This is an excellent decision, but of course, conservatives all over the world are furious about this, but they don’t agree that anyone has a human right to anything, as far as I can tell. Right to food? Nope. Right to housing? Nope. Right to basic health care? Nope. Right to dental care? Nope.
What they have done is mandate that everyone have access to it. What’s interesting is that a lot of cities in the US have decided that they are going to offer a wireless network to their citizens for free. Cities can set these things up very cheaply. Of course, the capitalist bastards are screaming bloody murder over this, and the US Congress has actually tried to pass laws banning cities from providing this service to their citizens. As our Congresspeople are all essentially whores for the rich and the corporations, these laws stand a good chance of going through.
I don’t believe they are mandating everyone have broadband. Just that you have access to it. I doubt if the state is going to buy you a computer. But if you have the computer or whatnot, you can hook into it.
Mandating it be available to everyone means that providers, state, private or whoever they are, have to make sure that everyone can have Internet access. This is good in rural areas because the capitalist bastards will never extend coverage to people in rural areas because they say it’s too expensive.
Up until the 1930’s, the capitalist scum refused to provide phone and electricity coverage to rural areas in the US on the same basis – they said it was too expensive and it would drive them out of business. But the US government forced them to provide this access. Last time I checked the phone and electric private monopolies were still in business. Unfortunately!
Another charming this the capitalists did back in the 1930’s and 1940’s was that there were different phone companies with competing networks, just as the neoliberal dipshits would love. My Mom lived through that era. She said it was totally insane. The competing phone companies refused to work with each other’s products (sort of like computer companies nowadays), so you could only call someone who had the same provider. What crap!
Finally the evil government stepped in and forced the poor, suffering phone companies to all work with each other. Now we can all call each other up, no problem, thanks to the evil government!
Wouldn’t it have been better if the evil government had just stepped back and let the moronic capitalists fight it out forever? That would be so cool. In 2010, we could still hardly even talk to each other on the phone! But who cares about that? At least the capitalists would be happy! Give the capitalists everything they want! They deserve it! For the rest of us, nothing. Or lumps of coal. Serves us right for being too lazy to set up our own businesses.
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I think this post in particular is very telling. ‘What do we get left with?!’. This feeling of entitlement is really quite preposterous Robert, but for the sake of understanding, I’d like to know where you are coming from. Why do you deserve broadband? Why do you deserve a phone that communicates with all other phone companies? Why you?
And more importantly why is it that you deserve the property of others?
You go on about human rights but negate the basic right of property in every post that touches on anything economic. But what are Human Rights if not Property Rights?! How will Free Speech be handled in a country like Finland given that this broadband access in now a right of all Finns yet the service is provided by private corporations? The lines get fuzzy and enforceable law or most importantly JUSTICE loses on this one.
What people deserve or don’t deserve is not the only consideration. Our society is made up of individuals, but it’s still a society. Why would you want to live in a society where phones wouldn’t be able to communicate with each other? Should all roads be privatized, too?
Call it how you see it ideologically, but the US lags behind many other developed nations in broadband availability and quality. If we want the US to continue to have a technological and scientific edge, this is not a good thing.
@nobody Yes actually I believe all roads should be privatized, but that’s a side issue.
“If we want to continue to have a technological and scientific edge”… as you mentioned yourself, this world is made up of individuals, so when you say “We” I don’t understand what you are talking about.
The only way for society to continue innovation is by letting that very thing happen: innovation. Forcing technology on the society creates a miriad of problems.
The example that Robert used is directly linked to a problem that irked him in the same post: “Last time I checked the phone and electric private monopolies were still in business. Unfortunately!” he said. Well of course, because in the process of the government forcing these businesses to provide the technology to the whole country the government was establishing a monopoly which they protect fiscally, physically and intellectually (through patent laws).