people in the state.
From a policy prospective, a government service provider will stifle competition. Since the government can lose money and use taxes to survive, while a private company must be efficient enough to show a profit, the government service provider is less efficient. And, since government can operate below cost (using tax subsidies) , private companies are priced out of the market, lowering competition.
In terms of politics, cable providers have lobbied to carve out a legal monopoly for themselves, and so, in effect we see the same effect from the private company.
The answer, in my opinion, is to have the municipalities run empty conduit to every home, and allow any private company to lay their cable there. This would allow more competition for electricity, cable, and potentially other utilities.
Neither the stifling competition nor the cable desired monopoly reasons apply in the Tennessee situation, though. The areas that Chattanooga's municipal broadband provider wishes to expand into are neighboring areas in which there is no existing broadband to compete with, and the cable companies have declined to expand into those areas.
On one side, I think every community should have the right to build whatever infrastructure they please.
On the other, I agree that the FCC is a federal governmental organisation that should not have precedent over a State's rights. Something which has been abused by the courts for the last 50 or so years.
However I think everyone can agree that what is happening is corrupt. State/municipality legislatures are taking money and setting rules. It's a tough thing to stop. Can you remember a time when you voted that you were familiar with all the candidates for both state and city positions? I know I can't. Not even close. I usually just vote a ticket.
Another question is...why do we need representatives at the city level? Can we not design a system to allow citizens to govern themselves?
City councils' are probably the most corrupt governing bodies today. Yet everyone is so concerned with Republican/Democrat and the presidential race that we forget what affects us the most, elected city officials. The whole thing is backwards.
There are some improvements to local governments, like [OpenGov.com][1], but that is only the first step. The people of a community should get to decide directly if they want to build their own broadband system, or only allow a select few, large corporations, own it.
It's a hairy issue. On one hand, municipalities are purely organs of the state governments. The states should be able to tell them what to do without interference from the federal government.
On the other hand, the whole point of the federal government is to preempt state action when it comes to interstate infrastructure like the Internet and the wires that carry it.
Honest question from a foreigner with a slightly less federal form of government: Why is the autonomy of the States so worth protecting? It seems like every time I see a state government clash with the federal government, it's always the state trying to protect some backward law. What are the counterpoints...I know they must exist!
Balance of power. You don't want one entity to get too much power. One can also argue that a state can be a better/closer representative of its people than a distant federal government formed out of many other states which may have different needs from this one state.
One can argue that a municipal government is a better representation of the people in the city (who want broadband) than some distant bureaucrat in the state capital. But this allows state to overrule municipal.
I think it stems from the formation of our country. Back when the U.S. first formed the states were very much separate from each other and the federal government had very limited powers. Similar to the relationship of Europe and the E.U. However Over time U.S. citizens started to think of themselves as americans first and their state second.
Think about how european citizens feel about the E.U. Today it would be crazy to ask a country like Germany to just roll over to the demands of the E.U. But I'm sure 200 years from now, if the E.U. is still around, that line will be a lot more blurry. This is essentially the position america is in.
Fun fact: At one point U.S. states each had their own currencies
> It seems like every time I see a state government clash with the federal government, it's always the state trying to protect some backward law.
For basically every progressive ideal, none of it is pioneered by the federal government.
Gay marriage, legalization of drugs, continuing environmental standards, renewable energy, more sustainable living, and I'm sure many more, are all things that various states pass laws surrounding before the federal government steps in.
Of those you enumerate, however, only drug legalization is an action taken by the state that has needed defending against contrary federal legislation or court action. Unless, on gay marriage, you are referring to the state-level efforts to prohibit same-sex marriage rather than those to allow it.
The thing is, none of this is pioneered by the federal government because "it isn't their job/place" because we have the state governments that are supposed to pioneer these things. I don't think that is an argument on it's own. I will add though that I think the smaller state governments add benefit by allowing progressive changes like this to take hold and see how it turns out in a small "experiment".
In short, it is to prevent secession and civil wars, and to limit federal power over individuals.
In more depth, the U.S. is vastly more culturally diverse than most other nations. Its history of open immigration means it is now culturally a distorted, but still mostly recognizable, 1:20 model of the rest of the world.
