How people see it is likewise irrelevant. It's put in place expressly to prevent 'revenge' from being the method of retribution.

Given that we've just found out that the FBI has screwed up 1000s of cases including 30+ who are now dead and perhaps wouldn't be...life is infinitely better.

That tells us plenty about your opinion...I'd wager most people on death row would see it slightly differently. And 100% of those now dead would see it differently. Being 'free' for even an hour is still probably worth, quite seriously, millions of dollars to those people (and the local populace who gets to pay it)

Worked well when fighting the mythical Lernaean Hydra...unless of course you've discovered the modern equivalent of torching the stumps after every each head is cut off; we seem to be missing that part of the story currently.

Drone strikes make MORE terrorists not less.

Nope, remove the subsidies the agriculture industry is getting. You have a problem with paying a fair share for water?

Fresh water is a scarce resource...

I'm all for whatever works. The Ion Bridge method described above requires vast areas of water separated from other areas. So the basic problem is the same as hydro power. It's great but not scaleable to meet the needs of more than the relative local area. From the descriptions & googling it doesn't seem quite ready to supply water for LA.

The thing about solar to electricity to batteries to whatever is not that there is loss along the way. Basically any system has that. It's that efficiency is significantly less of an issue when your fuel is free.

It's why US cars in the 50s got 7 mph and nobody really cared. Gas was plentiful and cheap. Now imagine if it was free and fell on your own land? You can draw the power for the current tech desalination plant from all over the city.

Come up with a better desal process? Great! in the meantime LA needs water right now and solar can easily supply the needs of current tech with very little planning.

Why wouldn't we use the single most abundant energy source on the planet to power something that is energy intensive? Oh and said energy source has no fuel costs?

from the FCCs own press release

"Interconnection: New Authority to Address Concerns
For the first time the Commission can address issues that may arise in the exchange of traffic between mass-market broadband providers and other networks and services. Under the authority provided by the Order, the Commission can hear complaints and take appropriate enforcement action if it determines the interconnection activities of ISPs are not just and reasonable."

This. Much.

Owning both the wires AND content on those wires makes it ever so convenient to throttle competing content to favor your own.

Which behavior? Um, both Comcast and Verizon throttling Netflix unless Netflix paid a bribe, i mean, extra fee? And Verizon even kept right on throttling after being paid said 'bribe'.

I already paid Verizon to give me access to the internet (up AND down) at set speeds, they don't get to then charge the content provider that I have specifically requested content from another fee.

If there were any competition, people who were having their Netflix traffic throttled would switch to another ISP, but there aren't any other ISPs for most consumers.

So it's not 'free' then right? There aren't laws governing the behavior of the ISPs so it can't be free.

'Freedom' is the express lack of restrictions, i.e. 'freedom of movement'. 'rule of law' specifically limits what is allowed and/or acceptable to society for the benefit of said society.

FCC regulation of UTILITIES is a restriction of the utility operator's activity for the benefit of society. You don't have 4 water systems in your town, you don't have 4 electric grids. Why should we have to have 4 sets of internet infrastructure to have competition?

ISPs, through franchising, have become defacto monopolies in entire areas and are behaving as such. Unless you build entirely separate infrastructure (i.e. 4 water systems) there is no competition and thus no free market. That is ALL the FCC is enforcing here - as a defacto monopoly you can't favor or disfavor traffic on your infrastructure.

Economies that balance free market with regulations are the ones that do the best.

Full scale anarchy is the only truly 'free' market. I.e. whatever I want to do is justified since I want to do it.

Too many libertarians and other supposedly 'free market' proponents conveniently forget the role regulations play in creating a level playing field...like net neutrality.

Then said libertarian is naive.

The 'monopoly' of ISPs has resulted in many many many MORE people having actual access to the service than if a true monopoly were in place. Nobody would build out to everybody because it simply isn't cost effective to charge $100/month for where you had to put in a $50K line extension over a few miles just for them. Even the suburbs wouldn't have had service until relatively recently. Monopolies only go where there is profit.


The problem is that there wasn't a term limit on these franchises saying that after 20 years or whatever, the networks became open and would be entirely separate from the CONTENT running on the networks.

It's old news but in PA they ruled setting auto insurance rates by gender wasn't 'fair' so PA made starting insurance rates the same for everybody.

linky

End result? Women's rates when up and men's went down...totally what they were going for I'm sure

Actually most things can be negotiated for. What determines it is the relative price. If it's 5 bucks, they aren't likely to negotiate because they have very little profit margin.

If it's $100K, there's going to be multiple 1000s in wiggle room.

But mostly, you list examples of buying 'goods' and not services. Services are inherently more negotiable since it's time vs money instead of stuff vs money. (basically the same as above)

That's cute. You believe government with no oversight is competent?

And your proof that these LOVEINT 'self-reporting' incidents were the result of periodic reinvestigation is....what?