"Unless they ask the IRS to make you accountable to them"

There is a better way

I was referring to the use of the IRS as an anti-opposition weapon by a sitting President.

The problem with the banana republic governments that are kept in power by the US military

Off-topic. I was talking about corporations and government of the same country.

using the US military to "promote America's interests" - where "America's interests" are not freedom or democracy but instead the interests of a small number of rich Americans who stand to benefit from having their corporations exploit poor people in other countries

Citations needed. Badly...

most corporations today are global multinationals operating in all countries, and they love to make use of that by doing in the non-free countries all the evil things that they can't (as easily) do in the free countries.

First of all, America is still reasonably free. Second, the governments of those non-free countries, which may condone (and encourage) those unspecified "evil things", are even less likely to provide citizens with decent Internet access, than is Facebook.

You claim this is the best way for a corporation to get rich, but you offer no evidence to support that claim.

In a free country, there is simply no other way to get rich. That's my proof... The less free the country (down from "free" to "reasonably free"), the worse it is as corruption and crony capitalism open up opportunities for corporations to get rich in other ways.

A big news one recently was when Oracle decided the best way to riches was to take the MONEY for providing a service to the taxpayers of Portland without actually providing the service, and giving just a token piece of junk instead.

That's a rather one-sided way of describing it, but is this your argument for trusting the State government, which hired Oracle in the first place? Or for the Federal government, which made such a contract (creation of "health exchange") necessary in the first place?

But whatever the specifics of this case, I was talking about corporations getting rich by pleasing people — people, spending their own monies, rather than government officials spending those of their constituents.

The more money is spent by the government, the less free the citizens — and the more opportunities arise for unscrupulous corporations to profit unjustly. You can win a billion-dollar contract by giving a million to the official in charge of millions' of people taxes. But you can't do that selling to people directly — for that you have to actually deliver something decent, or fool people. Fortunately, fooling all the people all the time is notoriously difficult...

That they will never end up doing something that makes less money but is more evil simply because made a bad decision

Not at all. I consider neither corporate CEOs nor government bureaucrats to be omniscient. But you seem to think, only the CEOs are fallible...

PG&E was providing electricity [...] toxic waste properly and dumping it in people's drinking water instead.

Once again your example involves a corporation profiting from a special arrangement with the government... Don't you see the trend yet?

Facebook is the perfect example here - their product is private information for targetted advertising, the users aren't the customers

So long as nobody is forced to sign up, you argument is without merit.

It's easy to point the finger solely at government for those but it's also false, if the government didn't exist the companies would do the SAME things

For someone pointing out logical fallacies (real or otherwise) in other people's arguments, you are strangely susceptible to the "excluded middle". How about the government existed, but limited itself to those things enumerated in our Constitution as government's domain:

• Law (criminal, tort, contractual) enforcement;
• Defense from any would-be foreign invaders

Nothing else.

That reading would seem to permit the Feds to override any and all State laws against political subdivisions doing anything. Some States have decided as a matter of public policy not to engage in public solid waste collection but rather to rely on the private sector for such services. Can Uncle Sam override such decisions?

I would agree with the FCC's action if it was limited to overriding laws that preclude people from starting co-ops. I think it's a bridge too far for the FCC to tell a State that it must allow a political subdivision into the telecommunications business.

How about you learn from someone who was a Marine who knows how the system works

I'd be happy to learn from him, how to operate a weapon, but why would an average Marine know "how the system works" any better, than a software engineer, a construction worker, or a janitor?

But if you hold Marines' political savvy in such an esteem, why don't you accept their other opinions today? They are rather Conservative for one thing — do you share that too, or are you only going to quote the few cherry-picked among them?

Um, Orwell was a well known socialist

Only as an opposition to Franco's fascism (Orwell fought in Spanish civil war) — and until he realized, that both Fascism and Socialism are merely two sides of the coin of Statism.

Whatever the Wikipedia article may say about the book, an actual quote from it says:

I worked out an anarchistic theory that all government is evil, that the punishment always does more harm than the crime and the people can be trusted to behave decently if you will only let them alone.

That anarchism may be naive, but there is certainly nothing in it about the need to confiscate money from citizens at gun-point (also lovingly referred to as "taxation") in order to build schools and otherwise "help the downtrodden".

US Marines were used numerous times to support the agenda of United Fruit.

Abroad. I was talking about the threat of government vs. the threat of corporations of the same country.

In more recent times, only a fool doesn't understand

Wow. This is the second time I am reminded of Hans Christian Andersen on one day...

about corporations not acting in collusion with governments

This was not really what I was talking about. But let me ask you, why is it you prefer the government side of that "collusion" you allege to be taking place? Corporation, at least, is doing it in order to bring some goods (such as bananas) to people, who want them... What's the government's excuse?

a corporation will bust your kneecaps if you demand higher wages set fire to smaller competitors

Assault and arson are both bona-fide crimes, that a government has a right and duty to prosecute. I wish, the government busied itself with those responsibilities only...

elect ... and make them accountable to you

Unless they ask the IRS to make you accountable to them... Great example.

we just passed net neutrality

A major intrusion into property rights and violation of one's freedom to operate one's business the way one sees fit.

we're legalizing gay marriage

A self-contradicting term akin to "meatless steak".

But I see, what you mean. Unhappy with other people's opinions and actions and unable to convince them, you seek to either simply force them to do things your way (such as pass any and all traffic through their own cables), or redefine certain terms (such as "marriage" — which all human civilizations until 20 years ago understood to mean "union of different sexes").

