this post was submitted on 22 Feb 2024
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A Boring Dystopia
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It should be illegal for Utilities to become for-profit. They should either be government run or non-profit, but only in the business to provide a needed service and NOT to make money.
For clarity: By 'Utilities', I mean items for which local residents have little or no choice in the provider (power/electric lines, water/sewer lines, hospitals) AND which either are or are nearly essential for modern living (it'd be hard to get a job without it, OR social services might take your kids if you don't provide the item).
In this day and age, the ISP should also be on the list of things classified as "utilities" - it's getting harder and harder to do anything useful without the internet. It's become an essential service.
The governments treatment of ISPs has made other industries reconsider how they do business. Utilities as we know them will be going away soon. How long before USPS is sold?
I'm shocked DeJoy hasn't managed to already.
It's because he'd have to face the Letter Carriers union, in an organized labor market that has gotten extremely militant with strike culture
USPS fan here. BIG time fan.
There will be riots in the streets before the postal service is privatized. Who will go for that?
Democrats don't want it. Country Republican voters would be outraged in minutes if their service was cut off or the price spiked. Those voters will notice fast. And they'll take note faster than city people. LOL, their mailperson may be the one government official they know personally, and count on.
We're talking about a gigantic federal agency, gigantic. The USPS is simply too important to be fucked with. Anymore than we have already...
normally I'd completely agree with you.... but... DeJoy has been hatefucking the USPS for 4 years and we can't seem to get rid of him - conservatives or libs. so....
I dunno what the fuck to do, I just know nothing so far has worked.
OMG that motherfucker needs a SPECIAL DELIVERY.
Yes, its crazy how a pair of Presidents that seem to viscerally hate public services can't seem to get rid of a guy who is dismantling one of our largest.
Trump shat on everything he touched so that's easy enough; where do you see Biden ' viscerally hate public services '? fucker rode amtrak for decades.
come on provide examples of your premise because this smacks of bullllshiiiit.
And yet he was behind Obama's federal policy of expanding for-profit charter schools, particularly in low income neighborhoods, at the expense of public school funding. He backed USPS Reforms that have kicked off even more layoffs and cuts than under Trump. He's further privatizing Medicare, transferring tens of billions in health care spending to private equity balance sheets.
The only public sector service Biden seems to like, other than Amtrak (which is getting is own privatization push regardless), are cops. Motherfucker loves throwing more money at the police.
first off, great user name.
second, dude lead with the facts instead of burying them in the responses, these are solid points.
My dumbass Republican father wants to do away with USPS entirely and rely solely on existing private businesses, such as FedEx or UPS.
He lives in Tucson, AZ. So, not exactly country. But he's fucking stupid.
I completely understand your experience. I am a resident of Tucson and we seem to be a bastion of purple in the sea of red that is Arizona.
There are plenty of InfoWarrior rides and the occasional coal-roller can be found cruising the streets.
What you're missing here is that it takes a little while for things to go to shit. What you do as a smart conservative (bit of an oxymoron, I admit) is implement this towards the end of your term so that the effect will come when the democrat is in power in the next term.
"In order to stop the Democrats from trying to steal another election by mail in ballots we will be shutting down the USPS and replacing it with a bigger more better delivery service. Why try to kick out the crooked left when we can't start fresh with the best deliver-ers of packages and mail in the business. Only the finest of delivery men and women that believe in true American values."
-Trump probably
I agree with what you're saying but I also feel you are underestimating how gullible the base is AND how determined the GOP is to pass things once in power. They prefer the slow boil method.
Or just scrapped so that Amazon can consume the balance of the market share.
Agreed!
Last mile at least, with equal access rules in the exchange
Much as I don't like ISPs, and I've worked for a few, in the field and on the phones, I shudder to think of our government running one. Yes, they should absolutely be classed as utilities. But I don't want the government involved in actual operations. That's a nightmare in 12 different ways.
It's a weird business space. Despite being a monopoly in most American markets, they keep expanding service, for no extra cost. I have no idea why they're doing this.
I live on the edge of town in a redneck suburb. No reason to improve service out here, they're the only real game in town. Yet I keep getting faster and faster speeds for no extra cost.
Anyone know what's driving improvements without competition? Or is there competition I'm not seeing?
Honestly, as an Aussie who has the NBN, it actually works surprisingly well, despite its rocky start and I can guarantee it's better than the previous setup we had, which was either Telstra/Optus cable for way too much money or you'd be stuck with cheap slow ~800kbps ADSL - and that's if you could even get wired internet. N In fact, despite the massive fuckup that was the initial rollout (things tend get fucked up when the government repeatedly changes hands mid-planning and implementation stages) it's actually doing quite well.
