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from the mama-don't-allow-no-competition-'round-here dept.
TechDirt reports
Wilson, North Carolina's Greenlight [publicly-owned ISP], has had to disconnect one neighboring town or face violating state law. With state leaders tone deaf to the problem of letting incumbent ISPs write such laws, and the FCC flummoxed [by a federal court] in its attempt to help, about 200 home Internet customers in [the town of] Pinetops will thus lose access to gigabit broadband service as of October 28
[...] Greenlight's fiber network provides speeds of 40Mbps to 1Gbps at prices ranging from $40 to $100 a month, service that's unheard of from any of the regional incumbent providers (AT&T, CenturyLink, Time Warner Cable) that lobbied for the protectionist law. Previously, the community of Pinetops only had access to sluggish DSL Service from CenturyLink.
Related:
Muni ISP forced to shut off fiber-to-the-home Internet after court ruling (Ars Technica)
Previous: Appeals Court Rules the FCC Cannot Override State Laws Banning Municipal ISPs
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday September 21 2016, @12:23AM
I like the *idea* of city states, but they don't work well in a civilization that has rapid transportation and communication.
A possible idea would be to have multiple levels of government from somewhere below city sized to national, and for each level to only be able to regulate the two or three levels immediately below it. But this needs to be combined with some maximum length for any law, and some maximum number of laws per level of government, and some sort of test for decidability in each law (as well as a test of intelligibility).
Say no level of government should be able to regulate more than 512 instances of government (with people counting as a basic level of government. And each level of government having its composition determined by choices from the level immediately below it. So a nation would be limited to 512 regions (but if it's got that many regions, the national government cant's control any sub-region governments). And the region would be limited to 512 states, and the state to 512 counties, and the counties to 512 districts, and the districts to 512 cities, and the cities to 512 boroughs. But if a level of government instead of having 512 sub-governmental units, had 256, then it could have (half the limit on the number of laws) laws pertaining to the sub-level.
I dunno. That's not quite right, but it shows promise if it were worked on a bit. Perhaps each level should be able to impose n laws on it's immediate sub-governments, and sqrt(n) laws on their sub governments, and n^-3 laws on the sub-sub governments, and n^-4 on the sub-sub-sub-gov...etc.
The real bone in the matter, though, is how to hold the people with power responsible for their exercise of that power.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Wednesday September 21 2016, @01:09AM
I like the *idea* of city states, but they don't work well in a civilization that has rapid transportation and communication.
I don't see why not. If anything I'd expect those factors to make it easier for non-monolithic entities to interact with each other. Rightly or wrongly, I model the rise of large governments as being a matter of military might.
A possible idea would be to have multiple levels of government from somewhere below city sized to national, and for each level to only be able to regulate the two or three levels immediately below it.
To me this sentence and the details that follow it seem to argue for how a government ought to be structured, but not how big the overall structure should be. Are you imagining that the highest level of this fractal government would be a one world government, or are you thinking of dividing existing federal governments into this structure, or perhaps establishing a maximum depth that a tree of governments can reach before splitting entirely?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 21 2016, @05:26AM
Singapore
Possession of chewing gum is a crime there.
...and $DEITY help you if you get caught in possession of a firearm or ammunition--even if that's part of an inert piece of jewelry.
google.com/search?q=intitle:Singapore+"a.single.bullet.in.your.luggage" [1] [archive.li]
[1] The S/N comments engine is still NEEDLESSLY stripping %22 out of hyperlinks.
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