
Sanders unveils plan to boost broadband access, break internet and cable titans - HenryKissinger
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/06/bernie-sanders-releases-broadband-plan-targets-comcast-att-verizon.html
======
DanTheManPR
The inequality in access to service around the US is stark. I'm currently
living in a suburb of a large city, and have some of the most awesome internet
I've ever had (I can finally host my minecraft server from home!). My parents
living an hour away in a small town pay more for service that can't reliably
stream video... but pay slightly more than I do. It's one of the thousands of
small cuts that are killing rural areas.

~~~
ajmurmann
Distances in the US can be so much bigger than in other countries, leading to
rural areas being much more rural than in pretty much any other developed
country. This makes servicing some rural communities very expensive. Not only
for ISPs but for pretty much any infrastructure. Living in a rural area is a
decision, that's fine for people to make, but I'm not sure we all need to be
subsidizing it. Yes, cities have become very expensive, but it would be much
cheaper as a society to solve that problem by getting rid of NIMBY regulation
and make it easier and cheaper to build denser than to keep maintaining small,
remote settlements with very little economic value

~~~
iron0013
There's truth to that, but affordable rural high speed internet is possible.
Paul Bunyan Communications in northern Minnesota, for example, runs affordable
fiber optic service deep into the country. My friend lives 25 miles from any
town, and they happily ran fiber out to his house. The main difference between
Paul Bunyan Communications and other rural providers who claim that such a
thing is "impossible" seems to be that Paul Bunyan is a Co-operative:
[https://paulbunyan.net/cooperative/our-
history/](https://paulbunyan.net/cooperative/our-history/)

~~~
Rebelgecko
Did your friend have to pay installation costs for the fiber? If so, do you
know how much it was?

~~~
iron0013
I don't know. The website says that there's an $85 activation fee, and my
friend's income is such that a large installation fee would have been
impossible for him (just like most folks in the north woods!).

~~~
stouset
I genuinely don’t understand how this is possible/profitable. $80/mo is just
shy of $10,000 in $10yr. Even if all of that is marginal profit (e.g., the
costs to them after running the lines once are zero), there’s no way that pays
for the crews to lay even 10mi of fiber.

Something has to be missing here.

~~~
iron0013
I asked a customer service rep about it on the online chat. Here's what they
said (I doubt they'd mind me posting it here):

16:10:46 Thank you for contacting us. An operator will be with you shortly.

16:10:46 Guest: Is there an installation fee for Gigazone internet?

16:11:08 Guest: Hi, I see that there's an $85 activation fee, but is there
also an additional installation fee?

16:11:40 Operator JJ joined the chat

16:11:47 JJ: Hi there!

16:11:51 Guest: Hi!

16:12:13 JJ: There is no installation fee. It is rolled in with the activation
fee which is waived if you sign a 6 month contract.

16:12:54 Guest: That's great--I was discussing this with friends and we can't
figure out how it's possible! How can you afford to run fiber optic out into
the country and charge so little for it?

16:14:36 Guest: Part of why I ask is because almost no other rural areas have
this figured out

16:14:56 JJ: Well, there's a couple of ways. For a long time we required our
members to have phone lines along with our internet service as there are a
number of government grants that we can qualify for as long as we're building
rural telephone infrastructure. That's the reason we still are required to
require phone service in some of our service area.

16:15:13 Guest: I see, cool

16:15:52 JJ: Secondly, we're a co-op and committed to the community. If we
plow a fiber line to your home and you end up moving some time in the future,
the line remains for some other lucky co-op member in the future. It's kind of
a "long-game" mentality.