NBN sells its service through the ISPs at a set cost, the ISPs then compete for profit and add-ons - the speed plans are (up/down) Basic, (12/0.8). Basic II, (25/4), Standard(50/17), Fast(100/17), Superfast(250/22), ultrafast(700/40), so you're still buying it through an ISP, but you can expect a consistent pricing (though I swear the larger ISPs are always overpriced)
Speed plans are also dictated by what kind of connection the NBN offers in your neighbourhood - my neighbourhood recently upgraded, and supports all of them, but before I was limited to Fast speeds - super and ultra weren't available, as a matter of fact, we're still on Fast, even though there are higher options now, dad sees no reason to pay more.
It's a bit different for America - lots more people, and plenty of areas where gigabit is available, unlike Australia which had one of the worst internet speeds on earth. Already having good speeds makes it harder for a government to justify spending the money on something like the NBN
But the one thing the NBN and the buyout of all the original landlines and cable networks, as well as the construction of the NBN fiber networks did, is open up the market for hundreds of smaller ISPs, we now have so much choice for ISPs that the two selling points people look for when choosing are price and customer service, not speed as that's practically guaranteed. People flip between them for better deals all the time.
However some places only have access to fixed wireless and they often get their own, honestly pretty inconsistent and abysmal download speeds 2-11, 2-23, 2-75 - note that upload speeds aren't often advertised and the base speed is pretty shit - but before NBN they were stuck with mobile data or nothing, so it's still potentially an upgrade - provided you're not in an area where 2mbps is common.
Include Internet access to those utilities as well, please.
I think a better way to go about it is what Australia used to do. There was a government run service for most things, phones: Telstra, banking: Commonwealth bank, etc. Unfortunately they get sold off for peanuts/privatised, and what do you know, service suffered, but profits for the board and investors jumped.
This leaves the ability for private companies to operate in the space if they can compete on price or on service/features.
Private companies hate that though, it means they can't boil the frog/capture the industry as easily.
I fully agree with you, but the problem is that inevitably conservative governments will find a way to privatize these sorts of state-owned corporations. Our provincial governments here in Canada have been doing this for decades now - always resulting in worse outcomes for consumers
I'm starting to think the best model going forward would be collectively-owned non-profits (roughly like credit unions) but I'm not optimistic that most people would buy into this idea - certainly not enough to enable it's use for services that constitute utilities. I know in the US a lot of attempts at municipal broadband have been curtailed by the big corps and their owned politicians, and those attempts had a local government behind them. The uphill battle that concerned citizens would face seems almost insurmountable if this were attempted in any way that would challenge a big corp's profits.
Basically, everything is garbage and the world is getting objectively worse.
Mate, that’s literally what they’re saying. Make it government run as a public utility.
Privatisation is a neolib cancer on the world.
How is that better?
Yes. These things should not be run for profit.
I think that we should set up some sort of honey pot trap, here. Anyone who seriously proposes privatizing one of the utilities is permanently barred from working in the industry ever again.
Wildly impractical, I know. I just want the people who are always making the world shittier so they can have a little more profit to suffer.
In NW Florida we had a semi-private, semi-government firm running our power. Seemed fair. We could vote on directors, they made a profit to keep the infrastructure running, prices were fair.
Now that our government sold us out to a private company, prices spiked and reliability dropped. I should note; We were told prices would jump to work on infrastructure. OK, I dunno, might be fair. Read on.
So, this is all anecdotal, take it as you will. People complained about prices jumping 40%. I didn't see it for some time, my bill was about the same. Now I'm seeing the price hike. Don't know what changed. My bill went from $120 tops to $240. For reference, I live in a small Habitat for Humanity house. They build for energy efficiency above all else.
Since the private entity took over, I'm seeing more power blips. Nothing to really bitch about, but we never had "blips" during afternoon storms. What happened to the infrastructure improvements? Again, anecdotal, but it sure seems worse.
And one more anecdote... I'm 53. Grew up in Tulsa. Power never cut out when I was a kid, not for a second. OTOH, when a storm took us down, it was hours or days to recover, not minutes. And I may be misremembering, YMMV.
Mostly with ya OP. I think utilities should be able to make a modest profit. Encourages them to do well, expand. They make a little money, do a good job, nobody's bitching. Modest being the key word here.
『Bolshevik chorus swells』
SEIZE THE MEANS OF PRODUCTION! WE HAVE NOTHING TO L—mph! mmmpmmmph! mmmlmmmpmmmph!
『is carried off by well dressed industrialist goons』
In The Netherlands, the power grid has been turned into a different company than the power supply company. Same for gas and internet. The infrastructure companies are tightly regulated, to the point that they might as well be gpvernment branches. The providers however, are free to offer whatever.
The result is healthy competition where possible, without any company gaining a monopoly position over the utilities of individuals.
The drawback is that they figired out that the best way to make money, is of the backs of lazy people. People who don't want to switch providers, cause that means effort. Hence, not actively looking for a better offer every few years is quite costly.