News that makes us laugh, cry, or both

[MGuy]

I think (if I'm not mistaken) that is what's done here for phone companies and internet. IIRC for electricity I think their is some kind of agreement between them (though I don't believe its public) that each company runs certain areas.

[Crissa]

Getting Americans to believe that en mass is difficult, Murtak. However, it apparently is not as difficult as to be outside of good business.

-Crissa

[Koumei]

If you can't abuse the current system, you're doing it wrong.

Note: if you can but choose not to, you're doing it right. All I'm saying is that currently, you can abuse the hell out of it easily, what with nobody talking to each other.

Hell, if you're worried about, say, narcotics, and people seeing doctors on public money and getting scripts for oxy, then consider: you can EASILY go to every pharmacy within 10 miles and get a pack of non-prescription codeine+paracetamol from each of them. Then, you take all that and over the course of a few weeks you die in excruciating agony from liver failure due to paracetamol (or you spend 10 minutes on the internet and use cold water extraction to filter the paracetamol out). Viola, all that changed under the new system is that they got to see a doctor who determined whether they actually need their drugs or not, and can offer them alternatives/a reference to a drug support network.

Via Washington Monthly,

ThinkProgress[/url]]Shah Rukh Khan, one of Bollywood's most recognizable movie stars, was in the United States to promote his new film about the racial profiling of Muslims. Khan, a Muslim star in a largely Hindu country, was, ironically, recently detained at Newark's airport for no apparent reason. He was released after two hours of questioning.

I weep.

-Crissa

I laughed and cried at this.

[Draco_Argentum]

If you pay them they will.

What, the people? That makes people in distant communities get shafted. Or did you mean congress, thats tax funds, may as well just make it govt run.

Anything that a private company can do can be done exactly the same by the government(minus the profit margin of course). If its not being done right by the government thats a failure of implementation, not a failure of concept.

[Absentminded_Wizard]

1) Power companies are generally monopolies, because having more than one grid would be...an unholy mess.

Here in Germany there are a couple dozen power companies. Anyone who owns a grid is basically forced to carry other providers power at prices fixed by the state. The same goes for phone and internet services.

That said I firmly believed basic infrastructure should be provided by the state. If the private industry wants to provide some sort of premium model for the rich, let them, but the basics should be done by the state and in most cases be insanely cheap. Society as a whole can only benefit from well repaired roads, public transport for dimes, renewable energy and heat at the community level, broadband for everyone, cheap health care, etc.

Agreed. Competition in utilities only works if the basic infrastructure (the "lines") are owned by the government or another neutral third party, or if you have an agreement like the one you describe. Two examples of the wrong way to do things:

Ohio natural gas deregulation: The monopolies had to open their gas lines to other companies' gas, but they got to charge as much as they wanted for it. Therefore, the existing companies got to keep their territories by making other suppliers' prices uncompetitive.

U.S. cell-phone coverage: More Americans than Europeans experience dropped calls because the basic infrastructure (cell-phone towers) was built by private companies who were duplicating each other's work and had no access to competitors' networks.

Contrast either of these with the Internet, a system of publicly-owned infrastructure over which anybody can send content. It would look completely different if, say, Microsoft owned it.

[tzor]

Now I know I am getting strange. I’m actually starting to like it when people put words in my posts; how I am (according to Kaelik) only measuring success in terms of money (I’m not) and how I (according to Maxus) think all monopolies are evil (I do not, in fact I don’t think I mentioned “evil” at all).

Maxus mentioned the power company, so it should be a good place to start. The key to understanding any large system is to attack it as one would attack Gaul; divide it into parts and conquer each one separately. What is the power company? On the first pass, it can be divided into three parts. (Later on we can discuss the hybrid parts.) The first part generates the power. The second part transports (or transmits) the power across long distances. The third part delivers the power. These three parts must be addressed separately.

