"an you imagine the Seattle City Council keeping a secret like this and then acting on it in just one day? Of course not. We’d need to have endless community meetings and hearings and public floggings of Google Executives. Every citizen in a tinfoil hat who thinks fiber is just another cereal ingredient would have their three minutes in front of the Council. "
Ah, I see - democracy is a bug, according to the author.
Actually, reading further, it appears that anything short of kneeling and begging at the feet of corporations is somehow supposed to be terrible...
Seriously - here's the conclusion:
"Could we simply agree to pay for all the pole replacements and permitting as a city, and hire a few extra employees to expedite the process? Couldn’t we just hand over title to a few strands of the 500 mile fiber cable network we’ve built to Google Fiber?"
Translation: "Couldn't we just spend taxpayer dollars to subsidize profits for one of the world's largest corporations?"
There's a choice - spend taxpayers dollars to prevent Google from laying fiber or spend taxpayer dollars to enable Google to lay fiber (and yes, make the profit in the process). I think the latter is preferable. I'd prefer no taxpayer dollars participation at all, but in the current environment it's not really an option, right? There's an option of having fast internet or having slow internet and unperturbed bureaucracy. Seattle chose the latter. I hope they enjoy their bureaucracy.
Not really, the real question is at the end of article: "There's just one question: Do we love our Seattle process too much?" There is a choice - you can have process, permits, etc or you can have fast connections. The problem is that we pretend that you can have both, or that there is no cost to the Seattle process.
Comments
"an you imagine the Seattle City Council keeping a secret like this and then acting on it in just one day? Of course not. We’d need to have endless community meetings and hearings and public floggings of Google Executives. Every citizen in a tinfoil hat who thinks fiber is just another cereal ingredient would have their three minutes in front of the Council. "
Ah, I see - democracy is a bug, according to the author.
Actually, reading further, it appears that anything short of kneeling and begging at the feet of corporations is somehow supposed to be terrible...
Seriously - here's the conclusion:
"Could we simply agree to pay for all the pole replacements and permitting as a city, and hire a few extra employees to expedite the process? Couldn’t we just hand over title to a few strands of the 500 mile fiber cable network we’ve built to Google Fiber?"
Translation: "Couldn't we just spend taxpayer dollars to subsidize profits for one of the world's largest corporations?"
There's a choice - spend taxpayers dollars to prevent Google from laying fiber or spend taxpayer dollars to enable Google to lay fiber (and yes, make the profit in the process). I think the latter is preferable. I'd prefer no taxpayer dollars participation at all, but in the current environment it's not really an option, right? There's an option of having fast internet or having slow internet and unperturbed bureaucracy. Seattle chose the latter. I hope they enjoy their bureaucracy.
Not really, the real question is at the end of article: "There's just one question: Do we love our Seattle process too much?" There is a choice - you can have process, permits, etc or you can have fast connections. The problem is that we pretend that you can have both, or that there is no cost to the Seattle process.