"the thoughts go to the fined drivers, hoping they won't ever be caught carrying their grandmother to the supermarket then have to explain how they dared"

Unless they're planning on charging granny for the trip to the supermarket, this isn't relevant.

If Cory Doctorow believed in sending copyright infringement complaints, one would be on its way to you now.

http://www.johnjosephadams.com...

Nobody is arguing that some "silly law or court ruling overrides the First Amendment." The court rulings define what does and doesn't fall afoul of the First Amendment. The First Amendment's speech protections aren't universal (i.e. libel, incitement to violence), and they aren't specific to all cases, so the Constitution has to be interpreted, and the courts, for better or for worse, have to handle that.

The objection to Citizens United is that it too TOO broad a view of the First Amendment, by granting First Amendment protections to speech that opponents of the decision didn't think should get those protections.

Not only that, but a big portion of the increased wages were a bonus that depended on satisfactory performance in house visits. Yup, if the factory rep decided that you weren't keeping your home clean enough, or thought you were drinking too much off the job, poof went a big portion of your comp.

I'm actually extremely well-informed on this topic. You really should look into it, however, since I think you're not understanding the situation. The regulations that have "prevented" Google from building out are regulations that other providers (i.e. cable and Telco) have long had to abide by. So, Google is saying they'll only build out if they get special treatment that wasn't available to the incumbents.

Google has explicitly said that they will only build out in areas that are willing to work with them, and that means (thus far) offer them concessions (right of way, street cabinet placement, waiver of requirement that they build the entire municipality) which haven't been available to the incumbents. For example, the second article below talks about the deal Google got in Kansas City, which includes the opportunity to place their street cabinets on public land at no cost (something AT&T & TWC can't do), and the ability to put fiber on city-owned poles for about half what TWC is paying, and no requirement for a citywide buildout.

http://online.wsj.com/news/art...
http://www.wired.com/2013/07/w...

If anything, the costs decline for additional providers, since the poles are in place, the conduit (if it's underground plant) is often in place, etc.

We should be doing all three (although the last would be better captured through a tax based on vehicle weight and mileage travelled). Gas tax is certainly regressive, but we could resolve that with a refundable income tax credit for gas tax that declines as income increases.

It's _extremely_ unlikely that your area has a legal duopoly or monopoly. Those arrangements have been banned for years now. No doubt, there's a natural (i.e. economic) duopoly, but that's different.

I'm curious - what are these artificial barriers? In essentially the entire US (with a few very tiny exceptions), if you want to build out your own fiber and offer internet access, you can. You'll need to show financial viability (i.e. you have the resources to do the buildout), so the municipality doesn't end up with stuff strung on their poles rotting away, and half-dug trenches), but you can do it from a regulatory perspective.

The barrier is economic - it's a terrible business model. You're looking at $600 per home passed, at least, plus a couple hundred bucks (at least) to connect each customer. Plus your back-end (routing, backbone connectivity, etc. etc.). Then, you need to market, and convince people to leave their cable or Telco offering to sign up with you. Since they've often got triple play, you might need to consider offering video and phone service as well. Video programming costs are very high (particularly if you're small), and have fixed minimums.

Bottom line, pretty much anyone who's tried overbuilding has either (a) gone bankrupt (i.e. RCN), (b) have had a very large investment in place to protect (i.e. Verizon FiOS), or (c) not needed to actually make money doing it (i.e. Google).

Fundamentally, it's absolute $ that matter, not % change in $. If I'm trading off cost of car, or performance of car, against fuel economy, I don't care that much what the percentage change in my fuel bill is going to be, I care about what the absolute value of the change is going to be. If car X is $1000 more than car Y, but gets better fuel economy, I care whether I'm going to save >$1000 in fuel expenses, not what % my fuel bill is going to change. By the same token, if car X and car Y are the same price, but car X gets better fuel economy, while car Y is more fun to drive, I care about how much (in $) I'll be saving by buying the less fun car.

I haven't driven a car in the past 15 years that didn't have a "distance to empty" option on the dash.

Anyway, MPG's a useless metric for figuring out whether you need to stop for gas, unless you also know how big your tank is. If you do, then you're doing the math in your head to duplicate the distance to empty calculation on your dash.

Finally, the portion of the population who routinely take drives with >150 miles between gas stations is tremendously small.

Quite apart from the random ad hominem, saying that we should use MPG because it's marginally more useful for a tiny share of total trips taken in the US, and only in those cases for the small portion of cars that don't have distance to empty available, and for the drivers of those cars who can't be bothered to fill up at a gas station before venturing out on a 150 mile round trip, just doesn't make sense. Somewhere, there might be someone who has once made a trip in a car where the odometer had been customized to read in rods, and the only local gas station had a software problem with the pumps, so they read in hogsheads for a day. That doesn't mean Grandpa Simpson was right.

Finally, using MPG doesn't really tell you anything for the purpose you're talking about. You care about RANGE, not fuel economy. If you're starting off on that 140 mile round trip without gas stations, and your gas gauge reads half full, and your car gets 25MPG, you could be in great shape (if you have a 20 gallon tank) or screwed (if you have a 12 gallon tank).

Visit Germany sometime. You'll see a LOT of 4 cylinder cars doing more than 120mph. The BMW 520d (4 cylinder Diesel) maxes out at about 140. Also gets (real world) about 40MPG.

Here's one easy solution to your problem - when the tank hits 1/3 full, stop at the next gas station. There are VERY VERY few places in the US where the direct route from A to Z is 100 miles long and doesn't pass a single gas station.