Ukraine

I appreciate the discussion!

I would say I’m actually just as paranoid. I just trust a government body in a democracy more than I trust a private for profit company in a democracy. If we don’t have a functioning democracy, then I don’t think it matters if it’s a private corporation or a government entity, because either way the government will enforce it’s whims on the utility (eg, surveillance and censoring).

So my argument is, while we still have a democracy we should expand public utilities. They’re not perfect, but I think socially more responsible, more auditable, than private companies who are not motivated by even a loose public good mandate. So given the choice between municipalizing or federalizing internet utilities and a private company, I’ll choose a public good utility every single time. I don’t worry about the USPS reading my mail as a standard of operation, but I know for a fact that a private company would try everything it could to open up that mail and take a peak (eg, you have to opt out of “prioritized mail screening” or something, and then you’d get degraded service). I know this, because private ISPs already try to packet sniff everything you do online and throttle select services.

So I guess my argument is, fear of losing democracy isn’t a good reason to oppose public utilities and social programs, because the realized harm of oligarchic fascism will be the same regardless if it’s a private or public entity (in fact, ironically, fascists will make it a “public entity” and then give its assets and control to whoever the oligarch for that “utility” will be). So since while we have a democracy, public utilities serviced by governments are better, and the results are the same regardless under fascism, we should instead try to bolster public utilities all the more while we can.

To the original suggestion in this thread, taking over a utility like space provided internet, which uses the public owned goods of spectrum and orbit paths, is actually a better benefit to consumers in this case, and honestly one we should support. What’s the alternative? Letting a fascist man baby run it how he sees fit? We already have that. If it’s a government service and our government is taken over by fascists, we’d still have that. But while we have a democracy, let us use it.