Power generation currently is far from a monopoly. There are many companies out in the market all with power to deliver to the “grid.” They range from the large nuclear, coal, and natural gas facilities to smaller systems that tap large rivers and streams (I know there is a small scale water powered generator on a famous river south of Troy NY that once had the largest water wheel in the United States and was the inspiration for the famous Frenchman named Ferris for his famous amusement ride named after him) and provide various amounts of energy at different times of the season / day.

Next is the transmission of power. Again this is less of a monopoly as much as it is an oligarchy. It consists of a number of independently owned transmission lines. Getting them to all play well together is currently a mess but is currently doable.

Finally, last and least, we come to the delivery of power. This is by nature a monopoly, but only at the local level. This too is strongly divided into a number of local companies. In some cases they own part of the grid network, in other cases they don’t even own the poles on which their wires are strung (based on the marriage of convenience between traditional telephony delivery and traditional power delivery which over time also was used by local cable delivery; a separation of function that is currently dissolving rapidly).

What is the implication of this complex non monopoly? Well in some cases it means you have a “choice” in terms of power. In some locations you can actually pay more for “green” energy, your money going to that green energy generation facility. You might not be getting that green energy directly, but as a result someone who would probably not that green energy got it because of you and unlike a lot of things in the world, a volt is a volt and is pretty much generic.

I avoided the most confusing part of all; the consumer becomes the supplier; the creation of extremely small solar, wind and even natural gas generation by homes and businesses throughout the local grid systems. The biggest problem with electricity is the grid must always be in a Zen like balance. It’s hard enough given the complex grid and the complex nature of demand but adding flakey small supply variations can tax the system in many ways.

One can argue that this same model also can be applied to the USPS. I could make such arguments but this post is too long already. In addition the consumer of mail also is the generator of mail. Finally, unlike electricity, mail is not like volts, specific mail has to be delivered to specific locations. I know some people have a near worship of the current system and think I only talk in terms of profit but let me ask you this; how far must your mail travel if you want to send a letter to your neighbor? In the past every local post office used to sort their local mail. Not any more! The mail is shipped to a local central location, sorted, and then sent back to the post office for distribution. The distances from the local office to the local central office is (at least on Long Island) getting longer and longer as less and less offices actually sort the mail anymore.

When I get the time I will rant about how the bureaucracy of the USPS has caused significant problems in the goals of the USPS and that famous motto that while carved into a famous post office in Manhattan, was never an official motto of the USPS.

[Daiba]

The post office, as I mentioned before, doesn't wsork.

When I get the time I will rant about how the bureaucracy of the USPS has caused significant problems in the goals of the USPS and that famous motto that while carved into a famous post office in Manhattan, was never an official motto of the USPS.

Those two statements are are very different.

[Crissa]

I think it's strange he rants against the post office... Which is literally the oldest part of the United States. Established in 1775, it precedes the actual revolution. Only the National Guard claims older, and thats dubious, as it wasn't a federal invention at the time.

It seems astoundingly obvious the founding fathers thought that when something needed to be done, for the welfare of the nation, it was better to do it with appointees and companies created by the government, than to farm it out to a letter of marque, like the king had done.

-Crissa

[Parthenon]

I don't get this wanking over the founding fathers. I don't know if its because I'm not American and as such only hear the views of extremists, but I get this view that most Americans love the Constitution and think that it is perfect or should be followed like words of gods. People keep complaining that things are "unconstitutional" or use the constitution to back up their arguments as if that will automatically win arguments.

Then, theres all the love of the founding fathers and assuming that they are almost omnipotent. Hell, theres fanfic of some of them, some of it considered canon by a lot of people.

I mean, look at the example of Crissa above. Her two points about the American post office are:
[*]That its old.
[*]The founding fathers said so.
Those aren't arguments for or against a governmental post office.

So why do Americans go crazy about the constitution?

[Username17]

It's hard for people outside the US to "get" the whole Founding Father thing. It doesn't make a lot of sense. Mostly it comes from living in the second oldest country on the planet. To get a sense of perspective, watch how neurotic the UK gets about their Queen. They are the oldest country. The US is kind of like that, except all of our people in the position the Queen is in are dead.

