Note This article is written by me and spell checked with AI. Many of the images are generated by AI. They are mostly to explain certain points and break up the wall of text.
Well FUCK YOU!
Use your word processor to spell check, and buy stock photos taken by humans, which have probably been ripped off to train that AI.
Your disclaimer doesn’t legitimize anything.
Yep I saw that it had AI slop and immediately closed the window.
Frankly idgaf what an AI user has to say.
Very good. My TL;DR take:
The American and German approach of letting incumbents build monopolies, allowing wasteful overbuild, and refusing to regulate natural monopolies is often called a ‘free market.’
But it’s not free. And it’s not a market.
True capitalism requires competition. But infrastructure is a natural monopoly. If you treat it like a regular consumer product, you don’t get competition. You get waste, or you get a monopoly.
The Swiss model understands this. They built the infrastructure once, as a shared, neutral asset, and then let the market compete on the services that run over it.
That’s not anti-capitalist. It’s actually better capitalism. It directs competition to where it adds value, not to where it destroys it.
The free market doesn’t mean letting powerful incumbents do whatever they want. It means creating the conditions where genuine competition can thrive.
Some right libertarians actually believe the bullshit that free markets magically pop up out of the ground like weeds if you just don’t regulate anything. This is obviously untrue. You need the right type of regulation to have a free market. Otherwise you end up with cartels and monopolies.
Those that operate the cartels and monopolies know this, but continue to feed the propaganda machine that spouts the opposite.
Libertarian police
I was shooting heroin and reading “The Fountainhead” in the front seat of my privately owned police cruiser when a call came in. I put a quarter in the radio to activate it. It was the chief.
“Bad news, detective. We got a situation.”
“What? Is the mayor trying to ban trans fats again?”
“Worse. Somebody just stole four hundred and forty-seven million dollars’ worth of bitcoins.”
The heroin needle practically fell out of my arm. “What kind of monster would do something like that? Bitcoins are the ultimate currency: virtual, anonymous, stateless. They represent true economic freedom, not subject to arbitrary manipulation by any government. Do we have any leads?”
“Not yet. But mark my words: we’re going to figure out who did this and we’re going to take them down … provided someone pays us a fair market rate to do so.”
“Easy, chief,” I said. “Any rate the market offers is, by definition, fair.”
He laughed. “That’s why you’re the best I got, Lisowski. Now you get out there and find those bitcoins.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m on it.”
I put a quarter in the siren. Ten minutes later, I was on the scene. It was a normal office building, strangled on all sides by public sidewalks. I hopped over them and went inside.
“Home Depot™ Presents the Police!®” I said, flashing my badge and my gun and a small picture of Ron Paul. “Nobody move unless you want to!” They didn’t.
“Now, which one of you punks is going to pay me to investigate this crime?” No one spoke up.
“Come on,” I said. “Don’t you all understand that the protection of private property is the foundation of all personal liberty?”
It didn’t seem like they did.
“Seriously, guys. Without a strong economic motivator, I’m just going to stand here and not solve this case. Cash is fine, but I prefer being paid in gold bullion or autographed Penn Jillette posters.”
Nothing. These people were stonewalling me. It almost seemed like they didn’t care that a fortune in computer money invented to buy drugs was missing.
I figured I could wait them out. I lit several cigarettes indoors. A pregnant lady coughed, and I told her that secondhand smoke is a myth. Just then, a man in glasses made a break for it.
“Subway™ Eat Fresh and Freeze, Scumbag!®” I yelled.
Too late. He was already out the front door. I went after him.
“Stop right there!” I yelled as I ran. He was faster than me because I always try to avoid stepping on public sidewalks. Our country needs a private-sidewalk voucher system, but, thanks to the incestuous interplay between our corrupt federal government and the public-sidewalk lobby, it will never happen.
I was losing him. “Listen, I’ll pay you to stop!” I yelled. “What would you consider an appropriate price point for stopping? I’ll offer you a thirteenth of an ounce of gold and a gently worn ‘Bob Barr ‘08’ extra-large long-sleeved men’s T-shirt!”
He turned. In his hand was a revolver that the Constitution said he had every right to own. He fired at me and missed. I pulled my own gun, put a quarter in it, and fired back. The bullet lodged in a U.S.P.S. mailbox less than a foot from his head. I shot the mailbox again, on purpose.
“All right, all right!” the man yelled, throwing down his weapon. “I give up, cop! I confess: I took the bitcoins.”
“Why’d you do it?” I asked, as I slapped a pair of Oikos™ Greek Yogurt Presents Handcuffs® on the guy.
“Because I was afraid.”
“Afraid?”
“Afraid of an economic future free from the pernicious meddling of central bankers,” he said. “I’m a central banker.”
I wanted to coldcock the guy. Years ago, a central banker killed my partner. Instead, I shook my head.
“Let this be a message to all your central-banker friends out on the street,” I said. “No matter how many bitcoins you steal, you’ll never take away the dream of an open society based on the principles of personal and economic freedom.”