16:16:05 Guest: Makes sense, thank you!

~~~
rasz
\+ as a local co-op they value paying for local labor differently from noname
national monopoly corporation.

------
partiallypro
My parents have no access to high speed internet, except over 4G. Which I find
unacceptable. Even DSL would be fine...but ISPs have discontinued that and are
expanding fiber. So that basically adds maybe 5-10 more years before they'd
ever get it?

I generally don't agree with Bernie's whole premise here, but I do think he
has the right idea. We should up high speed requirements, but also OTA should
not count. The reason wireless (5G, 4G, Satellite) shouldn't count is...well
the data caps are so limiting that you can't possibly do anything with the
service. Or the equipment and setup is so expensive you'd have to be a company
to afford it. I don't agree that high speed is a "human right," I really think
such statements add nothing of value and make such proposals easy to mock. The
argument should simply be to treat high speed land lines as a public utility
and requirement, like electricity.

~~~
uoaei
> I don't agree that high speed is a "human right"

What makes access to high-speed internet a privilege as opposed to a right?
Why shouldn't everyone be guaranteed access to high-speed internet?

~~~
Pigo
I fundamentally don't agree with an ever expanding list of "human rights",
because it requires an every expanding government to fulfill them.

~~~
charlesism
That’s not very nuanced.

A big Finnish government is different than, say, a big Russian government.

To me it seems like saying: I fundamentally disagree with dining out because
it requires restaurant, and restaurant is always bad.

~~~
hollerith
Restaurants didn't kill 100 million people over the previous century.

~~~
tharne
^This. Over the course of the 20th century, the vast majority of killings
occurred at the hands of governments. Furthermore, it was typically
governments killing their own people, not the people of other countries.

Say what will about big greedy corporations, they're boy scouts when compared
to the carnage brought about by governments in the last century.

~~~
rini17
Whenever there was profit in the killing, corporations willfully helped. The
distinction is meaningless.

~~~
tharne
You're probably correct. Corporations almost never reach an enormous scale
without government to provide the regulatory moats necessary to inhibit
competition and disruption. And that doesn't even take the issue of subsidies
into account. Smaller government would likely lead to more small enterprises
and fewer enormous ones.

~~~
rini17
Again this is not so clearly cut. With small govt, corporations take over its
responsibilities, both social and repressive. There is plenty of historical
precedent for that and AFAIK it is not considered a good thing.

------
rayiner
[https://www.snl.com/articles/398790780.png](https://www.snl.com/articles/398790780.png)
(showing US at 15, ahead of Canada, Germany, France, Italy, and the UK).

Our subway and water systems are “public utilities” supporting “good paying
union jobs.” How many of them would rank in the top 10-15 in the world? (Note
that no country in the top 10 treats broadband like a publicly owned utility.)
Moreover, the median age of municipal election voters is 57. What trade offs
are they going to want to make in balancing rates versus maintenance and
upgrades? (There is a reason that our water infrastructure, for example, is
facing a one trillion investment shortfall.)

Sanders proposes to spend $150 billion on broadband. Over what time frame? If
it’s the typical 10-year time frame candidates have been using for budget
proposals, that’s just about 1/5 of what the private sector is investing in
broadband annually.

Public broadband is going to be an $80 billion a year commitment just for
capital expenditures. If you demand those be tied to “good paying union jobs”
be ready to make it $120 billion or more. Add in operational expenditures, be
ready to triple that.

Telecom is a huge sector. Even if you subtract the profits, you’re talking
several hundred billion of dollars annually. That’s half the size of the
military budget.

~~~
thatfrenchguy
Your first link is misleading, as it just indicates that part of the US is
using cable where most european countries use DSL + fiber.

> How many of them would rank in the top 10-15 in the world?

Anything would be better than Comcast, seriously.

~~~
rayiner
It’s not misleading. The US broadly adopted cable because the market was
mostly deregulated. Europe tends to lag on these measures because it’s more
top-down regulated markets tried to evolve the existing phone network with
DSL. So the few places that have fiber have great speeds, while everyone else
is stuck with DSL. The US has an entire additional infrastructure that offers
much faster speeds than DSL. Countries like France and Spain are now rolling
out fiber, but the US has enjoyed a huge advantage in speeds for most of the
21st century because of cable.