But anyway, the conservative movement is as a whole anti-progress. So it is perhaps unsurprising that they argue about a golden era that never even existed. About how all this "progress" (that they are against) is destroying the nation because it's not what the Founding Fathers made. See? Founding Fathers made the nation, so if you change that, you're destroying the nation.

It's very difficult to argue with that, because it's basically a nonsense argument. But sometimes you totally an. Like with the Post Office. Like how the Post Office is totally exactly what the Founding Fathers had in mind, and how getting rid of the Post Office actually would constitute an attack on the nation as conceived.

-Username17

[Kaelik]

In the case of the Post Office, the real “competition” to them is email; converting bill payment to email and electronic transfer of the payment has cost the post office significant revenues.

Seems to be about money to me.

Seriously Tzor. Your list of complaints about the post office prior to your most recent post is:

"It doesn't make a profit."

and

"It's illegal for private companies to do."

That's called money and monopoly.

You've now added "Mail sent locally travels a longer distance than the minimum needed."

Great. Who fucking cares? It's still cheaper to send it to the larger sorting collections, you know, economy of scale.

And wtf are you mailing someone locally that you care about how long it takes?

[tzor]

You've now added "Mail sent locally travels a longer distance than the minimum needed."

Great. Who fucking cares? It's still cheaper to send it to the larger sorting collections, you know, economy of scale.

I just love this place. I mention a comment that some person has to wait two more days for a check because they don't want to deliver mail on a Saturday and I am considered a urban snob.

I mention that people have to wait multiple days to get a check mailed across the block and I'm considered a whiner.

[Neeeek]

And wtf are you mailing someone locally that you care about how long it takes?

Better question: If you're mailing it to your neighbor, why the fuck are you using the postal service at all?

[tzor]

It's hard for people outside the US to "get" the whole Founding Father thing. It doesn't make a lot of sense.

It’s hard for people inside the US to “get” the whole Founding Fathers thing. (Such is the sordid state of history in the classrooms these days.) These were a people who could agree on very little; slave or free, large state vs. small state, agrarian vs. a small growing industrial base; but they could agree that without a set of checks, balances and a solid rule of law, all nations eventually fall into despotism.

[Username17]

It’s hard for people inside the US to “get” the whole Founding Fathers thing. (Such is the sordid state of history in the classrooms these days.) These were a people who could agree on very little; slave or free, large state vs. small state, agrarian vs. a small growing industrial base; but they could agree that without a set of checks, balances and a solid rule of law, all nations eventually fall into despotism.

Way to make your own point. They couldn't even agree to that. The original articles of confederation were anti-law. They agreed to rule of law because they had fucked up trying to go their own way pirate ship style.

-Username17

[tzor]

Better question: If you're mailing it to your neighbor, why the fuck are you using the postal service at all?

I'll tell you what ... you hand deliver the 60 copies of the Fr. William J. Crowley Knights of Columbus monthly bulletin all over my neighborhood. And if they are not in you are in tough luck; technically speaking it’s illegal to put mail in someone else’s mail box.

[Kaelik]

You've now added "Mail sent locally travels a longer distance than the minimum needed."

Great. Who fucking cares? It's still cheaper to send it to the larger sorting collections, you know, economy of scale.

I just love this place. I mention a comment that some person has to wait two more days for a check because they don't want to deliver mail on a Saturday and I am considered a urban snob.

I mention that people have to wait multiple days to get a check mailed across the block and I'm considered a whiner.

So how about you tell us what is actually wrong with the post office then? You hate it so much, and you deny every single example of what could be wrong with it. What the fuck is wrong with it?

Also, fuckity fuck fuck. You just added words to my post while complaining about people adding words to your post. I never said whiner, I am honestly trying to figure out what you think the post office could be doing better, and so far everything I think you might mean you deny actually meaning.

[Neeeek]

Better question: If you're mailing it to your neighbor, why the fuck are you using the postal service at all?

