[nickff]

The real issue isn't fairness, it's outcome. The problem with municipal ISPs is that they are very likely to end up providing worse service and being more expensive than private options, but hiding the true cost by using tax money to subsidize the operation. Thus, you end up with a very expensive, low quality option that makes alternatives non-viable (as most people won't be willing to pay for the true cost of the service on top of all the taxes being used to pay for the municipal one).

[neutronicus]

Plenty of people send their kids to private school

[nickff]

Yes, you're right that the 'public option' is unlikely to destroy all the private ones, though internet provision has better economies of density (related to scale) than schooling. I would guess that the effect on private providers will be more extreme in this context, i.e. only the highest tiers of internet service will be available privately, likely to businesses in dense areas.

[vkou]

> The problem with municipal ISPs is that they are very likely to end up providing worse service and being more expensive than private options, but hiding the true cost by using tax money to subsidize the operation.

The private sector has pretty conclusively proven that in the absence of municipal competition, their offerings are expensive, and provide terrible service.

In fact, it has proven it so conclusively that people are clamoring for a public alternative.

There is zero reason to oppose unsubsidized, zero-margin municipal broadband.

There are some reasons to oppose subsidized, negative-margin municipal broadband, but if >50% of the electorate supports it, that's a pretty strong signal that its better than the private alternatives.

[nickff]

Well, there are less reasons to oppose unsubsidized, zero-margin municipal broadband, one of which is the likely scope creep and eventual subsidy. That said, I would be very interested to see it would work out.

50%+1 of the population voting for something doesn't make it good; the public overwhelmingly supports farm subsidies, and those are terrible.

[vkou]

> likely scope creep and eventual subsidy

The same can be said about private providers. Even if they temporarily lower rates and improve service in your area, to prevent entry from competitors, they will ratchet the rates up, and start cutting corners on customer service as soon as they no longer feel threatened. This is not a theoretical concern - this has happened over and over and over again, across the country.

> Farm subsidies

That's not a great comparison.

1. Farm subsidies are terrible for economic efficiency, but fantastic for economic and political resiliency. [1] Lack of bread very quickly leads to regime change. It's why every single country in the world subsidizes their agriculture and encourages overproduction.

2. The reason farm subsidies exist is not because 50%+1 of the public supports them. The reason farm subsidies exist is because the federal government was designed to give excessive amounts of political power to rural states. This means that something supported by ~20% of the public can easily turn into national policy.

3. Municipal referendums are nothing like it - they are direct democracy.

4. Municipal governments are not direct democracy, but they do not have multiple layers, or were designed to give disproportionate amounts of political power to regional minority groups. What a municipal government wants is a lot closer to the pulse of their constituents.

[1] Efficiency (which is what marketeers want) is often at odds with resiliency (which is what anyone looking past the next quarter's financials wants). Remember the start of the COVID pandemic when all of our incredibly efficient just-in-time global supply chains went to hell? Efficient systems have no built-in slack to absorb temporary shocks. When it comes to food supplies, a temporary shock can leave us with millions of emaciated corpses.

[nickff]

Farm subsidies are very popular; public choice is a real thing, but not the cause for farm subsidies.[1] Steel tariffs are similar.

I am not a democratic fundamentalist. This is to say that I don't value democracy as an ends; it is a valuable means, but saying that something is democratic doesn't change my view on the policy. I don't care how direct it is.

[1] https://www.politico.com/story/2018/07/30/poll-indicates-som...

[vkou]

It is correct to say that just because a decision was reached democratically, it does not mean it was a good decision.

But it is also correct to say that when a when a decision was reached democratically, it is generally speaking, not the business of anyone outside that group to second-guess it.

There's a very high bar that you have to clear in order to tell some other group of people what they can't spend their communal funds on.