~~~
hocuspocus
You realize you cannot make such broad generalizations about Europe? Cable
internet has been available and very popular in several countries. And DSL
doesn't have to suck, G.fast offers speeds above 500Mbps. Also FTTH rollout
has started long ago in most countries.

Even in rural areas the coverage is typically pretty good when horizontal
deployment is done by municipalities or local utilities. And you see the exact
same thing in the US.

~~~
rayiner
You can make generalizations about Europe. Most of the EU population lives in
just five countries: the UK, France, Germany, Spain, and Italy. The US has
faster internet than all of them, although Spain is pulling ahead in a couple
of recent surveys.

------
jacquesm
Musk will do this, Sanders can talk about it but will still need years to
implement it. Free for him to suggest he will be able to do this but the
problem has more chance of being solved at the technical level than the
political one.

2020 will be the year for Starlink, if it really works as advertised by the
time Sanders could be elected this will be a reality (or a dud).

[https://www.space.com/spacex-starlink-satellite-internet-
ser...](https://www.space.com/spacex-starlink-satellite-internet-
service-2020.html)

~~~
chime
As long as it works in all weather, I agree Starink is superior to digging
trenches. But if Internet goes out during storms, especially multi-day winter
storms, then rural/distant areas would be better off with DSL or Fiber, even
ignoring the bandwith or latency differences.

Also, Starlink is run by a single, private company. If anything happens to the
company, do we really want a vast chunk of the country offline? At least with
GPS we know they don’t need to be profitable. What if the shareholders don’t
find Starlink worth it?

That being said, I can’t wait for Starlink myself!

~~~
WhompingWindows
Couldn't Starlink benefit from relays so that receivers in non-cloudy/non-
stormy areas could boost signals to cloudy areas?

~~~
dillonmckay
That sounds like using microwave towers again.

------
ecolonsmak
Use the same guiding spirit as the rural electrification project of the 1930's
to get this done. Bringing symmetrical broadband service to every address in
the US is just as important as electrifying the countryside was back then.

~~~
3fe9a03ccd14ca5
Broadband rollout costs suffer horribly with 80/20 rule, with rolling out
broadband to the last 5% being extremely expensive.

I’d like to see something like fiber to 80% of the country, and then
alternatives (like low-attitude satellite internet) for the last 20%.

Give companies huge tax breaks if they’re doing this work.

~~~
iron0013
We tried tax breaks--hell, we even tried simply giving companies like comcast
billions to do the job. Instead they just took the money and didn't do
anything. If we the people want something done, we have to do it ourselves.

~~~
3fe9a03ccd14ca5
Giving contracts and giving tax breaks are very different things.

------
tribeofone
Sanders can't even get good internet or phone connectivity in his own State.
He's accomplished little to nothing in Vermont and has pretty much been MIA
for the last 6 years. Thinking that he can get anything done at a National
scale (let alone International scale) is a joke.

~~~
hwillis
He's a senator, not a governor or state congressperson. Literally his job is
to accomplish things at the national level, not the state level.

------
LarryDarrell
I would think the Postal Clause in the Constitution would provide enough
authority to the Post Office to create and run an ISP.

------
_davebennett
Wow so interesting comparing the comments in this thread vs Reddit. I guess
since the HN audience is generally older, they tend to have a more
conservative take on this than myself and my peers.

~~~
EpicEng
Being older doesn't make you right, but it does tend to impart some wisdom.
Most importantly, an appreciation of nuance. I can't take part in reddit
threads because the overwhelming majority sees every issue as black and white,
right or wrong. There's little room for real debate.

Currently, these are the top five comments:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/e710oj/sanders_ca...](https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/e710oj/sanders_calls_to_break_up_comcast_verizon/)

>Break up comcast? Clearly bernie is a man for and of the people.

>Finally! It's long overdue. These monopolies need to end so people can have
affordable internet access.

>Every day there’s more great news from him.

>And now you know why MSNBC hates Bernie. I really enjoy the network but even
I'll admit their Comcast connections get in the way of their ability to
actually cover politics in a fair light.

>Fuccckkk comcast

And it continues like that for quite a few more. No substance, just empty rage
against 'The Man'. Disagree on any bit of it and prepare to be personally
attacked and downvoted into obscurity.

