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A little light Googling reveals 35-ish percent of the 180,000 inhabitants of Chattanooga customers of the municipal broadband. That's 63,000 people.
The system cost $220,000,000 to install. $111,000,000 of it is federal money.
So, the government installs broadband at a cost of $3,492 per user and you call it a success.
A little light Googling reveals 35-ish percent of the 180,000 inhabitants of Chattanooga customers of the municipal broadband. That's 63,000 people.
The system cost $220,000,000 to install. $111,000,000 of it is federal money.
Not really a fair comparison. Comcast already had the majority of its infrastructure in place, paid for by decades of providing cable TV service as a de-facto monopoly. The city of Chattanooga would have been starting from scratch.
Also, everyone knows that Federal money is free money.
In keeping with the theme of public works vs. private enterprise when it comes to the delivery of utilities (which broadcast is increasingly considered to be), I humbly submit the topic of the Tennessee Valley Authority.
A little light Googling reveals 35-ish percent of the 180,000 inhabitants of Chattanooga customers of the municipal broadband. That's 63,000 people.
The system cost $220,000,000 to install. $111,000,000 of it is federal money.
So, the government installs broadband at a cost of $3,492 per user and you call it a success.
Edit: looks like they are over 100,000 subscribers now. So $2,200 per subscriber. And they wonder why private industry didn't want to do it.
Originally Posted by Joe Perez
Not really a fair comparison. Comcast already had the majority of its infrastructure in place, paid for by decades of providing cable TV service as a de-facto monopoly. The city of Chattanooga would have been starting from scratch.
It also ignores that people still have to pay a monthly fee to use the service, to pay back the $169,000,000 loan that was taking out by the EPB to help pay for it.
What specifically about the TVA would you like to discuss?
What specifically about the TVA would you like to discuss?
Well, two things.
The first seems rather obvious. In the early part of the 20th century, that part of the US from which my stepfather* hails was in utter poverty. No electricity, shitty farming techniques, etc. Anti-statists would posit that the private sector would have seen this as an opportunity. That obviously didn't happen. Fortunately**, a democratic president decided to spend a huge amount of public money on a set of works whose name is now being co-opted by a socialist***, and as a result, people living in Tennessee / Alabama / Mississippi / Kentucky / Georgia / etc. suddenly had access to electricity and modern agricultural techniques and farming equipment, and didn't have to worry about dying from starvation and malaria quite as much.
Huge plus for the folks down in the Bible Belt, but at a great cost**** to everyone else paying the taxes to drive it.
So that drives an interesting philosophical / moral question. After the private sector refuses to serve a need which it deems undesirable, is it good for public works to serve that need?
* = disclaimer: my very white mother***** from the Appalachian region married a hillbilly from Tennessee after she divorced my father, so Thanksgiving and Christmas are kind of weird now, since we still do a lot of traditional Latin / Caribbean cuisine, and yet every single person at the table aside from my sister, myself, and my niece are gringos.
** = from the point of view of the hillbillies, I don't mean this as a broad generalization of merit.
*** = You know who I mean. The one who is pretty damn hot until she opens her mouth.
**** = aside from the fact that agricultural output suddenly skyrocketed, which was about the time that the concept of the modern grocery store emerged in the US.
***** = And yet I feel that she deserves honorary hispanic status, as she's basically what would have happened if Julia Child had embraced the cuisine of Spain rather than France. Also somewhat shorter, and alive.
The second this is just this amusing picture which I came across recently:
Regarding electricity, the poor impoverished South, and the need for the federal government to come save everybody from themselves, Lloyd Shoals Dam was built in 1910 using private money to produce electricity for the entire city of Macon Georgia. It is located 44 miles Southeast of Atlanta. A couple of hours further south, the dam on the Flint River in rural South Georgia in 1925 formed Lake Blackshear and was built by Crisp County as a local project with no state or federal money. They then sold electricity throughout many surrounding counties. The excess Revenue led to many quality of life improvements for residents within the county.
I heard an anecdote that the hometown of Nikola Tesla didn't get electricity until 1990 or threreabout.
This was told to me by my good friend who is of Croatian ancestry after being told to him by his father. I didn't fact check this. It could be fake news. But I happened to enjoy the irony and didn't want to spoil it by seeking the truth.
I mean AOC says it's OK to be morally right than be totally truthful, right? Carry on.
Regarding electricity, the poor impoverished South, and the need for the federal government to come save everybody from themselves, Lloyd Shoals Dam was built in 1910 using private money to produce electricity for the entire city of Macon Georgia. It is located 44 miles Southeast of Atlanta. A couple of hours further south, the dam on the Flint River in rural South Georgia in 1925 formed Lake Blackshear and was built by Crisp County as a local project with no state or federal money.
