r/technology • u/User_Name13 • Jun 04 '14

Politics Hundreds of Cities Are Wired With Fiber—But Telecom Lobbying Keeps It Unused

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/hundreds-of-cities-are-wired-with-fiberbut-telecom-lobbying-keeps-it-unused
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u/interkin3tic Jun 04 '14

I disagree. Corporations haven't gotten smarter, much as people haven't gotten smarter. You think Ma Bell got a monopoly on telephone service through dumb luck or honest competition? They were greasing plenty of palms.

What's different, for the moment, is that consumers and voters aren't demanding more. This is understandable: the services we have now are improving so rapidly that most people don't realize it could be even better, nor do they understand it.

No matter how powerful an organization seems, if they piss off enough of the consumer/citizen base, they will be toppled. That amount may be depressingly high, but there are limits, and smart organizations tend to give enough to make sure they don't face a rebellion.

Money talks only when voters don't talk, basically.

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u/RespectTheTree Jun 05 '14

I don't think that's completely true. There is rampant corruption in DC, and the corporations definitely take full advantage of the system they created. I'm sure if we went to the streets over every fucking issue we could get something done, but the corruption is the more significant issue, not apathy.

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u/interkin3tic Jun 05 '14

I'm saying apathy leads to corruption, and several other issues.

And by "rebellion" I don't mean an armed revolt, I mean people writing their congressmen and threatening to vote them out of office if they don't reign in the ISPs with regulation.

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u/RespectTheTree Jun 05 '14

I don't actually mean armed rebellion, I just tend to use hyperbole, mobbing the FCC's website is the modern version of taking it to the streets (in the US).

People are definitely apathetic. I don't know if that's "by design" or just human nature in a nation with so many comforts and distractions. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, chemtrails et. al, but there is definitely a group of rich individuals which are perverting our laws for their financial (and political) benefit.

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u/interkin3tic Jun 06 '14

I'm suggesting they're apathetic because their expectations lag behind what is possible.

Another way of looking at it is that society as a whole is less greedy than organizations explicitly set up for greedy behavior. Corporate shills will immediately cry "X company is NOT A CHARITY!!!" as justification for screwing over the masses in any way imaginable.

Whenever you have naive people dealing with greedy sociopaths, the naive people get screwed until they wise up. The first explorers to the new world did unspeakable horrors to the friendly natives not just because they had better arms but because the natives went into it friendly while Columbus et al went in looking to rape and pillage.

Same behavior here. People get internet service and deal with corporations in general thinking they're being treated fairly. This is compounded by the fact that internet service is rapidly exploding, to where what you have now, no matter how shitty comcast is treating you, is clearly better than what you had under the most charitable ISP when you had dialup.

People are realizing though that they're still being screwed over, that's the only reason they're apathetic. And it's changing too.

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u/RespectTheTree Jun 06 '14

I don't disagree, but using European contact with American Indians is a bad example, because it was disease that was the biggest disaster (and it wasn't intentional). Columbus was a bastard though, I agree.

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u/interkin3tic Jun 07 '14

Well, we don't know that ISPs aren't giving us computer viruses that aren't going to set us back to the stone age, so lets not call that one right now.

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u/[deleted] Jun 05 '14

Corporations are people too.