rigorousintuition.ca

I just realized I had been sending this story to all sorts of people, but hadn't actually posted it here. How stupid of me.. here's the story:<br>-----------------------------<br><br>Imagine yourself in your neighborhood, in your home. Someone knocks on the door. You peer out and see two people you recognize. One you've met at your local place of worship, and the other you've seen at the grocery store.<br><br>You open the door, invite them in to sit, and they ask you a few questions.<br>Is the water running ok?<br>Is the electricity working?<br>Is the house having any structural problems?<br>Did you visit the doctor? Was it helpful?<br>How are your children (if any)?<br>Do you feel good about the school they go to?<br><br>..and so on. <br><br>So you tell them.. maybe there were a few brownouts last week. Maybe the water is smelling funny. Maybe all is good.<br><br>A few weeks later, you get a call from the Urban Land Committee. It will be your turn to receive a map of the neighborhood, a notebook, and go around asking your neighbors if everything is running smoothly for them.<br><br>When you go around, you discover that the sewer down the street has been clogging up and making the area smell bad in the evenings. Mrs. Smith on the next block cannot afford to fix her leaking roof. You report all your findings to the ULC office. A few days later you see a Water Commission truck and people cleaning out the faulty sewer. There's also a few guys with a ladder in Mrs. Smith's yard. <br><br>You know there isn't a monopoly getting rich. The guy driving the truck lives down the street, in a house a lot like yours. The guy with the shovel lives in a modest apartment downtown. Last year the guys with the ladder were at your house, fixing your roof, for a very reasonable fee.<br><br>There isn't much crime, because if you don't have enough food or clothes or heating fuel there is help. The teenagers aren't bored enough to do graffiti, because they're all too busy with sports and after school activities. There's not much reason to become addicted to alcohol or drugs; counseling is part of everyone's health plan. If you can't afford a big TV to watch the football game, you can go to the community center and watch with your neighbors.. hopefully your friends. <br><br>You know where your tax money is going. It's making sure you and your neighbors have clean water, electricity, and safe streets. Some of it goes to pay for the ULC salaries, but that's ok. They are getting a fair wage to support their families, because their job is just as important as the water commission, the electrical commission, and yours.<br><br>Sound like Utopia? Or at least, a nice place to live?<br>The infrastructure for such a system exists right now, in your town, in your neighborhood. The hard part is convincing your neighbors it's a good idea, then electing a mayor who will implement it.<br>-----------------------------<br><br>Most of this is directly from the ideas Hugo Chavez is currently implementing. <br>Look it up <!--EZCODE EMOTICON START :) --><img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/smile.gif ALT=":)"><!--EZCODE EMOTICON END--> <p></p><i></i>

Sounds... revolutionary. When corporations aren't getting rich, they're not happy. And when the corporatocracy isn't happy, the media (past of Them) isn't happy. And when the media isn't happy, they make sure the people aren't happy...<br><br>Maybe I should move to Venezuela. My Spanish isn't too bad... --MaryK <p></p><i></i>

There's not much in Venezuela worth exploiting except the oil, so that gives Chavez some room to work in. But the American "consumer" is to giant corporations as aphids are to ants. They expect the right to come around and milk us regularly, and throw hissy-fits if they're denied.<br><br>See, for example, this article on Google's proposal to provide free wireless access to San Francisco:<br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.linuxpipeline.com/blog/archives/2005/10/google_in_the_a.html">www.linuxpipeline.com/blo...the_a.html</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Besides having the resources to build and run the network at no cost to anyone else, there's another reason why I think Google is the best choice: It has the resources and the will to fight back against companies that would love to kill the very idea of municipal Wi-Fi.<br><br>Although national ISPs such as Earthlink and even Yahoo come to mind, I don't think they'll go beyond grumbling about the plan. But the prospect of genuine competition simply petrifies the telecom industry -- in this case, our widely-despised local provider, SBC Communications. I don't see them allowing this to happen without a legal and/or legislative fight, although they might think twice if they faced an opponent that could buy them -- perhaps literally. . . .<br><br>We've also heard from Vince Vasquez, a "policy fellow" with the Pacific Research Institute, who says he opposes any municipal involvement in providing wireless Internet access. "Our concern is with public money and publicly controlled Internet access," Vasquez told the San Francisco Chronicle. "We take a lot of caution about how government should intervene in the market."<br><br>Surprise: The Pacific Research Institute receives funding from SBC. This may explain why Vasquez can utter free-market platitudes without addressing an equally vital concern for any conservative think tank: Telling the federal government to butt out of local jurisdictions' affairs.<br><br>That's relevant here, because SBC is all about Congress sticking its noses where they don't belong. If you'll recall, one of the company's former employees, Representative Pete Sessions (R-TX), introduced a bill that would outlaw municipal-sponsored networks. If that bill fails (which seems likely), you can expect these weasels to try again and again to strip local communities of the right to decide what types of public services they support.<br><br>When you think about it, bare-bones, 300kbps wireless Internet access isn't even a very daunting competitive barrier; any competent private service provider would have more than enough, above and beyond such a service, to offer its customers. But just as some companies would rather use sham intellectual-property claims to extort money from customers and competitors, a company like SBC would rather spend its money buying congressmen and tainted "policy research" than deal with customers who have a choice.<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br>The Pacific Research Institute, by the way, is one of those Scaife-funded, hard-right think-tanks. Anti-environmental, anti-affirmative action, free market extremists. The usual.<br> <p></p><i></i>

That article starroute links contains another, more scary link talking about a Texas bill to ban these types of efforts. From there I found <!--EZCODE LINK START--><a href="http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/policy/2005/08/03/muniwifi.html" target="top">this report</a><!--EZCODE LINK END--> about a bill banning municiple WiFi going through Congress!<br><br>I think there's more to it than just big company economics.<br><br>Imagine, allowing previously unconnected "poor" or "rural" areas online.. to talk to other people.. where they can get ideas.. like the ones on this board.. or the real truth about the images on the TV news..<br>The high-level politicians must be pooping their pants.<br><br> <p><!--EZCODE IMAGE START--><img src="http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a239/ZeroHaven/tinhat.gif"/><!--EZCODE IMAGE END--></p><i></i>

Sounds like a good idea.<br><br>(Seems to be working for Chavez....<!--EZCODE EMOTICON START :rolleyes --><img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/eyes.gif ALT=":rolleyes"><!--EZCODE EMOTICON END--> ) <p></p><i></i>