The Cable Company Dickbag Problem
Susan Crawford for Bloomberg:
The Internet has taken the place of the telephone as the world’s basic, general-purpose, two-way communication medium. All Americans need high-speed access, just as they need clean water, clean air and electricity. But they have allowed a naive belief in the power and beneficence of the free market to cloud their vision. As things stand, the U.S. has the worst of both worlds: no competition and no regulation.
Such an important and easy-to-understand post. Essentially, the U.S. has fallen behind (and continues to fall farther behind) in high speed internet access because of deregulation gone-bad. It allowed greedy dickbags (the cable companies) to do what they do best (perfect being greedy dickbags).
Just read about how many millions of dollars each of them spend in lobbying to ensure that communities continue to have to pay them (many more) millions for sub-par service. Total. Fucking. Dickbags.
I hope Google (or someone) succeeds in their (insanely expensive) end-around approach. Because it’s pretty clear the government isn’t going to do shit at this point. I wrote this post almost three years ago — what has changed in the meantime? Absolutely nothing. It’s gotten worse. And it will keep getting worse.