If you ever want to visit India, China, Italy, Greece, Poland, Mexico, Sweden, and Germany in one day, just fly to Chicago and buy a CTA pass.
It is not a one-size-fits-all country. If the state is protecting a law that seems backward to you, it may be because they live on the other side of the looking glass from you. To them, your opinion is backward.
In Wisconsin, you can buy olives, gin, and vermouth in the same store, but only before 9 PM. In North Carolina, you have to buy the olives and vermouth in one store, and the gin from another. Why are the laws different? Because the people who live in those places, on average, prefer it that way.
State autonomy also allows for a limited sort of political experimentation. For instance, North Carolina can experiment with telling transgender people what bathrooms they must use, and Colorado can experiment with legal recreational marijuana. By observing the change in state economics, other states can respond more appropriately to the national zeitgeist. Federally, marijuana is still schedule I, and transgender people are not strongly protected against discrimination, but state autonomy has shown that the feds are wrong about weed, and that people prefer their identity to be something that is declared rather than imposed.
In a lot of cases though, states themselves are too diverse and unwieldy to govern as a unitary entity. Texas and Massachusetts may have their differences, but Houston and Austin have much more in common with Boston than with a small town in the Piney Woods. Why shouldn't Houston be free to experiment with legalized marijuana just because the state government won't go along? By that same logic, it is state power over local governments and individuals that needs to be limited and municipal rights that need to be protected.
In my opinion, it is actually in my best interests for any government claiming jurisdiction over my person to have flawed mechanisms for enforcing its will upon me and extracting property from me. I consider that to be an adequate balancing factor for any inefficiencies it may also have in providing services or managing the commons.
Other people may prioritize such things differently.
I'm not arguing against the idea that government needs coercive powers. I'm arguing against the idea that states are the optimal organizational level to have unitary and sovereign governments.
Why are the laws different? Because the people who live in those places, on average, prefer it that way.
I agree that there is value in trying a diversity of approaches, but I'm doubtful that a "will of the people" explanation can explain the state by state differences. Assume two groups of people, one from North Carolina and one from Wisconsin, but somehow we didn't know which group was from which state. In an attempt to determine this, we poll each group with a single written question about how best to regulate the sale of olives.
At what group size are we able to reliably identify which group is which? I'm doubtful that this is possible to do with greater than 90% accuracy at any group size less than the full population of each state. To the extent that it might be possible with lower accuracy, I'd guess it's based on the "status quo" rather than an actual "preference".
For many issues, I think it's likely that the initial decision is essentially random: one merchant convinces one legislator to propose a law. That legislator trades favors with other legislators to get the law passed. With the patina of time, the arbitrary self-interested law becomes associated with prosperity, "strong moral values", and evidence that Our Great State is still in the favor of God.
ps. I'd been meaning to ask you why your moniker is "logfromblammo", but a web search delightfully answered this for me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2C7mNr5WMjA. I'm embarrassed to say that I previously was ignorant of this piece of retail history. Thank you.
The US is large enough, and populous enough, and spread across so many climates, that different regions disagree dramatically on how they want to be run and what is important. Sometimes a state wants to do something unconstitutional, but in general state's rights allows people to decide things for their community, without having to answer to strangers they'll never meet, 3,000 miles away.
It is perhaps instructive to note that the US is the 4th largest country by landmass. Canada, 2nd largest, is also a federation. (The other two are Russia and China)
Pick a state whose laws, people, and culture you view as being backward, ignorant, or otherwise undesirable. Let’s oversimplify and call it a bad state. The bad state also has some influence over the federal government, exercise of its power, and therefore control of good states.
Should Mississippi rule over California? Should New York rule over Texas? Most will reject at least one of these propositions. Thus, the United States are a system of divided powers.
> I agree that the FCC is a federal governmental organisation that should not have precedent over a State's rights. Something which has been abused by the courts for the last 50 or so years.
...and then say this:
> Can you remember a time when you voted that you were familiar with all the candidates for both state and city positions? I know I can't. Not even close. I usually just vote a ticket.
...makes me think you don't really care about states' rights.
Yes, you're right, I basically called out everyone, and then included myself as the problem. Just highlighting the fact that very few people care anymore.