~~~
lotsofpulp
Why do you think removing the monopoly of private companies such as Comcast is
not “substance”?

Search an address anywhere in America, go to the ISPs website, and see what
the options are. I’d bet money that the vast majority are restricted to one
ISP, one will be via coax which is limited to 5mbps upload for the whole
neighborhood. The other is the phone company offering DSL (doesn’t count as
broadband internet).

The only solution to providing high bandwidth, low latency, symmetric internet
is by running fiber wires everywhere. The private company owning the monopoly
(Comcast for most) has no reason to do that, and can simply charge whatever
they want (as long as it’s not too much to cause sufficient outrage to cause
political change). They don’t need to improve their product, which the only
way would be to run fiber wires to all the houses, but they can just collect
rent from everyone who has no option.

~~~
EpicEng
>Why do you think removing the monopoly of private companies such as Comcast
is not “substance”?

I don't, and I never said that; I said that reddit comments tend to lack
substance, and I think the examples show that. Only one of them even mentions
the word "Monopoly" (local oligarchies would be more accurate), and it's a
very simple, short statement. The rest are complete throwaways.

Look, your response to me was vastly better than any of those. There's no
discussion of pros and cons, potential roadblocks, or the complexities of such
a large plan. It's just "Bernie is awesome, down with the corporations!". If
you disagree, in any way, your labeled a corporate bootlicker. /r/politics is
a cult. I didn't come out of that thread having learned anything. I didn't
even see a mention of any specific details of the plan in the ~10 top comments
I read.

How you can equate that with what you see in the comments here is beyond me.

~~~
lotsofpulp
I read all those short F Comcast and monopoly comments to convey what I wrote
in short form.

It’s been known for a long time that the only way to improve internet
connections is to run fiber wire. It’s also been known that Comcast and other
monopolies lobby and spend money to fight it. It’s known that they stand to
lose money by becoming a dumb pipe. So there no discussion to be had, in my
opinion, other than governments running their own fiber for their citizens.

~~~
EpicEng
You're arguing against a position I never took. This discussion is about
Reddit comments versus hacker news comments. I never even took a side on the
whole ISP debate. I'm not sure where you're going with this.

------
mrosett
If there's anything we can all get behind, it's the idea of the government
controlling everyone's access to the internet.

~~~
koboll
If multiple companies are competing, I'd much rather get services from the
market rather than the government, because I can vote with my wallet, and
companies respond to that.

But if I must use a single monopoly company that provides a service, I'd much
rather get services from the government, because at least I have some
semblance of a vote in the form of my actual vote. With a single corporate
provider of a utility, I have no say at all.

~~~
buckminster
When many large British companies were in state hands (up until the 1980s)
there was no accountability. Customers were ignored because they had no
alternative. The law - sensibly enough - didn't allow politicians to interfere
in the running of the companies so they were basically unaccountable. That's
how you got waiting lists of more than a decade for a phone line.

One of the Tory ministers responsible for privatizing utilities in the 1980s
said they did it because the utilities would be _easier_ to control as private
companies with a regulator.

There is no silver bullet.

~~~
koboll
>The law - sensibly enough - didn't allow politicians to interfere in the
running of the companies so they were basically unaccountable.

I'm not sure how that's sensible. Are you being sarcastic?

Sure, there are problems with political intervention in state-owned companies
(near term bias, etc.), but if it's the only means of holding state-owned
companies accountable, and if a competitive market is untenable, then yes,
voter-accountable politicians should be able to intervene in state-owned
companies.