He nodded, because he knew I was right. Then he swiped his credit card to pay me.
The American dream!
Fantastic BTW.
so capitalism good when done right - couldn’t agree more
Fuck comcast. Fuck 2tb bandwidth limit unless you get their fuckass router. Fuck them.
They will never give you more unless something forces them to. That could have been us, forcing them to, but we’re shit at accomplishing those kinds of things.
The author misses a few key points about the American model:
First, in exchange for the local territorial monopoly, the providers are supposed to be heavily regulated by the local (or State) government, with controls in place to prevent abuse of the monopoly and promote the interests of its residents. Of course, we all know how business interests influence government to make business- friendly regulations. Governments have the ability to enforce more user-friendly practices, if they choose to do so.
But the more important point is that in the US, we hand out different monopolies based on the connection type. For instance, where I live we have one company that owns the twisted-pair POTS landlines, a different company that owns the coaxial cable TV service, and another company that owns the direct fiber to the home. Three companies, three connections to each home, all three (theoretically) capable of delivering the same services, since there is no longer any real differentiation between voice, video, and data service: it’s all just bits.
We just got our FTTH provider only recently. Before that, our choices were only the cable company or the telco’s astonishingly show DSL. So I subscribed to the Cable company, and their pricing model tried to force you into a bundle for the other services. Their speeds were also quite slow for broadband, until the Fiber company started digging. Then I got all sorts of emails saying “we’re increasing your speed – for free!” And sure enough, I was getting better bandwidth. But all that did was piss me off. These losers could have given me that better service all along, but didn’t bother until they were forced to.
So I’m on the fiber now. But I know how it works, this service will be awesome at first, but once this company finishes building out they won’t sign on any new capacity and it will gradually get shittier over time. It’s the American Way!
(And I still pay the local telco way too much money for a POTS landline. What can I say, I’m an old.)
Now we just need some decentralised stuff so that we can communicate directly with one and another.
I’m sure this will be lost in the comments but you CAN get 25GBit here in 'murica. My ISP offers it… But this ISP is also considered one of the best in the world so… https://epb.com/fi-speed-internet/#choose-your-plan
Just for reference Init7 offers 25 Gbit/s for 65 CHF a month. Thats about 83 USD.
They have the same monthly price for 1 Gbit/s 10 Gbit/s and 25 Gbit/s. Only the initial install for the higher speed optics costs 77 CHF or 222 CHF more respectively.
I’m still on their 1Gbit/s service because I’m too lazy and cheap to replace my router and LAN with 10 Gbit/s equipment.
Most hardware does 2.5Gbps out of the box these days.
I’ve had 1Gbps for 13 years now (in Denmark) and can comfortably say: it’s plenty
Lol $1500 a month. JFC.
Here in Sweden I have over 20 choices of providers, many with specific a focus. One that is superb, which is the one I have, don’t do any tracking or information gathering at all. They are fully focused on privacy, an open Internet and have helped countries in need, like Ukraine, with hardware to keep Internet access on. They’ve been raided and taken to court over not following the required IP address storage laws and some other things of deliberately not collecting information. Their newsletter is so good too, all about privacy and relevant tech news. Seriously couldn’t dream of a better ISP.
because America keeps giving money to broadband companies, who promise to improve internet speeds and access… give the money to executives as bonuses, do shit all with speeds or access, and their reward is another dumptruck of money to expand access and speeds… Which they 20 return to 10 and give it all out as executive bonuses again and do fuck all for the customer/citizens
oh, and when municipalities try to run their own broadband, they force them to shut down because its not fair for them to compete with the monopolistic internet companies. 🙄
I wish this was just in the USA but numerous countries in the EU handed out billions upon billions to private companies to roll out VDSL and then fibre connections (GPON) and the public owns none of what has been made despite paying for it all and the bonuses on top. Now the higher speeds are grossly more expensive than the old DSL lines used to be and they are turning those all off and getting to pocket the increased prices.
corporatism is a plague all over the world.
is it because Switzerland is like 2% the size of America with like 4000% the GDP because of all the banks with illegal funds there?
Or because the US, the richest country ever to exist, is squandering its wealth on weapons and kleptocracy instead of improving its citizens’ lives even a tiny amount?
top 10 richest countries on the world adjusted per capita.
notice something missing from that list?
oh wait…look who is on the list?
Is per capita appropriate in this context?
very much so. poor people don’t buy things that aren’t necessary like internet access.
edit: just to clarify, poor people don’t have the expendable income to pay for both home Internet AND a mobile phone.
The poor parts of Eastern Europe like Romania are awash in cheap, fast internet though
you mean the parts that are a part of the EU that directly benefit from support from some of the richest countries in the world?
The EU is still poorer than the US
Switzerland is fucking tiny.
That’s why.
China has a bigger landmass than the US and China’s internet is insanely fast. Just like the 5GA. The US is like dialup compared to China. Especially now only Netgear is allowed in the US compared to the innovate technology from the likes of Huawei.