It is hard to follow. Keeping track of city, state, and nation wide politics is very difficult. Many times, the local politicians running are very unknown, with no info about them. Then they get into office on city council and there is little transparency into what is going on. Who receives money for what, who gets the contract, etc. And once a city council member is in, as long as there isn't a scandal or huge public outcry in the community, which is also hard to do because back to point A....who can follow politics at every level, the elected member can remain for a long, long time.
It's a very hard problem, one thats solution is hard/unknown and may not even involve election "representatives" (do they REALLY represent you for their entire term? A big check from a corporation is hard to turn down and somehow legal in many cases.)
While the FCC's top-down approach to affecting change here would have probably been the most efficient; realistically, this type of change will probably need to come from the residents of the various states (bottom-up).
I suspect part of the problem is that people don't know that there are state laws, local ordinances and a lot of money changing hands to ensure the monopolistic behavior stays intact. And the reason they don't know is because
1) current options are "good enough"
2) status-quo bias makes us think change is too hard
I live in CT. I have only one option for broadband (which stinks, but its good enough). However, after reading about this FCC judgement... I'm kind of interested to see what effect that would have had in CT and my local town if it had gone through. I suspect its not going to be an easy process to dig this information up. Thoughts on places to start, what to look for?
I recently attended a meet-and-greet with a local candidate running for state senate in California. He explained that he would have the freedom to be independent in the legislature and vote based on his convictions, unlike the rest of his compadres.
The reason is that he comes from a wealthy, populous district. It is easy for him to fundraise from liberal constituents. For the rest of the state, he explained, many legislators are forced to fundraise from lobbyists in Sacramento - 90% of their fundraising instead of 10% like him. This results in lobbyists having extreme control over much of the legislature. E.g., the tobacco lobby, which has almost no actual business in California since very little tobacco is grown here, instead has enormous influence because they can easily buy legislators.
States are much less powerful than the federal government. They can be played against each other. The elections and laws are much less closely watched. Individual billionaires can easily control an entire state, where they might struggle on the federal level.
Of course, none of this is terribly different at the federal level either - Congresspeople are pretty cheap, and lobbyists have tons of cash. The American form of government is thoroughly rotten.
----
As for hope, I like: participatory budgeting. I think all municipalities should be using this in some form. This has apparently been used with some success in Porto Alegre, where the basic form is: each neighborhood sends a representative with a project proposal and a request for funds, e.g., we need a library, we need to repair sewer pipes, we need to build a sidewalk, it will cost us $X. Some fraction of the city budget is allocated to be spent on such projects (say, 10% or 20%). All of the neighborhood representatives vote on which proposals should be funded; the funds are used.
The mechanism is simple, extremely democratic, and forces some neighborhood organizing, all of which seem like they would be great things for municipalities.
> Another question is...why do we need representatives at the city level? Can we not design a system to allow citizens to govern themselves?
Like what? There are still some cities in the US that are a true democracy. What ends up happening is a bunch of old men show up once a week to make the laws (young and the women are not prohibited, but they rarely show up).
The above is already bad enough, but it gets worse. If you want the city to do something you get a bunch of your friends to show up on the night that will be discussed. That night you dominate the meeting and your issue wins. The next week the old men have to figure out how to pay for it.
A real city console at least has to balance the effects of a tax increase (they might lose their job next election) with the benefits of all their ideas.
The only thing I know of that works is to have such a sparse population that you don't need a government. Of course you also don't have civilization.
We are more connected than ever before in the history of humans. We have technology to confirm one's identity across the communication mediums (peer checking, blockchain, etc.).
Thinking of it like old style town halls are not what I mean. As a new system, where anyone can raise an issue, discuss an issue, and either vote directly or proxy someone they know to vote for them on every issue. (I proxy a teacher that I trust to vote on every education issue in the community). However, if at any time, I can vote for myself. There are no longer representatives, we are all representatives.
However, there will also have to be checks in place to protect the minorities (in a voting sense, not race/religion). As a true democracy can be very dangerous, as the minority is always under represented and ultimately leads to self destruction of the democracy. (...sounds familiar to the situation the US is in? Who will vote out Santa Claus...read, welfare.)
