
Groups funded by the Koch brothers are campaigning against municipal broadband - xbmcuser
https://www.wired.com/story/koch-brothers-are-cities-new-obstacle-to-building-broadband
======
fastball
Do people really believe that infrastructure is not the purview of the
government?

Roads, water, electrical, internet, etc. should all be built out first on a
municipal level, then the state should connect those municipalities, then the
federal government should connect those states. The various levels of
government do not need to (should not?) be the ones to _operate_ this
infrastructure, but I absolutely believe that to foster competition they
should build it out and lease it to others (and such an operational lease
should never be exclusive / too long-term)

Is there a good argument against this? Who doesn't think the US Highway System
has been great for our economy? Who doesn't think a US Internet System would
be great for our economy too?

~~~
sitepodmatt
Yes, what you are describing is basically the UK railway. Network rail
(government) subcontract out maintainence and build to the private companies
(Alstom etc..) and then lease track access to private companies (Virgin trains
etc...). The UK has possibly the most overpriced railway in the world, at
least in this instance it fair to say 'it didnt work' unless you want to pay
300usd to get from london to glasgow in economy.

~~~
pjc50
Note that the system _was_ fully private for a while (Railtrack PLC), until
they went bankrupt. I think it's going to be expensive whether it's public or
private, for complex reasons probably related to "legacy" hardware. If it was
_fully_ deregulated then the operators would immediately shut down all the
tracks within 100 miles of London to build houses on them.

I believe all European countries are required to have separate track and train
operators for railways with some structure for competition in rail. It's just
that most of them manage it better than the UK.

The UK telecoms industry was privatised and has ended up with BT Openreach
operating most of the wires, leased out with local loop unbundling (LLU) to a
variety of broadband providers. It works OK although not brilliantly.

~~~
jernfrost
No, the most sucessful train company in Europe, the swiss doesn’t. And those
who have go e for separate companies have just bad experience with it. This
separation is mostly ideologially driven with no proven benefits. Right wing
parties will push through anything their economic text books say is smart
regardless of pracrical results and experiences.

~~~
pjc50
Switzerland is part of the Single Market but not part of the EU or EEA, just
to complicate matters. I agree with the rest of what you're saying.

------
simasj
As a libertarian I think that government should not do commercial projects
like this fiber optical network. But then I raise a question - why private
companies do not make such fiber networks? And it is obvious that it is not
about cost. Google has plenty of money to invest (is YouTube already
profitable or still burning 1 million USD a day?), but still they struggle
with their fiber network.

I have a live example I live in Lithuania. Until 1998 Lithuania had one
monopolist telecommunication company owned by government. But in 1998 our
government sold this monopole company (about 95% of shares) to Swedish company
Telia, but at the same time they passed the laws to liberalize
telecommunication market. Theoretically Telecom was obligated to allow usage
part of their communication infrastructure to other competitors, but as
monopoly they set such high prices, that for other companies it was cheaper to
build their own networks. And laws allowed to build network for everyone. And
that's where libertarian dream came true - even monopoly could not limit
expansion of private networks when there laws allowed that. Soon there
appeared many amateur networks that used simple UTP cables or wi-fi to connect
to each other, some of them joined forces together and become companies who
sold internet connection to neighborhood homes. That's how suddenly there
appeared lots of small ISP's. Soon they understood that they cannot rely on
UTP cables or wi-fi, so they started building fiber cable networks in largest
cities. And keep in mind, that in 1998 - 2000 when those companies have
appeared, the Lithuania was quite poor country who has just escaped USSR. It
had a GDP only of 11 billion USD; average salary was about 150 USD/month, so
you can imagine that average customer could not pay for internet a lot. That
small fiber optical ISPs didn't had big investors behind their back, tons of
money to invest, but still they managed to buy equipment on word prices and
expand their networks. And now here in Lithuania we have plenty of ISP's who
offers 100 - 300 mbps fiber connection to almost every home that needs it.

So I think real problem in USA is not about the money, it's about the laws
that limit competition. And building government network would not solve this
issue - building municipal networks is just the fight against the
consequences, not the causes.