As it stands, with a company like PG&E, you have a half-solution, where it's a
privately-owned monopoly but isn't directly accountable to its customers
because they can't vote with their wallet, so it gets metric tons of
regulation dumped on it instead as a half-measure that (obviously) doesn't
work.

------
arminiusreturns
I wish the candidates would stop talking about legislative agendas as much as
they do and focus on the things actually in the purview of the office they
seek. I know almost all of them are in the legislative branch, but I'm tired
of hearing about legislative promises _they won 't be able to deliver on_!

The reality is that K-street and the oligarchs write the laws, congresspeople
don't even read the bills, maybe key staffer or two who the K-street firm
promised a job later who did the actual legwork on the bill has read some of
it, and then the congressperson votes along all kinds of machiavellian and
other power lines that have nothing to do with "is the bill good or not".

Until America fixes congress, plans like this will get railroaded via riders
and rewrites regardless of the merit of the original proposed bill.

At least it mentions the glut of monopolistic mergers and aquisitions, but I
want more than "we will fight it". Tell us how you intend to actually use the
DOJ to go after white-collar and anti-trust crimes!

Bernie couldn't and doesn't even stand up to his own party as is evidenced by
it's corruption in the 2016 election. What makes anyone think he can stand up
against the oligarchs?

------
mrep
For rural areas, with all of the low earth orbit internet constellations being
proposed, I'd rather wait to see how they end up doing rather than massively
investing in laying down a ton of fiber at enormous costs especially when
spacex has already demonstrated speeds of 610 megabits per-second to a flying
airplane [0] and their expected cost is $10 billion [1] which is 1/15th of the
$150 billion dollar plan Bernie is proposing.

[0]: [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-spacex-starlink-
airforce/...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-spacex-starlink-
airforce/musks-satellite-project-testing-encrypted-internet-with-military-
planes-idUSKBN1X12KM)

[1]: [https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2018/05/block-5-spacex-
incre...](https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2018/05/block-5-spacex-increase-
launch-cadence-lower-prices/)

~~~
falcolas
At what latency and upload speeds? Satellite internet has historically been
high latency and ultra-low upload speeds; not an ideal condition for internet.
Sure, if you have no other option, satellite will work, but fiber will blow it
out of the water.

~~~
dacohenii
Existing satellite ISPs have their satellites stationed in geosynchronous
orbit, which is like 35,000 km above sea level. This allows them to send up
fewer satellites, since they have a line of sight to more of the Earth's
surface. However, that distance that results in those high propagation delays.

SpaceX (et al) have a different strategy. They are instead sending satellites
to Low Earth Orbit, so they'll be about 500 km above sea level. As a result,
the propagation delay will not be nearly as bad. Perhaps under 50 ms, compared
to the 600 ms I've seen on geosynchronous satellite internet.

At that low altitude, you need a lot more satellites (because each satellite
can only "see" a small-ish area of the earth), so they need to send a swarm of
those satellites. This is now possible because satellites are much smaller and
cheaper than they used to be.

Will fiber blow it out of the water? Yes. Will The phone company run a fiber
line out to my house for less than thousands of dollars? No. Would they do it
if there's some competition from above? Maybe so.

------
deweller
I don't know much about Bernie Sanders.

Where does he propose to get the funding for projects like this?

~~~
black_puppydog
_cough_ progressive income tax _cough_

seriously though. over the last few decades, economies around the globe have
taken tax load off the bigger shoulders, and now the argument against any
progressive agenda is "how would you ever finance this?"

Not that it's a generally bad question to ask, but I find it quite remarkable
how deeply ingrained the notion is that you can't simply raise funds as a
government, and how much that limits the (perceived, and by extension
practical) agency of a government and "the people".

~~~
JasonFruit
I find it quite remarkable how deeply ingrained the notion is that limiting
the agency of government limits "the people".

