[20yrs_no_equity]

So long as there are levers of control, people will attempt to exploit them. The government at every level, should have no power to prohibit entities, whether government or not, from providing internet service.

Freedom of transaction is a basic human right (whether the Bill of Rights talks about it or not, read the Preamble to the Bill of Rights and you'll see the Bill of Rights doesn't create rights, according to the Bill of Rights, it creates limitations on government from violating those rights.)

Even if you disagree with the above, the First Amendment is unquestionably part of the constitution and thus this is a violation of freedom of speech (internet is speech.)

[colechristensen]

>The government at every level, should have no power to prohibit entities, whether government or not, from providing internet service.

Sure they should. You're being ridiculous.

The first amendment doesn't mean anyone can do anything because you can pretty easily cast a wide net and classify everything as speech.

I can't freely express myself with a firearm and shoot anybody I don't like.

Likewise, governments can regulate commerce. They're generally doing a pretty bad job when it comes to the Internet in many cases, but it's very much not a first amendment issue.

[20yrs_no_equity]

Wow. It's ridiculous to oppose the government stopping people from getting economic broadband? And you compare it to shooting people with a fire arm?

I knew that the loony left had taken over HN, but this is really around the bend.

This site use to be a place where people believed in the Internet, and believed that people hat a right to communicate.

[ThrustVectoring]

Freedom of transaction is not a basic human right - there are some markets so abhorrent that the correct response is to imprison those who participate in them.

Like, absolute freedom of transaction means that you could participate in assassination markets. It'd even be structured in a way that the buyer could avoid paying for performance - simply make a large payment available for whoever happens to accurately predict the day of death for a certain individual (and make the predictions expensive enough that you basically have to kill them in order for it to be a good idea).

[icebraining]

A slightly more narrower statement of Freedom of transaction would be "if you can do it for free, you may do it for money".

Assassination is illegal by itself, paid or not, so using it as an example just confuses the issue. It's like saying Freedom of Speech is not a basic human right because you can use speech to order someone to be killed.

[pitaj]

What is a basic human right, then? Your argument can be applied to pretty much anything.

[rayiner]

The government (the state of North Carolina) is simply choosing not to go into the Internet business. The municipality is just an organ of the state government. So it's the government telling itself what to do. Why should that not be permitted?