Mike Soja 's BestNetTech Comments

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  • On the post: Shocker: Billions In Broadband Subsidies Wasted As Government Turns Blind Eye To Fraud

    Mike Soja ( profile ), 11 Aug, 2015 @ 12:07am

    Bode's Unwell

    Final paragraph there is just to un-cute to leave un-criticized.

    It's the old chicken/egg idiocy. Which came first? The schemers scheming to buy favor with corrupt government officials? Or corrupt government officials willing to sell citizens' freedom to the highest bidding schemer?

    Bode wants to blame corporate schemers, ignoring the fact that when government (ostensibly at the behest of the great unwashed) takes it upon itself to "regulate" Industry, that it is Industry's right to petition said government for redress in any and all grievances.

    When government injects itself into business, business has the right to respond.

    The problem isn't that business can utilize resources to defend itself against government. The problem is that so many people are of the opinion that government should be attempting to direct the course of private business.

    As long as government sticks its nose in private business, private business will attempt to direct which way that nose points. As is its right.

    Government's business is enforcing contracts, not stipulating what those contracts contain.

  • On the post: Daily Dot Latest To 'Keep Conversation Moving Forward' By Not Letting Site Visitors Comment At All

    Mike Soja ( profile ), 04 Aug, 2015 @ 10:59pm

    No Comment

    Vox has been promising comments since its start up, but they don't really want to jeopardize the shine they've got on that turd.

  • On the post: USTR Pushes Congress To Approve Trade Deals… But Threatens Reps With Criminal Prosecution If They Tell The Public What's In Them

    Mike Soja ( profile ), 17 Mar, 2015 @ 11:29pm

    Re: Re: Hatred doesn't spend well, money does

    Who contributes most to Republicans? Large multi-national corporations.

    Like the Democrats aren't on the take, also?

  • On the post: USTR Pushes Congress To Approve Trade Deals… But Threatens Reps With Criminal Prosecution If They Tell The Public What's In Them

    Mike Soja ( profile ), 17 Mar, 2015 @ 11:22pm

    Re:

    Possibly holding out for the super power of a hashtag.

  • On the post: To Abundance: The Cause Of, And Solution To, All Of Life's Problems

    Mike Soja ( profile ), 17 Mar, 2015 @ 11:00pm

    Re: Re: scarcity

    the much-vaunted laissez-faire approach has led to the surveillance state

    The free market has engendered the government's corrupt violation of citizens' rights? How is that not nonsense?

    We're just talking about these things with a view to finding solutions.

    Insofar as Copia is a private endeavor, sure, more power to the enterprise, but as it seeks to influence policy (ie. force over one's fellows) it's liable to be just another part of the problem.

  • On the post: USTR Pushes Congress To Approve Trade Deals… But Threatens Reps With Criminal Prosecution If They Tell The Public What's In Them

    Mike Soja ( profile ), 17 Mar, 2015 @ 10:44pm

    USTR, et. al.

    For years now, we've been trying to understand why the US Trade Rep (USTR) is so anti-transparency with its trade negotiations.

    For months now, I've been trying to understand what BestNetTech doesn't understand about the nature of the government alphabet bureaucracy.

    Hint: It's what you get when you cede individual rights to third parties, who once ensconced in power begin to look after their own interests, instead of yours.

    But there is Masnick, and the majority of commenters, failing to see that the failure was in the initiation of the USTR and that everything following on is just an endless soap opera of finger pointing and ill-informed accusations respecting the conduct of the USTR that will never be resolved. The creation of the political institution establishes a de facto corrupt entity that every avowed stakeholder will seek to hold sway over.

  • On the post: To Abundance: The Cause Of, And Solution To, All Of Life's Problems

    Mike Soja ( profile ), 15 Mar, 2015 @ 12:29am

    scarcity

    There are never enough productive resources to provide all the goods and services that people want. The result is that people must constantly choose among competing alternatives.

    Your larger point is correct, but it needs to be said that people don't always value the same things. Not everyone likes lobster. I could have chosen a Mercedes, but I freely bought something else. Many might not even need to own a car at all. The relative scarcity of Big Macs that McDonalds allegedly exploits doesn't preclude me from indulging in Hardees five pound burger (with cheese).

