I jumped from comcast (whatever, 200 up/20 down or similiar) to 1Gbps symmetrical 4 years ago and now 10Gbps symmetrical. For less than half of what Comcast charges, with a local ISP (Sonic). It just makes you realize how much money is being funneled directly into shareholder pockets (and to lobbyists and congresscritters and local regulators). And then they brag about throwing $100k at some local schools or something.
Gotta make sure those g'ddamned pirates don't have enough bandwidth to seed their beloved cable-network-owned TV shows and movies, at the expense of everyone else who could benefit from faster uplink speeds. ;)
> why would people work hard without personal upside?
Define "personal upside" because people work hard all the time absent a path to power, or even material benefit! Come to think of it, why do people have children?
Humans are social animals and they are deeply moved to work extremely hard for the sake of love, dignity, and respect alone. Contrary to the nonsense picture you paint, humans only lose touch with such desires in the face of hopelessness to realize them.
> Humans are social animals and they are deeply moved to work extremely hard for the sake of love, dignity, and respect alone. Contrary to the nonsense picture you paint, humans only lose touch with such desires in the face of hopelessness to realize them.
This is bullshit, and obviously so. Humans are by nature lazy. If you give people food and comfort, they will work the barest minimum they can to not be bored, and practically speaking, they'll pick an unproductive hobby (like gaming or idle art) instead of the stuff that society needs to function.
People have kids because having a kid is a deeply rewarding experience. Very few people are going to volunteer to work in mines, maintain sewer systems, or farm for other people to eat.
I believe you are being sincere, which saddens me greatly. I hope one day you find your way to a community where the common good is celebrated rather than denigrated. I can only assume that it is a lack of experience that leads you to believe that the world must be so and cannot be otherwise.
If the phone line is obligatory it’s just a way of restructuring your bill to make the headline rate look lower. (I’ve not paid for a landline for 15 years.) I’d love to use Sonic but they stopped building out the street next to me.
The bill is itemized, the voice line is $10 and the taxes on the voice line is $15.
If Sonic likes their extra $10 of margin, that's fine, but I hate paying taxes on a service I don't even want! Keep the money but give me an option to decline the voice service.
It's wild to me how you people are like "I don't mind if private business fucks me up the ass a bit but gash dang if that gubmint so much as kisses me on the cheek I'm gonna lose my shit".
If we could harness energy from cognitive dissonance, this site could power us-east-1. To be fair though, I've only seen a bit of masked capitalism defense here, and no one outright trashing municipal/coop options. I'm oddly optimistic lately, as the state of things continue, some consciousness seems to be becoming inevitable.
