this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2024
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It's even better: a lot of essential or close to it things are pretty much monopolies or cartels (for example, Internet access in most of the US) so people have no actual choice but to pay a specific entity whatever they chose to charge.
It's like tax but without the upside of taxes (which is that they're money that's supposed to entirely end up benefiting you, even if most of it indirectly) because when you buy a product or service from a monopoly or cartel only part of it goes to cover the cost of the actual product or service you're getting and a large fraction or even most of it goes to shareholder dividends, which has zero benefit for you.
I've taken to call these things Taxes Paid Directly To Private Companies.
Weird. How did those ISPs end up the only option?
Government and corporate interests can't help but suck each other off. Petty tyrants are gonna tyrant.
The land the utilities were built on were through government seized easements generally. The monopoly wouldn't exist unless propped up by a state.
Sounds like we should have made ISPs government owned then!
That could be a better system than the current government enforced monopoly.