    The increasing availability of information is obviously a good thing, and will over time change products and services, but it is hubris of the largest sort to suppose that there is some sort of "policy" that can best manage the process.

    It seems to me that Masnick and BestNetTech have assumed that popularity earned in some arenas have endowed them with knowing what's best for their fellows in arenas which are none of their business.

  • On the post: To Abundance: The Cause Of, And Solution To, All Of Life's Problems

    Mike Soja ( profile ), 14 Mar, 2015 @ 11:58pm

    Re: for-profit/capitalist system

    Capitalism is not a "system". It is an artifact of the larger fact that humans are individuals striving to survive in a world of progress that continually supersedes itself, via individual spurts and lunges.

    Innovation is always a scarce commodity, and always will be, and always will be more highly valued than non-innovation. The innovator is not exploiting the "system", but enhancing it.

  • On the post: To Abundance: The Cause Of, And Solution To, All Of Life's Problems

    Mike Soja ( profile ), 14 Mar, 2015 @ 11:34pm

    Abandon all hope ye who enter here

    Abundance needs no advocate. And the repetitive references to "policy" (an anodyne euphemism for government diktat) lend a stink to the allegedly good intentions.

    While legacy "policy" is undoubtedly injurious to innovation and entrepreneurial endeavor, remediation is best sought in removal, as opposed to the invocation of more clever policy.

    Copia is a little bit of putting a cart before a horse doing the rounds in a petting zoo in Ohio. The Internets (sic Bush) are a wonderful thing, but the human genome is an entirely different network, one incuriously immune to casual hacking.

    Ergo, alleged solutions to even a smattering of life's alleged problems are to be goggled at.

  • On the post: Hillary Clinton Finally Answers Questions About Her Email… And It Only Raises More Questions

    Mike Soja ( profile ), 11 Mar, 2015 @ 07:35am

    With any luck...

    ... Hillary will be overseeing the FCC and "Net Neutrality" soon.

  • On the post: Jeb Bush Is The Latest Politician To Demonstrate Absolutely No Understanding Of Net Neutrality

    Mike Soja ( profile ), 09 Mar, 2015 @ 01:57pm

    BestNetTech infirmaties

    The fool who trades freedom for (net) security, deserves neither.

    Likewise, the repetitive appeals to who does or does not "favor" the government encroachment du jour is characteristic of those unable to justify said encroachment otherwise.

    But, hey, who will remember that when they came for the big ISPs that Masnick, et al., not only merely didn't say anything, but cheered them on?

  • On the post: Verizon At Least Shows It Has A Sense Of Humor About Net Neutrality, Even If It's Incapable Of Respecting It

    Mike Soja ( profile ), 01 Mar, 2015 @ 02:21am

    Re: What we truly need goes beyond telecom...

    We need a federal law that states

    How about a federal law that says idiots can't propose federal laws every time they have a notion.

  • On the post: Verizon At Least Shows It Has A Sense Of Humor About Net Neutrality, Even If It's Incapable Of Respecting It

    Mike Soja ( profile ), 01 Mar, 2015 @ 02:15am

    Re: Re: Re: Re:

    "This is no more an act to regulate the internet than the first amendment is an act to regulate free speech."

    The First Amendment prohibits government involvement in certain things.

    FCC Wheeler is announcing government involvement in the conduct of ISP business.

    His rhetoric is dishonest nonsense. And, if his rhetoric is dishonest nonsense, the law he's pushing can only be a complete horrow.

  • On the post: Verizon At Least Shows It Has A Sense Of Humor About Net Neutrality, Even If It's Incapable Of Respecting It

    Mike Soja ( profile ), 01 Mar, 2015 @ 02:02am

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:

    Except McD's doesn't own the path to Bking, it owns the path I am using to get to the highway that leads to all other restaurants, including BKing.

    If so, McDs still owns the path. Who owns the path to your house? If you don't like who owns the path you ought to ask how they came to own the path, rather than assume you have the right in retrospect to commandeer that path just because you don't like the current ownership of it.