It won't be easy to create. It will probably go through many iterations/pivots/failures, just like anything else that becomes great. But in the end, I think we can get there. Or at least improve the current status quo, which as somebody else mentioned, it's a bad thing to think change is too hard. (Although, more than likely, change will be a generational thing. The people who hold up the current way will have to die and be replaced to someone open to other ideas. Which of course has its pros and cons. We repeat history all the time, despite being well aware of the mistakes of the past.)
Do you have any citations, perhaps a study of what actually happens in some of these cities? My personal experience with direct democracy involving a small community is that while interested groups may show up, they will listen to the other concerned community members who also listen to them, leading to a more compromised and reasonable position.
I'd be curious to find out at what sizes this breaks down.
In the modern United States, states are a particularly poor level of organization to have a unitary government--it's small enough that regulatory capture is too easy but too large to be responsive to people's concerns. If we want to let lower levels of government to handle more responsibility, then we should go beyond states' rights and make states federal and municipal governments unitary.
> City councils' are probably the most corrupt governing bodies today.
Spoken like someone who has never interacted with their representatives on their local council.
I know everyone on my council, 5 of one party and 4 of another, 5 men and 4 women, and they do 15-20 hours of work every week for $50/mo. Most of them are retired because they have to be, but my area is mostly older or retired anyway so at least it's representative. The only possible complaint you could have about them is the municipality is 80% black and only 2 of the 9 members of council are, but that's also representative of who actually runs for election.
You can't make a conclusion about the thousands of municipal governments based on your experience with one.
I don't know if I'd single them out as particularly corrupt, but they are very frequently at least one of understaffed, underfunded, incompetant, defunct or corrupt.
Whether the municipal governments fail to protect the interests of their constituents because the officials are in bed with some infrastructure corporation or because they're weak enough to get bullied by the corporation isn't really important to this discussion.
Of course it's important. Governments representing a few thousand or even few hundred people are by definition going to be very weak. For the most part any government below the state level is going to be at least three of "understaffed, underfunded, incompetent, [and/or] defunct." When the pool of people you have to draw from is 1,500 (a small fraction of that being those with the time or inclination to run for office) it's unlikely you're going to pull 7-9 people together who have a passion for local governance and are actually good at it.
I've lived in several areas of my state and have worked with local and county government extensively, and the statement to which I was responding ("City councils' are probably the most corrupt governing bodies today.") is simply not true.
State legislatures are the most corrupt by an impressively wide margin because they're in the sweet spot of plenty of power to cause real damage and not enough real press coverage outside of the political horse race.
> On the other, I agree that the FCC is a federal governmental organisation that should not have precedent over a State's rights.
There's a bit of confusion here. This is not as much of a state's rights issue as it is a law vs lack of law issue. The court essentially said "make it a federal law, then that trumps state law...but your whims do not".
While I dislike the outcome, I'm not torn; the decision was absolutely correct. If this is something you want congress to address, contact your congressman.
So states should be allowed to ban abortion? We've already got precedence of State rights taking a back seat to individuals. I'd argue that in 2016, access to broadband should be a basic human right in a developed nation.
You are dead on regarding local politics and voting. I have minimal time to research them because I work, etc. I wish there were a good site that let you answer surveys on policy issues and compare local politicians side by side to see who you are best aligned with similar to some of the sites that have done this for the Presidential elections.
I have no idea where to start even researching this stuff in an efficient manner.
Internet communication is inherently interstate commerce.
I am not familiar with all the many laws surrounding interstate commerce, but the Feds are given oversight of such, in a broad sense.
I'd start there, with respect to the FCC's jurisdiction.
P.S. If you can buy and sell data processing (programming, analysis, etc., etc.) delivered inter-state and via the Internet -- not to mention physical things a la Amazon et al. -- then, from my perspective, you are looking at interstate commerce.
The big, entrenched ISP's make a lot of money participating in this commerce. They don't escape the resulting regulation.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 135 ms ] threadOne law for one, one law for everyone else doesn't appear to be the way the law is supposed to work, I can't fathom why it works this way in this case.