So, two rural cities per 15 years electrified with private funds.
So, two rural cities per 15 years electrified with private funds.
Just the last two lakes I put my boat in, so they were easy examples. Did the TVA build dams? Yes. Would many or most have been built anyway? Arguably, yes. Did the federal money speed up the inevitable? Probably. Does it make it right? Probably not if constitutionally weighed.
By the mid 1930s, 9 out of 10 rural homes in America were still without electricity. The problem was a simple matter of economics. Building power lines across the sparsely populated rural areas would not be cheap, and there would be little revenue in return. The existing power companies were not interested in serving areas where they could not forsee a profit.
On May 11, 1935, President Franklin Roosevelt signed an executive order which created the Rural Electrification Administration. The purpose of REA was to bring affordable electricity to rural America by providing low-interest loans for the construction of generating facilities and transmission and distribution lines. Still, the large power companies showed no interest in serving America's vast rural areas. It soon became clear that it would be the farmers themselves who would make the rural electrification program work. By forming non-profit cooperatives and applying for REA loans, the people of rural America would often get the job done.
The roots of Snapping Shoals EMC began developing with the creation of Snapping Shoals Power and Light Company on June 29, 1936. The organizers were 5 area men who received a loan of $90,000 to construct 90 miles of lines for serving 270 consumers in Rockdale, Newton and Henry counties. The original headquarters was located at Snapping Shoals, an area on the South River between Newton and Henry counties, where a small electric generating facility was located. The first power lines were energized in November 1937.
I have personal experience with this corporation as well.
Does it make it right? Probably not if constitutionally weighed.
Devil's advocate:
"The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States"
Does providing electrification, irrigation, and agricultural education to farmers in the rural south, in order to elevate their standard of living to parity with those in urban areas, and also to increase the food supply to the rest of the country, qualify as providing for the general welfare of the United States?
"The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States"
Does providing electrification, irrigation, and agricultural education to farmers in the rural south, in order to elevate their standard of living to parity with those in urban areas, and also to increase the food supply to the rest of the country, qualify as providing for the general welfare of the United States?
Same argument could be proffered for federally run utilities of every type, including sewer, interwebz, and garbage collection. The general welfare clause has often run afoul of the tenth amendment in arguments past. One could argue farming and production of motor vehicles profit the general welfare as well.
Same argument could be proffered for federally run utilities of every type, including sewer, interwebz, and garbage collection.
That was the whole point of my positing the argument: to ask that critical thought be applied with regard to the scope of the general welfare clause, much as a great deal of agony is presently being applied to the breadth of the first and second amendments today.
Originally Posted by sixshooter
The general welfare clause has often run afoul of the third amendment in arguments past.
???
How is quartering soldiers in private homes related to farming, other than in the obvious sense that both are things which have taken place at various times in the US' history?
Originally Posted by sixshooter
One could argue farming and production of motor vehicles profit the general welfare as well.
I do, in fact, argue that exact thing. These activities create employment, increase the velocity of money, contribute to net-credit trade balances with foreign nations, etc. The same goes for logging, mining, metal refining, film production, fishing, homebuilding, etc.
How many things qualify as contributing to the general welfare? I honestly don't know. But I'm pretty sure it's more than six.
The general welfare clause is probably the most ambiguous in the document. It is almost as badly abused as the clause allowing the regulation of interstate commerce.
Do I discern that moderators can EDIT a post without the post showing that it was edited? Is that the famous Rainbow Unicorn I have heard so much about?
Haha. Sadly, no. I merely edited the quotation while responding to Six inline with my own post, much as I did with your quote above (re: Rainbow Unicorn.) Eg: I am synthesizing a strawman fallacy. The original post remains unaltered, but apparently the intended humorous effect worked better than I'd intended.
Go back and look at post #14791. Six did, in fact, type (well, speak), tenth. I simply mis-quoted him, using the same sort of underhanded tactics that the mainstream political extremists consider normal. (Mis-quote your opponent, then violently attack the mis-quotation, air it in the press, etc. The same rules apply as with false rape allegations.)
EDIT: this was the inspiration for the Third Amendment joke:
EDIT 2: I'm actually a little bit saddened by the fact that nobody noticed such an obvious falsification on my part. I'd kind of hoped that this would be low-hanging fruit...
Let's clear something up right at the start: I'm Hispanic. I'm fairly wealthy. I live on the North Side of Chicago. And there is no way I'm going anywhere near that river. Not because it's dank, it's just cold as ****, and I prefer that my ********* not contract all the way into my gall bladder.
@Braineack , y'all down there in Baltimond, East Virginia need to tell your newspapermen to stick to **** they know, like how the President is literally Hitler. They ain't got **** on how our rivers work up here in employmentville.
06-19-2019, 09:12 AM
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