I'll tell you what ... you hand deliver the 60 copies of the Fr. William J. Crowley Knights of Columbus monthly bulletin all over my neighborhood. And if they are not in you are in tough luck; technically speaking it’s illegal to put mail in someone else’s mail box.

So...you are basically complaining that the USPS does a valuable service for you? Interesting.

[tzor]

Way to make your own point. They couldn't even agree to that. The original articles of confederation were anti-law. They agreed to rule of law because they had fucked up trying to go their own way pirate ship style.

I’ll strongly disagree. There is an evolution of “Do we really need this” from the loose Articles of Confederation to the Constitution and finally to the Bill of Rights. Bear in mind that the articles were written in the middle of a war and was more concerned with the immediate problems at hand. Even then it took them several years because unlike the Constitutional Convention it was not the highest priority they had at the time.

[Crissa]

It's illegal to put something in their US Post Box, but it's not illegal to slip it under their door or into their newspaper box or parcel box.

Although I have lived in towns where it's illegal to leave things on people's porches and on their doorknobs; I kinda liked that rule. I really don't need a pizza doorhanger on the empty apartment next to me or on my house while I'm gone or flyers from local churches getting wet on my stoop.

That the guys who made our country decided upon a federal postal service instead of a grant to a company seems like an argument in favor of socialism. A weak argument, but it is a point in its favor. The whole totally working for cheap is a better one, but hey, history should be worth something.

See why the news makes us cry so often?

-Crissa

[Sir Neil]

People keep complaining that things are "unconstitutional" or use the constitution to back up their arguments as if that will automatically win arguments.

Fun fact: My job is to machine-gun "enemies of the Constitution", or die trying.

[MGuy]

People keep complaining that things are "unconstitutional" or use the constitution to back up their arguments as if that will automatically win arguments.

Fun fact: My job is to machine-gun "enemies of the Constitution", or die trying.

Other than the dieing that does sound fun... The constitution represents the "ultimate law" for this country. It is part of this law that if something goes against it then it is illegal in this country. It gets spammed so much as argument support for the same reasons people quote the bible or a famous piece of writing, because it makes what you're saying sound better.

[tzor]

That the guys who made our country decided upon a federal postal service instead of a grant to a company seems like an argument in favor of socialism. A weak argument, but it is a point in its favor. The whole totally working for cheap is a better one, but hey, history should be worth something.

The governmental nature of the postal service was an English thing. As such the founders were only doing what everyone else was doing at the time.

The General Post Office (GPO) was officially established in England in 1660 by Charles II and it eventually grew to combine the functions of both the state postal system and telecommunications carrier. Similar General Post Offices were established across the British Empire. In 1969 the GPO was abolished and the assets transferred to The Post Office, changing it from a Department of State to a statutory corporation. In 1981 the organisation was split into separate Post Office and British Telecommunications corporations.

The first postal service in America arose in February of 1692 when a grant from King William & Queen Mary empowered Thomas Neale "to erect, settle and establish within the chief parts of their majesties' colonies and plantations in America, an office or offices for the receiving and dispatching letters and pacquets, and to receive, send and deliver the same under such rates and sums of money as the planters shall agree to give, and to hold and enjoy the same for the term of twenty-one years."

The United States Post Office (U.S.P.O.) was created in Philadelphia under Benjamin Franklin on July 26, 1775 by decree of the Second Continental Congress. Based on the Postal Clause in Article One of the United States Constitution, empowering Congress "To establish post offices and post roads," it became the Post Office Department (U.S.P.O.D.) in 1792. It was part of the Presidential cabinet and the Postmaster General was the last person in the United States presidential line of succession. In 1971, the department was reorganized as a quasi-independent corporation of the federal government and acquired its present name. The Postmaster General is no longer in the presidential line of succession.

[Crissa]

If you look closer, post in the US territories pre-revolution was by contract and not a centralized post system.

Maybe England did it in their homeland, but they did it laze faire style in the US.

-Crissa

[Heath Robinson]

Something that shouldn't be controversial, but is. Thanks once again, christian extremists.