Yes, you certainly need government's ability to compel people at gunpoint to achieve those things. Without it to back your ridiculous argument, you'd still be the laughing stock you were 10 years ago...

and marijuana

Funny, how you mix introduction of new oppressive laws with abolishing old oppressive laws together — and consider both to be good things.

*shrug*, Rush makes his living by being a showman. I don't really care for the show, though as a human being I have respect for anyone that can laugh at himself, which Rush does (he has played himself on Family Guy, amongst other things), so there's that. If you're looking for an in-depth and impartial analysis of the issues you're probably not tuning into The Rush Limbaugh Show. Conservatives see a slippery slope here to further regulation. I don't entirely discount that argument and it's hard to escape the fact that the internet became what it is today by being unregulated and free of top-down mandates that impede innovation.

I'm generally supportive of what the FCC is trying to accomplish but I think the means they're using is questionable at best. They're also going after hypothetical impediments to innovation (the oft-discussed fast lane hasn't actually happened) while ignoring real threats (data caps) to innovation. Frankly I'd rather see them in the business of regulating tariffs than telling the ISPs how to run their networks (*), because I view data caps as a far more serious threat to internet video (the "killer app" that started this whole conversation) than a fast line that has yet to come to fruition.

(*) Here's a hypothetical for you: Is it "reasonable network management" to prioritize one's voice service over other applications? Keep in mind that circuit switched voice is fast becoming a thing of the past, on both wireless and wireline. On the wireline side you've got the cable company's VoIP service running on the same DOCSIS node as your neighbor's bittorrent download. On wireless you've got VoLTE replacing circuit switched voice, so voice is just another data application there as well, one that's competing for bandwidth on an increasingly congested wireless data network.

If the answer is "Yes" then you've advantaged Time Warner/Verizon/et. al's voice product over Skype and similar offerings. If the answer is "No" then you're placing phone calls at the same "best effort" level as your neighbor's porn addiction.

That model does make sense for the internet and very few people argue with pricing broke down by speed tiers. It breaks down when people expect that they can utilize 100% of their pipe 100% of the time. In my area Time Warner sells 50mbit/s connections and has eight DOCSIS channels on their coax plant. At ~42mbit/s per channel that's a maximum of 336mbit/s shared amongst all users on a particular node. Some simple division will reveal that less than seven users subscribing to the highest speed tier are enough to completely saturate that pipe. You can translate this into your water analogy easily enough by observing what happens to your water pressure when the fire department decides to flush the hydrants in your neighborhood.

Caps really aren't the best way to manage this "problem" because they ignore the actual limiting factor of bitrate. 95th percentile billing would make more sense but good luck explaining that to the masses.

me: i don't trust government. i also don't trust corporations

You are framing the question wrong. I trust both to be self-serving and greedy.

The problem is, a self-serving and greedy government official will use his existing powers to expand his control over your life and money. As Thomas Jefferson observed back in 1788: "The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield, and government to gain ground."

On the other hand, for a corporation — operating in a reasonably free country — the best way to riches is through providing services and/or making goods, that people are willing to pay for.

This is why I want this country to remain "reasonably free" — where the above-stated means of enrichment remain competitive.

why is there this irrational tribalism at work in the world where expressing an opinion against something automatically means i am for something else

Because certain things are exclusive of certain other things. Liberty vs. expanding government control is one example.

If voting moves entirely online

Begging the question, huh?

Despite being perfectly possible technically voting didn't move to telephone. And even if it did, AT&T — for all the love I have for it — would not dream of impeding such voting even when it was a government-sanctioned monopoly.

Both privately owned gated communities and government housing projects are also in a position to prevent you from getting outside the gate on the day of the poll — does this mean, it is better to be homeless than to live in such a place?

Meanwhile the loving government can punish an entire town with make-work road repairs — would you accept that as an argument against government-maintained roads?

Rush Limbaugh remembers the days of the fairness doctrine. There are a handful of politicians who think it should make a comeback. I'm not a big fan of Mr. Limbaugh's but in his defense if you read what has been said by supporters of the Fairness Doctrine it would send shivers up your spine:

The shooting is cause for the country to rethink parameters on free speech, Clyburn said from his office, just blocks from the South Carolina Statehouse. He wants standards put in place to guarantee balanced media coverage with a reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine, in addition to calling on elected officials and media pundits to use 'better judgment.'

Most people, left or right would recoil whenever a politician starts talking about a need to rethink the "parameters of free speech."

Third world is bad, Orwellian world is worse.

Despite already well-known in his times mega-corporations (like Standard Oil), Orwell was not particularly concerned with them. Probably, because a corporation, however big, can not compel you to do anything at the point of a weapon.

No, he was worried about the power of government — an evil necessary only to protect citizens from crime and injustice... Today's Illiberals would've hated the man (as a "tea-bagging fucktard" or some such), if it weren't for those "Liberals" of the past adoring him...

If you're a Libertarian how do you feel about the second vote, the one where the FCC is claiming for itself the authority to preempt State level legislation against municipal broadband services? I am not a Libertarian, nor a Republican, but I find that vote extremely disturbing; it has always been the sole province of the States to set the parameters within which their political subdivisions operate. If New York State wishes to preclude my municipality from setting up an ISP what business is that of the FCC? Can the Feds also preempt a decision that precludes municipalities from operating solid waste services? Sewer services?

I am generally supportive of what the FCC is trying to do with Title II but they're going a bridge too far if they think it's appropriate to step into the middle of the relationship between States and their political subdivisions. Three of five unelected Federal bureaucrats do not get to override the parameters my State Legislature sets for my city.