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Originally Posted by SteveM58
I don't think I've heard anybody say they are on your side, nor should you ever think a corporation is. They are corporations, just like every other industry, acting in their perceived best interests within the (often absurd) rules of the government. And that goes for tech giants as well.
Private industries write the vast majority of industry-specific legislation, especially the more technical it is. You won't hear me argue against the notion that government should immunize itself from lobbying. But in my view, that means the government has to get itself out of industries by and large.
I think municipalities can & should encourage competition to enter where there is none, and perhaps in the most underserved of areas, subsidize a private company to come in and operate if the people want them to. But its not an easy thing to do better than the private sector unless its effectively near-zero. So I get why states that have seen the failings of some municipal network builds would be willing to exchange that for the jobs created by ISPs in that case. Thats not ISPs passing those laws, thats the government.
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Let me be clear that I'm not arguing for public networks everywhere. I expect they would be good in some places, but not good in others and I don't have the expertise to argue where those places are. I got involved solely to argue against your contention that banning public networks largely came out of a desire to protect taxpayers. Maybe that happened somewhere, but in general those laws came about through telecom lobbying as a way to protect their market shares.