There are a number of telecom companies. Not a lot, but we're certainly not talking about the situation with Standard Oil. At a macro level, there's clearly competition: Comcast, Verizon, Google Fiber, etc. No one can deny that, and that's the level where legislators interact with them. But the problem is that consumers don't actually get to choose between companies; they're largely locked into a particular provider based on geographic location. Franchise agreements, high barriers to entry, etc. all see to that.
That's not really an antitrust issue. Utilities, by definition, are functional monopolies. The problem is that broadband is a utility, but a unique one. You can't really differentiate water service or sewage, for instance. But there can be a drastic difference between ISPs and the type of broadband service they provide. At the same time, it's still subject to the same economic factors as any other utility service, making new competition very unlikely. So you wind up with a very dysfunctional market, despite the competition at the macro level.
It's a somewhat counterintuitive distinction, but what you wind up with is basically an industry with multiple competitors that don't actually compete with one another at the consumer level because they're just like any other utility at that level. You don't get a choice in water providers, sewage, etc. Everyone is locked within the confines of their particular borders, and while those borders can and do shift, when they do it's more like the trading of pieces of territory than encroachment via competition. And all of this is made worse by the sheer scale of the barriers to entry. As Verizon FiOS and Google Fiber both learned, fiber rollouts are a capital-intensive proposition.
.. you don't believe anything should be done about it. Local monopolies were created because local and state politicians were paid to make it that way. The FCC was acting as one of the few groups that would be funded and large enough to stand up to that, but the laws of the land are for the corporations not the people. Here you are praising a move to keep it that way.
All in all, TFA's title seems more informative.
The states-rights argument might swing more weight if each state had its own commercial broadband providers, rather than national companies locking up the market state by state.
That's not what the court found. The Sixth Circuit did not say that the subject matter here was not interstate commerce that Congress could regulate and preempt state law by regulating. They said that Congress had not acted to preempt these particular state laws, and that the regulatory authority the FCC had under laws passed by Congress did not extend to preempting the particular state laws in question.
There is a vast difference between finding that an action is not within the Article I powers of Congress and finding that an executive action, whether or not authorizing it would be within the Article I powers of Congress, is not, in fact, authorized by Congress. This ruling found the latter, not the former.
Now, I'm not saying that I agree with the finding, but it doesn't help to mischaracterize it.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Civil_Service_Reform
This would probably only work for towns close to the border and at best would demonstrate how stupid the legal landscape for competitive internet access has become.
It would also help to ban municipalities from requiring franchise licenses to offer video service over their wires. At least until cord-cutting is more advanced, double-play packages are critical to the profitability of services like Google Fiber and FiOS. Municipalities tend to impose onerous terms on the acquisition of video licenses which make it unattractive for competitors to enter a market.
It's not like competition doesn't exist anywhere. Low-regulation southern cities like Atlanta and Austin are enjoying multiple providers offering gigabit service.[1] The only reason the same isn't happening in New York or San Francisco is the local government.
[1] I mean, just look at the map of Google Fiber cities: https://fiber.google.com/newcities.
The 'last mile' networks are similar in nature to roadways; a service that is a natural monopoly and best supported through government and local community working together.
Meanwhile, cars (computers) and gas ('long distance' interconnect) are things that best compete on top of that local natural monopoly network.
You should have your choice of ISPs and other data services selling you their content across the local mesh network.
But if, for instance, it becomes difficult/expensive to built electric car recharge stations for some reason and we as a society make a strong shift to electric cars, you want the municipalities to have some way to encourage somebody to make an investment in the infrastructure, and that may not happen without some kind of promise that after they build the infrastructure they can benefit from it (for a while anyway). I know that's not a great example, but hopefully you can abstract to my point, that is, that there could be some reason in the future to want to allow the deals. Just have them expire.
[1] In theory existing ones were grandfathered in, but they were of a fixed-term (e.g. 10 years), and exclusivity was lost when the original deal expired.
However, since the FCC controls the airwaves, I could see localities getting started by using a wireless mesh with their help, and then once established branch into fiber.
Exactly what part of that means the FCC has no place in regulating internet access?
