Republicans slam broadband discounts for poor people, threaten to kill program::Thune, Cruz complain that $30 discounts go to people who “already had broadband.”
I like the sentiment, but I don’t trust the government to run anything efficiently or productively
As a Texan, I 100% assure you that I fully understand the ramifications of commoditizing public services. I was cold with the rest of them, while Can-cruz was slipping away to vacation.
I just think that placing the federal government in charge of building, maintaining, and upgrading internet infrastructure would have lasting negative ramifications in just about every way.
The though above (in a sister comment to the one i replied to) about regulations requiring an affordable option (maybe one that could be further subsidized for parents with school age children, etc) is much more palatable to me.
I have no doubt they can do it.
I don’t think they should be in control of our communication though. I don’t trust them with my privacy or not to use it to exert political control over the people.
I want regulations. A government willing to set rules and to enforce those rules.
As someone who has worked in government and private industries of all sizes let me tell you the takeaway from my experience: Only organization size matters. The only exception is in the “small stuff”:
- Small government entities (municipal stuff) are often extremely efficient and frankly, surprisingly competent.
- Small businesses are much more likely to be wildly inefficient and incompetent. They’re also much harder to police and can often exist solely to extract as much money as possible from a government contract while providing as little benefit/output as possible (the bare minimum). Safety is never a priority and anything that can be made someone else’s problem will be (externalities).
Big business and big government are both extremely slow and wasteful but in different ways. Big government wastes time and money on simple things that should be cheap but because of various laws and regulations must adhere to regulations of all sorts they end up being expensive (and these regulations often don’t keep up with the times). This also slows everything down because you have to wait for the stuff to pass muster before you can use it most of the time (no matter what that thing is… From simple paper products to chairs to industrial equipment to desks to rocket engines etc you name it). This often results in people having to wait (sitting on their asses while still getting paid).
Big business wastes money on 3rd party tools and services that are often completely unnecessary. Usually because the powers that be “have always done things that way.” They also waste money by being really, really bad at project management. This is the big one: At any big company something like 9 out of 10 IT projects are considered failures because they just keep going forward (with the project) no matter what. So they often end up with something that needs to be maintained/replaced and ends up becoming a regular, long term expense.
Big business isn’t usually corrupt but they will spend loads and loads of money lobbying to make it easier for them to extract profit from whatever it is that they do. Safety, ethics, and things like the general well-being of society be damned. They have no morals except those codified in law whereas the people in huge government organizations are very visible to the people in general and know they have to act ethically or they could get in big trouble (and there’s whole entities who’s job it is to watch them for bad behavior and inefficiencies).
Related: There’s never “too much” or “too little” regulation. There’s just good regulations and bad regulations. Anyone who says regulations are bad or insinuates that they’re “job killing” is looking to mislead you.