P.S. Lithuanian capital Vilnius has population of 650 000, so it is quite
similar to the case described in this article.

~~~
croon
> And now here in Lithuania we have plenty of ISP's who offers 100 - 300 mbps
> fiber connection to almost every home that needs it.

How do these ISP:s access your home? Do all these competing ISP:s have cables
running through your lawn? If not; is the government involved? It seems like a
success.

~~~
monort
It looks like this (Romania)

[https://farm4.static.flickr.com/3628/3493868568_0538c4f264_b...](https://farm4.static.flickr.com/3628/3493868568_0538c4f264_b.jpg)

------
caseysoftware
So the point of this is that a small number of super rich people exert massive
influence through a series of shell organizations, media campaigns, and think
tanks.

If that is true - which it appears to be - are the Koch brothers the only
ones?

~~~
guelo
No. There are a bunch of billionaires pushing their various agendas.
Billionaire pet-causes is pretty much the only way things change in this
country anymore. Democracy is dead, all we have left is billionaires fighting
each other.

~~~
brandnewlow
Citation needed. Also, is there any reason to believe this isn't how it's
always been throughout history? Those with lots of capital set things into
motion that impact everyone else?

~~~
mikeyouse
Corruption at the scale we're currently seeing was pretty much illegal until
the Citizen's United ruling. Dark Money groups spent $600 million on senate
races in 2016.

The Koch brothers alone were planning on spending nearly $1 billion to
influence the election. It's no wonder that congress is racing to pass an
historically unpopular tax bill that almost exclusively benefits these very
same donors. Hell, Lindsey Graham gave away the game in a response a few weeks
ago when asked what would happen if they didn't pass the bill:

> "The party fractures, most incumbents in 2018 will get a severe primary
> challenge, a lot of them will probably lose, the base will fracture, _the
> financial contributions will stop_ , other than that it'll be fine!"

~~~
smsm42
How what is described in the article - political group promoting their opinion
- is "corruption"? Yes, some rich people may have financed that particular
group - as rich people finance a lot of politically active groups - but what's
corrupt in that? Did they bribe anyone? Did they break any laws?

~~~
neolefty
Legal corruption is still corruption. But to fix it you have to change the
system, not just enforce existing rules. And in order to change the system,
you have to have a _better_ system ready and widespread support for it. That's
hard.

~~~
smsm42
OK, let me rephrase. How it is "legal corruption"? What's corrupt there in
people trying to convince other people in their point of view? Is the
"corrupt" part that the people doing the convincing happen to be rich and thus
must be evil? What exactly needs fixing here? Should Kochs be banned from
political advocacy? Should TPA be prohibited? Should opposition to municipal
projects be banned? What exactly here needs fixing?

------
ThrowawayKoch
A lot of left-wing and media groups attribute a lot of influence to the Koch
brothers. But honestly, their efforts are often ineffective or outright
counter-productive to their stated goals. It's funny to see them portrayed as
boogeymen when you know how bad they actually are at wielding influence.

I've worked with the Charles Koch Institute before, and it's a mad house.
Their other orgs are about the same. But don't take my word for it--check out
their Glassdoor reviews[1] to see for yourself how many current and former
employees feel about them. (Read the negative ones; many of the positive ones
were posted because HR told people to do it.)

[1] [https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Charles-Koch-Institute-
and...](https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Charles-Koch-Institute-and-Charles-
Koch-Foundation-Reviews-E446388.htm)

~~~
acqq
> their efforts are often ineffective or outright counter-productive to their
> stated goals.

The fact that the employees complain doesn't mean that the money they invest
isn't effective for the goals they have: to increase doubt in the facts that
they don't like and therefore prevent or even just slow down possible actions
against their interests.

Then, what is the support for your claim that they are ineffective?

------
gigatexal
This strikes me as anti-American. Sure, I wouldn't go about building myself my
own highway (to me the internet (access to) is to infrastructure as roads are
to infrastructure). But... co-operatives can work in some cases and if a
community wants to get together to build infrastructure and save the
government money and do it better than both the feds and private institutions
why not let them be FREE to do so?

------
kebman
Yes! More freedom for the rich! Meanwhile, except Comcast or Verizon to give
you your former freedom with at a premium. What you don't know, is what you
don't get to see.

------
jernfrost
I am all for municapal internet in the US, but really it is a bandaid. The
fundamental problem is how competition is regulated in the US. Most European
countries I know of did not achieve high speed internet by making it municpal.
Rather we did it by forcing competition. Cell phone and broadband
infrastructure owners in Europe typicall have to let competition offer
services on their hardware. Same with power. Here in Norway companies owning
the power cables going into my house are not allowed to exclude competitors
from using their lines to send power to me.

You, need struct regulation of natural monpolies and that is what the US
lacks. That is why Americans ironically end up with government solutions.

See the same with so many things. Government mandated minimum eages because
unions are so weak. In Nordic countries, Germany etc there has never been a
need for go ernment to provide this as unions have solved the problem with
exploitative wages.

Ironically by fighting government regulation you just end up with more
government.

