[12804] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: Monopoly, competition, and subsidies
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Draper Kauffman)
Sun May 29 14:49:32 1994
Date: Sat, 28 May 1994 23:24:30 -0500
To: com-priv@psi.com, Marvin Sirbu <ms6b+@ANDREW.CMU.EDU>
From: draperk@io.com (Draper Kauffman)
[Long, irrelevant dissertation on other subsidies deemed necessary in the
U.S. at various times.]
Marvin, the question I raised has nothing whatever to do with the points
you attempted to make. I particularly find the irrelevant sanctimony
annoying. If you REALLY mean to argue that access to the Internet is
somehow as vital to life as access to food or healthcare, your priorities
need re-examining.
As for the post office, I started right out by acknowledging the public
value of universal connectivity. In what way is your little historical
essay on the post office any different from what I said about the phone
system?
In any event, my original question was answered a few days ago by an
exchange of messages on this list, in which some of us discovered for the
first time that the EFF spokespeople are assuming an entirely different
vision of the future, one in which the Internet plays only a peripheral
role. Specifically, they are not advocating "IP# stamps," though what they
had said before was more than a little bit misleading on this score.
*If* their vision of the future turns out to be correct, their arguments
for subsidies *may* also be valid. As things stand now, I find that vision
more than a little bit unlikely. But we shall see.
BTW, you and several others on com-priv seem to have an exaggerated notion
of how pervasive phone subsidies are:
>They also recognize that a model which calls for competition and no
>subsidies to anyone will not provide what the majority of the society
>has deemed the minimal acceptable service to the poorest of the poor, or
>even the average person living on a farm or other costly-to-serve
>location.
My sister-in-law is a good example of "the average person living on a farm
or other costly-to-serve location." She lives in the mountains near
Albuquerque. She is 3 miles from the nearest phone line. It would cost
her $12,000 to get a line strung to her house. She can't afford it, so she
must do without phone service entirely. Where's your fictitious subsidy?
Draper
-- ^
* Draper Kauffman, Ed.D. /=\ email: draperk@io.com *
* 4311 Firestone /(*)\ Illuminati Online, Austin, TX *
* Houston, TX 77035 /=====\ login to IO.COM as "new" or call *
* 713/728-1360 (PM ONLY) /=======\ 512/447-7866 for Internet access *