> I could see localities getting started by using a wireless mesh with their help
That would be illegal in NC, the law the FCC was challenging explicitly states "it is against the public policy of this State for any unit, department, or agency of the State, or any division or subdivision of a unit, department, or agency of the State to engage directly or indirectly in the sale of goods, wares or merchandise in competition with citizens of the State and Whereas, to protect jobs and to promote investment, it is necessary to ensure that the State does not indirectly subsidize competition with private industry through actions by cities and to ensure that where there is competition between the private sector and the State, directly or through its subdivisions, it exists under a framework that does not discourage private investment and job creation"
The fact that Time Warner wrote the law and got it passed would be hilarious if it wasn't so disgusting.
Allowing a business owned by someone who can regulate / inspect every competitor out of business isn't seen as very fair.
The NC law was very specifically targeted at municipal broadband projects and was effectively written by Time Warner to prevent underserved customers from having another option. It's as simple as that and it's disgusting.
So, you believe that Time Warner was able to influence half the legislature with lobbying? Is there some reporting on what they offered?
Then the residents-of-the-city can vote for the city-as-municipal-corporation to grant that privately-owned, non-municipal corporation the sweetheart local monopoly deal that Time Warner was hoping to force upon them.
It isn't quite as disgusting as failing to provide biologically sterile and non-toxic drinking water to your utility customers, but quality network access is still important economically.
That would be indirectly competing and illegal.
Just, considering the democratic ideal of the government serving the people, I struggle to come up with a plausible justification that the states might give for denying municipalities and I'm hoping someone more familiar with the matter here at HN can shed some light.
I noticed that line of argument seemed more common when I lived in the south (NC).
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_laws_in_the_United_States
I can come up with a plausible explanation for that since it does seem to serve the will of a lot of people who also happen to be people that vote heavily -- especially considering the time period the law was made.
For banning municipal broadband, though? I can't think of any way that serves any significant bloc of people in the state.
In terms of politics, cable providers have lobbied to carve out a legal monopoly for themselves, and so, in effect we see the same effect from the private company.
The answer, in my opinion, is to have the municipalities run empty conduit to every home, and allow any private company to lay their cable there. This would allow more competition for electricity, cable, and potentially other utilities.
On one side, I think every community should have the right to build whatever infrastructure they please.
On the other, I agree that the FCC is a federal governmental organisation that should not have precedent over a State's rights. Something which has been abused by the courts for the last 50 or so years.
However I think everyone can agree that what is happening is corrupt. State/municipality legislatures are taking money and setting rules. It's a tough thing to stop. Can you remember a time when you voted that you were familiar with all the candidates for both state and city positions? I know I can't. Not even close. I usually just vote a ticket.
Another question is...why do we need representatives at the city level? Can we not design a system to allow citizens to govern themselves?
City councils' are probably the most corrupt governing bodies today. Yet everyone is so concerned with Republican/Democrat and the presidential race that we forget what affects us the most, elected city officials. The whole thing is backwards.
There are some improvements to local governments, like [OpenGov.com][1], but that is only the first step. The people of a community should get to decide directly if they want to build their own broadband system, or only allow a select few, large corporations, own it.
[1]: http://opengov.com/
On the other hand, the whole point of the federal government is to preempt state action when it comes to interstate infrastructure like the Internet and the wires that carry it.
Think about how european citizens feel about the E.U. Today it would be crazy to ask a country like Germany to just roll over to the demands of the E.U. But I'm sure 200 years from now, if the E.U. is still around, that line will be a lot more blurry. This is essentially the position america is in.
Fun fact: At one point U.S. states each had their own currencies
For basically every progressive ideal, none of it is pioneered by the federal government.
Gay marriage, legalization of drugs, continuing environmental standards, renewable energy, more sustainable living, and I'm sure many more, are all things that various states pass laws surrounding before the federal government steps in.
In more depth, the U.S. is vastly more culturally diverse than most other nations. Its history of open immigration means it is now culturally a distorted, but still mostly recognizable, 1:20 model of the rest of the world.
If you ever want to visit India, China, Italy, Greece, Poland, Mexico, Sweden, and Germany in one day, just fly to Chicago and buy a CTA pass.
It is not a one-size-fits-all country. If the state is protecting a law that seems backward to you, it may be because they live on the other side of the looking glass from you. To them, your opinion is backward.