~~~
ihsw2
How do you reconcile that with the fact that competition is by all means
opposed? Sections of the country are carved up into fiefdoms where rent-
seeking is the norm.

------
kabanossen
The Private depends on the Public -
[https://georgelakoff.com/2017/11/26/protect-internet-
freedom...](https://georgelakoff.com/2017/11/26/protect-internet-freedom/)

------
ferongr
This whole thing sound like a leftist twist on the right-wing Soros conspiracy
theory.

------
ikeboy
Why was the city able to get it at cost and private companies weren't?

~~~
Johnny555
Because the city is a government agency while a private company is not.
Conduit space is a limited resource, so the state can't afford to let every
interested company piggy back on an existing project. So instead they opened
it up to other government agencies who, presumably, would use the fiber to
provide some services to the public. There may even be laws preventing the
state from allowing private companies to share their infrastructure.

~~~
ikeboy
So wouldn't everybody win if the city sold the rights to private company for
say $1 million on condition they build out this network?

~~~
scarface74
Who would you suggest?

AT&T?

[https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2014/06/att-m...](https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2014/06/att-makes-the-same-promises-every-time-it-buys-a-new-
company/)

Verizon?

[https://www.fiercetelecom.com/telecom/verizon-sued-by-new-
yo...](https://www.fiercetelecom.com/telecom/verizon-sued-by-new-york-city-
over-fios-build-out-commitment-claims)

Comcast?

[https://qz.com/213995/comcast-promised-poor-americans-
cheap-...](https://qz.com/213995/comcast-promised-poor-americans-cheap-
internet-but-most-of-them-didnt-get-it/)

------
gozur88
The Koch brothers fund libertarian groups, so it shouldn't be surprising to
find these groups are against ISPs funded through tax dollars.

------
ajr0
exciting to see opportunities [0] popping up for community based networks, it
would be interesting to see a rewards based approach to hosting access points
for others.

[0] [https://nycmesh.net/](https://nycmesh.net/)

------
stuaxo
They are a barrier to further civilisation.

------
AlphaWeaver
That's pretty terrible, that outside political interest groups took it upon
themselves to meddle in a local community's little vote...

------
smsm42
Correct title would be "A non-profit, financed among others by Koch brothers,
opposes all kinds of government spending and meddling with private economics,
including, in one case, spending on municipal internet".

------
exabrial
What if a taxpayer could care less? Is it fair to take their money to build
something they don't want/need?

If the network build-out was completely supported by people that were going to
buy service I think that's awesome.

I think in the case where it's subsidized by non-participants or non-
subscribers there are some moral and ethical issues about using taxpayer
money.

~~~
Johnny555
The city does a lot of things I don't really care about and doesn't directly
affect me. Is it fair to use my tax money to provide library services when I
haven't stepped foot in a library in decades? If the library was completely
supported by people that use it, that would be awesome.

(substitute "library" with any service the city provides that you don't use
directly)

~~~
briffle
I have yet to have the fire department assist me in either an accident, or
fire.. We should turn them into a private company! (hint, that is how fire
departments started out, and it caused so many problems, the cities took them
over!)

~~~
Johnny555
Even with government sponsored services you can get into situations where
firefighters will watch your house burn down (and protect neighboring houses
from catching on fire from your house) if you don't pay their fire protection
fee:

[http://www.nbcnews.com/id/39516346/ns/us_news-life/t/no-
pay-...](http://www.nbcnews.com/id/39516346/ns/us_news-life/t/no-pay-no-spray-
firefighters-let-home-burn/)

