[just2n]

I think trust was intended, from the context. It's not a monopoly, it's an oligopoly.

But it's also a bit wrong to argue that capitalism is at fault here. It appears it's rather the rampant and ubiquitous corruption, greed, and incompetence of government at every level, coupled with the fact that $$ == speech in the USA.

This isn't going to change into a publicly-run publicly-funded enterprise anytime soon, so our best bet is a company that has yet to be wholly consumed by evil (Google, in this case, though they're on the fast track to it by trading our privacy for money from advertisers). I'd be OK with a country-wide investment to help Google deploy Fiber as quickly as possible, but I'd want some kind of guarantee that at some point the entire infrastructure would revert to public control, just to prevent Comcast 2.0 from forming. It would be rather funny to see a kickstarter hit $11B, too.

[thatswrong0]

> but I'd want some kind of guarantee that at some point the entire infrastructure would revert to public control, just to prevent Comcast 2.0 from forming.

You want to stop a monopoly from forming... by creating a government-run monopoly. And you trust the government to be in complete control of the internet. Yet you agree that the government is corrupt, greedy, and incompetent. I don't understand in the least.

[just2n]

I'm not proposing a government-run monopoly. I'm proposing Google be publicly funded up front to take advantage of the current legal system to create a monopoly by sustaining funding that gives it a supreme advantage over everyone else (we give them money) but at the cost that the infrastructure built has to become publicly owned (by the people, not by a government) after some period of time.

No government is involved here. We'd be handing Google the funds to demolish any and all competition with an agreement that they do NOT create a monopoly.

Both local and federal government have colluded to create the trust of service providers that exists today. Public funds paid to build much of the existing infrastructure, then exclusive control over that infrastructure has been granted by local governments. That's fine within a state, but Comcast for example, is operating nationally, so the federal government (in particular the FCC) has permitted them to acquire some absurd 70%+ of all small service providers and obtain these local monopolies all over the country. We can't trust the government to do the right thing in this space, since even though every wireless provider is colluding to keep prices fixed, and every consumer-facing ISP is colluding to keep prices fixed, there has yet to be any investigation into trusts. It's extremely obvious that the $50/mo being required by every single competing company when the same service is $8/mo anywhere else in the world is a fixed price. All of them should be fined some $50B each and/or dismantled.

But we have an opportunity here: Google could completely destroy their business. All of them. Entirely. We (and Google) understand that their services are overpriced in excess of 500%+ of the actual cost and that they don't actually invest more than ~5-10% of their profits in improving the infrastructure. This leaves a LOT of room for a company with nearly unlimited funding to step in and completely dominate. None of these companies will offer you 1gbps, not even for $500/mo. So if Google, cooperating with the citizens of the US at large, were to agree to build this infrastructure, demolish the entire ISP space, and then turn over everything at some point, I'd be willing to pay 100% of my disposable income, and I'm sure I'm not alone. The $11B it would cost (probably closer to $100B, realistically) would be entirely worth killing the likes of Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, Time Warner, Rogers, Sprint, etc.

We can't really win against lobbyists and every congressperson being guaranteed a job paying in excess of $800k/yr when they retire for doing what big interests want. We can win, however, by abusing the very system they put in place, by massively funding a single corporation. The problem with their logic is that they assume they will continue to have the most money to throw around. No company in existence, in the world, can compete with even 3% of our GDP. None. So if we really want to destroy the massive corruption that exists, we just have to commit the resources necessary. No government required, as the corruption has already provided the framework.