In Wisconsin, you can buy olives, gin, and vermouth in the same store, but only before 9 PM. In North Carolina, you have to buy the olives and vermouth in one store, and the gin from another. Why are the laws different? Because the people who live in those places, on average, prefer it that way.
State autonomy also allows for a limited sort of political experimentation. For instance, North Carolina can experiment with telling transgender people what bathrooms they must use, and Colorado can experiment with legal recreational marijuana. By observing the change in state economics, other states can respond more appropriately to the national zeitgeist. Federally, marijuana is still schedule I, and transgender people are not strongly protected against discrimination, but state autonomy has shown that the feds are wrong about weed, and that people prefer their identity to be something that is declared rather than imposed.
Other people may prioritize such things differently.
I agree that there is value in trying a diversity of approaches, but I'm doubtful that a "will of the people" explanation can explain the state by state differences. Assume two groups of people, one from North Carolina and one from Wisconsin, but somehow we didn't know which group was from which state. In an attempt to determine this, we poll each group with a single written question about how best to regulate the sale of olives.
At what group size are we able to reliably identify which group is which? I'm doubtful that this is possible to do with greater than 90% accuracy at any group size less than the full population of each state. To the extent that it might be possible with lower accuracy, I'd guess it's based on the "status quo" rather than an actual "preference".
For many issues, I think it's likely that the initial decision is essentially random: one merchant convinces one legislator to propose a law. That legislator trades favors with other legislators to get the law passed. With the patina of time, the arbitrary self-interested law becomes associated with prosperity, "strong moral values", and evidence that Our Great State is still in the favor of God.
ps. I'd been meaning to ask you why your moniker is "logfromblammo", but a web search delightfully answered this for me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2C7mNr5WMjA. I'm embarrassed to say that I previously was ignorant of this piece of retail history. Thank you.
It is perhaps instructive to note that the US is the 4th largest country by landmass. Canada, 2nd largest, is also a federation. (The other two are Russia and China)
Should Mississippi rule over California? Should New York rule over Texas? Most will reject at least one of these propositions. Thus, the United States are a system of divided powers.
> I agree that the FCC is a federal governmental organisation that should not have precedent over a State's rights. Something which has been abused by the courts for the last 50 or so years.
...and then say this:
> Can you remember a time when you voted that you were familiar with all the candidates for both state and city positions? I know I can't. Not even close. I usually just vote a ticket.
...makes me think you don't really care about states' rights.
It's a very hard problem, one thats solution is hard/unknown and may not even involve election "representatives" (do they REALLY represent you for their entire term? A big check from a corporation is hard to turn down and somehow legal in many cases.)
While the FCC's top-down approach to affecting change here would have probably been the most efficient; realistically, this type of change will probably need to come from the residents of the various states (bottom-up).
I suspect part of the problem is that people don't know that there are state laws, local ordinances and a lot of money changing hands to ensure the monopolistic behavior stays intact. And the reason they don't know is because 1) current options are "good enough" 2) status-quo bias makes us think change is too hard
I live in CT. I have only one option for broadband (which stinks, but its good enough). However, after reading about this FCC judgement... I'm kind of interested to see what effect that would have had in CT and my local town if it had gone through. I suspect its not going to be an easy process to dig this information up. Thoughts on places to start, what to look for?
But it seems like state gov'ts are blocking municipalities. [0]
[0] State of N. Carolina blocks municipal broadband: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/05/north-carolina-su...
Appreciate the link!
http://www.ct.gov/broadband/cwp/view.asp?a=4696&Q=557304
The reason is that he comes from a wealthy, populous district. It is easy for him to fundraise from liberal constituents. For the rest of the state, he explained, many legislators are forced to fundraise from lobbyists in Sacramento - 90% of their fundraising instead of 10% like him. This results in lobbyists having extreme control over much of the legislature. E.g., the tobacco lobby, which has almost no actual business in California since very little tobacco is grown here, instead has enormous influence because they can easily buy legislators.
States are much less powerful than the federal government. They can be played against each other. The elections and laws are much less closely watched. Individual billionaires can easily control an entire state, where they might struggle on the federal level.
Of course, none of this is terribly different at the federal level either - Congresspeople are pretty cheap, and lobbyists have tons of cash. The American form of government is thoroughly rotten.