    The new FCC regs undermine the ownerships of the paths.

    If you value the ownership of the path to your own house, you should be against the confiscation of the paths to other people's houses.

  • On the post: Verizon At Least Shows It Has A Sense Of Humor About Net Neutrality, Even If It's Incapable Of Respecting It

    Mike Soja ( profile ), 01 Mar, 2015 @ 01:38am

    Re: Re: Re: Re:

    Free market principles only apply when conditions of freedom exist in the market.

    That is Nonsense. With a capital N.

    The laws of supply and demand always apply, no matter how free the market.

    And that's why the new regs are going to increase costs to the Internet consumer and decrease innovation in the tech sector.

    There is never a free lunch in economics.

    When governments get involved, markets distort. Since government doesn't produce anything of itself, its decrees can only distort in one of two ways. Prices can increase, or supply can decrease. Often both happen. That's the nature of outside, coercive interference in markets.

    You may wish that it were otherwise, but it's science.

  • On the post: Verizon At Least Shows It Has A Sense Of Humor About Net Neutrality, Even If It's Incapable Of Respecting It

    Mike Soja ( profile ), 01 Mar, 2015 @ 01:23am

    Re: Re: Re: Verizon is right...

    Comcast would rather not live in a free market, so they strangle the competition to leverage their own products. This is the American way?

    Actually, that is the free enterprise, and American, way.

    The thing is, though, that Comcast, et. al., for many years, has been granted monopoly status by state and local governments, across the U.S. It enjoy, in many places, exclusive rights to place its wires on the poles, etc.

    That's the nub of all the contention, but you won't read much about that as everyone focuses on the SQUIRREL!

  • On the post: Verizon At Least Shows It Has A Sense Of Humor About Net Neutrality, Even If It's Incapable Of Respecting It

    Mike Soja ( profile ), 01 Mar, 2015 @ 01:14am

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:

    OK, so you're anti-government nutball who doesn't mind getting screwed so long as it's by a corporation rather than someone he can vote for.

    The side of freedom is always in the marketplace and ends with "someone he can vote for". There isn't even a modicum of choice when the government brings its boot down.

    You decry Comcast's alleged monopoly, but then welcome the massive unelected bureaucracy.

    Good luck with that.

  • On the post: Verizon At Least Shows It Has A Sense Of Humor About Net Neutrality, Even If It's Incapable Of Respecting It

    Mike Soja ( profile ), 01 Mar, 2015 @ 12:54am

    Re: Re: Re: Verizon is right...

    He must have missed the part where Netflix DID raise their prices

    I was saying that going forward Netflix wouldn't have to raise prices to its customers because the onus is now on the delivery agent to recoup the costs of the "net neutrality" service now mandated by government.

  • On the post: Verizon At Least Shows It Has A Sense Of Humor About Net Neutrality, Even If It's Incapable Of Respecting It

    Mike Soja ( profile ), 01 Mar, 2015 @ 12:50am

    Re: Re: Re: Re:

    This is not the case in the ISP sector, which is dominated by anti-competitive monopolies and duopolies. At this point, free market economic principles break down and are replaced by monopoly economics, which are based on economic coercion, not freedom, and it absolutely is the government's job to limit such coercion.

    Your "monopolies and duopolies" are also not products of the free market. Such exist because of previous government interference in the telecommunications/cable market, mostly at the state and local levels.

    In effect, government is trying to fix the problems it itself has caused, without remedying the underlying dislocation of market resources.

  • On the post: Verizon At Least Shows It Has A Sense Of Humor About Net Neutrality, Even If It's Incapable Of Respecting It

    Mike Soja ( profile ), 01 Mar, 2015 @ 12:41am

    Re: Re: Re: Sorry Verizon

    It's the ISPs who would restrict what people can access - by throttling traffic, or charging more for access to competitors.

    And now the choices of such ISPs have been "socialized" for the alleged greater good.

    The right of people to conduct their ISP businesses as they see fit has been usurped on the basis of illegitimate, picayune, political grounds.

    When the government controls the particulars of your business model, no matter how anodyne that control may seem, can you really say you own that business, anymore?

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