Government isn't the only way people can get things done, and I think we
should be resentful (and suspicious) of the argument that to fund and
accomplish large tasks, we need to hold a gun to the heads of the people. Are
we really so incapable of cooperation that we need tax men, followed by armed
police, to ensure that businesses serve the customers who pay them? Just like
Sears & Roebuck and Wells Fargo worked to bring good things from the cities to
rural America, this situation could be resolved by private enterprise. I
believe we would be farther along without government attempts to regulate the
industry that have impeded its progress.

~~~
jimbokun
> Are we really so incapable of cooperation that we need tax men, followed by
> armed police, to ensure that businesses serve the customers who pay them?

Empirically, the answer seems to "yes", at least in the USA.

Hospitals and insurance companies, higher education, private prisons, private
companies operating water systems, drug companies, local internet monopolies,
all seem to have a business model of stepping right up to the line of outright
defrauding their customers, occasionally crossing that line, and constantly
finding ways to avoid competing with each other and extracting more money from
their customers for worse quality and service.

We have given the "free market" plenty of opportunities to provide improving
quality at lower prices (the mantra of capitalist ideology), but in many of
the most important markets, it has completely failed.

~~~
JasonFruit
I'd like to point out that the industries you enumerate as serving the
customers the worst are the most highly regulated. Is it possible that
government intervention contributes to their poor quality and high prices?

~~~
jimbokun
Can you draw plausible cause and effect lines from regulations to lower
quality and higher costs? (If it's higher costs enforcing higher quality,
arguably the regulations are working as desired.)

Are there examples of countries with high quality outcomes and low costs where
those industries are deregulated?

I would add the Republican party in the US is so incompetent and
dysfunctional, they are unable to create concrete policy proposals or pass
legislation, even when they had full control of the federal government. What
concrete steps did they take to fix fundamentally broken industries like
health care and higher education?

So I find myself drawn to Democrats like Bernie and Warren, at least they have
plans to address these issues, and the status quo is unacceptable.

~~~
JasonFruit
First, I'm completely in agreement on the Republican party. Both the main
parties are a disaster, and their competition is stunted and ineffective. Part
of that is because the two main parties are given all sorts of regulatory
advantages by state and federal governments, and their competition is unfairly
hobbled by the same. The favored parties' competitive abilities atrophy, and
their competition cannot fully develop.

An analogous situation arises in business. When the government regulates
quality and cost, it leaves businesses no natural path to profitability, so to
allow them to survive, it must also interfere in competition, with subsidies,
tariffs, and other measures, up to and including enforced monopoly. That keeps
the natural economic processes that reward good quality and low price from
operating --- the favored businesses cannot be displaced by their competition,
and the effect of consumer dissatisfaction is blunted --- and provides the
perverse incentives that create the problems you perceive in industry (and
politics).

------
chadmeister
Finally! Why is he the only candidate willing to talk about this? Bring back
net neutrality while you're at it!

~~~
blg9
"bring back"? honest question: where are you seeing that net neutrality is
missing today?

~~~
shkkmo
Legally protected status? The current removal of that legal protection is
currently being fought in courts, once that gets cleared expect the minor
violations that we have now to be expanded rapidly.