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As for hope, I like: participatory budgeting. I think all municipalities should be using this in some form. This has apparently been used with some success in Porto Alegre, where the basic form is: each neighborhood sends a representative with a project proposal and a request for funds, e.g., we need a library, we need to repair sewer pipes, we need to build a sidewalk, it will cost us $X. Some fraction of the city budget is allocated to be spent on such projects (say, 10% or 20%). All of the neighborhood representatives vote on which proposals should be funded; the funds are used.
The mechanism is simple, extremely democratic, and forces some neighborhood organizing, all of which seem like they would be great things for municipalities.
Like what? There are still some cities in the US that are a true democracy. What ends up happening is a bunch of old men show up once a week to make the laws (young and the women are not prohibited, but they rarely show up).
The above is already bad enough, but it gets worse. If you want the city to do something you get a bunch of your friends to show up on the night that will be discussed. That night you dominate the meeting and your issue wins. The next week the old men have to figure out how to pay for it.
A real city console at least has to balance the effects of a tax increase (they might lose their job next election) with the benefits of all their ideas.
The only thing I know of that works is to have such a sparse population that you don't need a government. Of course you also don't have civilization.
Thinking of it like old style town halls are not what I mean. As a new system, where anyone can raise an issue, discuss an issue, and either vote directly or proxy someone they know to vote for them on every issue. (I proxy a teacher that I trust to vote on every education issue in the community). However, if at any time, I can vote for myself. There are no longer representatives, we are all representatives.
However, there will also have to be checks in place to protect the minorities (in a voting sense, not race/religion). As a true democracy can be very dangerous, as the minority is always under represented and ultimately leads to self destruction of the democracy. (...sounds familiar to the situation the US is in? Who will vote out Santa Claus...read, welfare.)
It won't be easy to create. It will probably go through many iterations/pivots/failures, just like anything else that becomes great. But in the end, I think we can get there. Or at least improve the current status quo, which as somebody else mentioned, it's a bad thing to think change is too hard. (Although, more than likely, change will be a generational thing. The people who hold up the current way will have to die and be replaced to someone open to other ideas. Which of course has its pros and cons. We repeat history all the time, despite being well aware of the mistakes of the past.)
I'd be curious to find out at what sizes this breaks down.
Spoken like someone who has never interacted with their representatives on their local council.
I know everyone on my council, 5 of one party and 4 of another, 5 men and 4 women, and they do 15-20 hours of work every week for $50/mo. Most of them are retired because they have to be, but my area is mostly older or retired anyway so at least it's representative. The only possible complaint you could have about them is the municipality is 80% black and only 2 of the 9 members of council are, but that's also representative of who actually runs for election.
If they're corrupt, they're doing it wrong.
I don't know if I'd single them out as particularly corrupt, but they are very frequently at least one of understaffed, underfunded, incompetant, defunct or corrupt.
Whether the municipal governments fail to protect the interests of their constituents because the officials are in bed with some infrastructure corporation or because they're weak enough to get bullied by the corporation isn't really important to this discussion.
I've lived in several areas of my state and have worked with local and county government extensively, and the statement to which I was responding ("City councils' are probably the most corrupt governing bodies today.") is simply not true.
State legislatures are the most corrupt by an impressively wide margin because they're in the sweet spot of plenty of power to cause real damage and not enough real press coverage outside of the political horse race.
There's a bit of confusion here. This is not as much of a state's rights issue as it is a law vs lack of law issue. The court essentially said "make it a federal law, then that trumps state law...but your whims do not".
While I dislike the outcome, I'm not torn; the decision was absolutely correct. If this is something you want congress to address, contact your congressman.
I have no idea where to start even researching this stuff in an efficient manner.
I am not familiar with all the many laws surrounding interstate commerce, but the Feds are given oversight of such, in a broad sense.
I'd start there, with respect to the FCC's jurisdiction.
P.S. If you can buy and sell data processing (programming, analysis, etc., etc.) delivered inter-state and via the Internet -- not to mention physical things a la Amazon et al. -- then, from my perspective, you are looking at interstate commerce.
The big, entrenched ISP's make a lot of money participating in this commerce. They don't escape the resulting regulation.
Fixed that for you