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It's learned helplessness. Push lever A, push lever B, don't push any lever. It doesn't matter, the painful shock is coming anyway.

Sure, but only if you do not use government money at all, do not use any exercise of eminent domain. That means if you want to run a cable, you negotiate with each and every property owner it needs to run through or over.

Title II could make that happen, but it will be a few years until there are enough choices to make a market work half decently.

For example, back when dial-up was the best technology generally available there were dozens of ISPs to choose from, all connected to a highly regulated POTS network. Prices dropped like a rock and if there was an issue, you could actually get your call elevated to the actual network admin.

The big flub with DSL was not giving the regulations enough teeth to make access truly equal. Many providers gave up when it took a month or three to get their DSLAM connected to a subscriber line but the local Bell's own service would get connected within 24 hours.

They get the police to do that for them these days. In that sense, it's worse than it was back then.

It has everything to do with what capitalism becomes when the market regulators are asleep at the switch or simply absent. There is no such thing as "free market capitalism". It is either Capitalism and the market regulations that come with or it is not Capitalism at all. You can't call it anarchy and you can't claim that the government isn't involved because that would make corporations non-existent.

Corporatism might fit or Cronyism or perhaps just plain old corruption.

He was pointedly ignoring a number of compensatory services the top 53% get back.

But when PEOPLE peaceably assemble and then break the peace by committing a crime, they go to jail as individuals. Let the same happen to those board members and we're good.

Finally! Someone noticed. Half the state dependent on a single fiber out in the middle of nowhere. What the hell?!?

To make it worse, it sounds like it was all communications. Cell, landline, and internet. Every egg in that one basket.

Surely there should have been at least a second cable somewhere.

You think that will stop him? You should have seen what he did to the mail box last Easter. The neighbors still cross the street to get past it.

And the people they apply that leverage to have been known to put families out in the streets at the drop of a hat, so not all sunshine and roses on that side either.

If you think the teamsters are a problem, just think of them as revolution lite. The concessions unions have gained are a good bit of what kept a worker's revolution from happening in the U.S.

Yeah, they'll have those automated buses ready to go and have state and federal approval in a week or two, tops!

Back here on Earth, it'll be several years before they can get approval for an automated bus on public streets, another few years until they get people to trust them rather than protest them as a safety hazard, and perhaps another year or two to get them to pay for themselves before they break down (driver salary and all), especially for a shuttle bus that isn't running 24/7.

So I guess the Teamsters kids might need to do something different.

And either those drivers join Teamsters before the cutoff date or the next news item is about how Yahoo, Apple, Genentech, eBay and Zynga were shut down for two weeks when their employee buses couldn't get through the picket line. I wonder how much that downtime will cost?

Nah, he's just not looking at the right set of rules. Those rules are the ones that allow exclusive access to a larger area in which a portion may be profitable on the condition of them serving the unprofitable areas equally as well. It also includes rules concerning municipal provided broadband competing with those monopolies in particular 2 states, Tennessee and North Carolina.

http://www.fcc.gov/document/fc...

in combination with page 4 of this

http://www.fcc.gov/document/fc...

makes it clear that exclusive access is no longer allowed. This means that I can run in and saturate the profitable areas with my offerings making comcast or whoever else either lose money in general or raise their rates to avoid doing so

Ensures fair access to poles and conduits under Section 224, which would boost the deployment of new broadband networks