------
jandrese
It's like he's trying to get no airtime at all on the networks owned by said
cable titans.

~~~
kevingadd
Given how the media historically treats left-leaning candidates and
politicians, it's not necessarily a good idea to try and avoid ideas they
dislike

------
mrandish
Regulation can be necessary for some industries and contexts but, generally
speaking, broadband is one market that will benefit consumers more with less
government restriction.

The issues we currently have with so many areas having only one or two
providers are a legacy hangover from earlier federal regulation of phone
companies and broadcasters along with municipal intervention where cities
granted an exclusive franchise to only one cable co. With disruptive new
delivery systems from balloons and drones to LEO satellite constellations
about to come online, now is not the time to be mandating pricing or
offerings.

------
KoftaBob
Between the entry of the big mobile carriers into home internet with 4g/5g,
and new lower latency satellite internet providers like Starlink, the
landscape is about to become dramatically more competitive.

4G coverage in rural areas varies widely, but satellite internet is
everywhere, and the existing ISPs will have to improve if they want to keep
those customers.

You'll theoretically have a smaller town go from having 1 traditional ISP to
having that plus Verizon, ATT, Tmobile/Sprint, Starlink, and any other sat
providers. That's a 5x increase of options.

------
RickJWagner
I live in a rural area, so I'm all for it.

But if I lived in a metro area, I wouldn't like the idea of paying taxes so
somebody out in the sticks gets high-speed internet.

I'll feel a little guilty if something like this comes to pass. But I bet
it'll pass quickly. :)

------
randyrand
Isn't broadband effectively defined as above the slowest 10% of internet
users? Or rather, it gets redefined every few years so that it is effectively
that.

------
sol_remmy2
This is going to create a public internet free for everyone to use. But will
hate speech be banned from this public-option internet? Sanders is going to
spend 150b on this...I don't want Russian hackers and Neo Nazis benefit from
the public's money

------
datashow
> The plan would also require service providers to offer a “basic” broadband
> plan at an “affordable price.”

This really connects to socialism. China used to have "Price Bureau" (物价局). It
sounds like Sanders is calling for one in the U.S.

Also, if "affordable price" policy is needed for internet, why not needed for
more basic stuff like food and medicine?

Maybe food is too expensive for the poor because there is no Price Examination
Department (物价检查所) to check price in grocery stores?

~~~
gizmo686
Sanders litterally wrote the damn bill for free-at-use medical coverage.

Current policy already has mechanisms (broken though they may be) to provide
affordable medicine to people, ranging from government provided medicaid to
income based discounts on drugs.

Current policy provides subsidized food to everyone in the country (and
outside of the country, which is something of a sticking point on trade
negotiations). We additionally provide further subsidies on a need based basis
through the SNAP program (aka, food stamps).

Prices are already highly regulated for other utilities like electric and
water (although, I am not sure what regulationd exist at the federsl level
here)

EDIT: also, China is a rapidly growing economy that has overall had very
succesfull policies. We should not blindly copy what they do, but "China did
it" is not a convincing arguement.

~~~
datashow
China did it in old days, gave it up under market economy.

Also subsidiaries are different from price control.

------
bluecalm
I think this is what left/social leaning politicians should focus on. "Rich
people bad" rhetoric of which Sanders is guilty as well gets old fast. Instead
why not say: it shouldn't be possible to get rich by exploiting a monopoly or
a resource that belongs to everyone (like natural resources). Focus on
regulating away ways to get wealth by what many people from all sides of
political spectrum consider unfair and your will get traction. Focus on "tax
the guy 70% because he makes a lot of money" and you will be forever
economically illiterate old man raging at the sky.

------
archie2
The constitution does not give the government the power to appropriate funds
for infrastructure. But hey, that never stopped power hungry megalonmaniacs
from wasting tax payer dollars.

~~~
LarryDarrell
The Constitution literally has a Postal Clause for the expressed purpose of
creating interstate communication through "Postal Roads". Despite their small-
government bona-fides, a reliable communication network was something so
important they thought fit to put it right in there from the very beginning.

~~~
archie2
The Supreme Court has ruled that the postal clause is applies only to the post
office.

~~~
LarryDarrell
So we'll just have the Post Office run a national ISP then.

~~~
archie2
The constitution ONLY enumerates the power to the federal government to
establish post offices and post roads. Period. Thomas Jefferson didn't even
want a postal clause in the constitution to begin with because he thought it
would be a massive waste of money. Spoiler: he was right.

If Bernie Sanders wants to make such a vast proposal he should do it the legal
way and _propose a constitutional amendment_. Of course, he knows that will
never happen so he'll just unconstitutionally let congress force it through if
he wants.

Of course, it's all talk now because he's not the president.

If people want government high speed internet so bad they should be lobbying
their STATE government because that is where the power in the constitution
lies.

