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The conservative small government movement has gained momentum based on the principle that decisions are best made at a local level, because people know what they want better than the federal government does. So why is a contingent of small government-minded congressional representatives trying to dick over local governments when it comes to high-speed internet access?
I live in Chattanooga. I have their gigabit internet. It is great, but it could be better officially let us run servers, officially let us run open wifi ala openwireless.org (I do it anyway, but if they come knocking I'll have to turn it off), even better would be if they let other ISPs run on top of their fiber plant and compete with each other. Still, it is at least as good as google fiber for the same price or less (except for no $300 flat-fee low-bandwidth option).
[Editor's Note] For the non-Americans in our readership, this appears to be nothing more than the usual Rep/Dem disagreement depending on which 'big business' funded the most to the appropriate campaign coffers. I would have to agree that the pricing seems expensive but, as we know, that is caused more by the regional monopolies than the actual cost of provision.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 24 2014, @07:36PM
> It's the federal government that says things like I can't kill people.
No, I'm pretty sure that murder is only a federal crime in specific circumstances.
Meanwhile, to address your general point, you can't legislate good governance. But you can make it harder to perform good governance. One thing that makes it harder is to put distance between the people making the decisions and the people who have to live with those decisions. It doesn't make good governance impossible and the opposite certainly doesn't guarantee good governance either. But in general, the less communication between the two groups, the harder it is to do representative government.