There are certain things that our ancestors were intelligent enough to see that were important enough for everyone to have. Right off the top of my head I can think of two (three) examples: Communication (mail and telephone) and electricity. With the Rural Electrification of America laws, people in farm and ranch country had wired electricity instead of batteries and six volt lights. With telephone, one company was granted a monopoly (with the people’s [government] oversight) so that it would be economic to run power lines to one house every mile or further. With the mail, we (the people, the government of the United States) created a governmental agency to do this; only later it became a QuANGO (quasy-autonomous non-governmental organization) with funding coming from the users and the government. In all cases, the point was to share the financial burden among all Americans for the benefit of all Americans. Had we left it to the corporations, the services would either have not been there, or have been just too expensive. As examples of this I use two problem areas for rural folk, cable TV and Internet service. Sure, you can have satellite dishes, and thanks to those little dishes cable prices are not out of sight. And yes, you can have dial-up Internet, but it is very slow, or you can have satellite Internet and it is not quite as slow but it is very expensive. The job of a major corporation is to make money for its owners (shareholders) and its management, not to provide a service to all Americans equally — it has no social conscience. Our government (we the people) has hampered the mail service to the point it is a joke. The alternative is for all of us to pay for it together. Or all of us to pay higher costs. Our choice. It looks like we will pay higher costs.
There are certain things that our ancestors were intelligent enough to see that were important enough for everyone to have. Right off the top of my head I can think of two (three) examples: Communication (mail and telephone) and electricity. With the Rural Electrification of America laws, people in farm and ranch country had wired electricity instead of batteries and six volt lights. With telephone, one company was granted a monopoly (with the people’s [government] oversight) so that it would be economic to run power lines to one house every mile or further. With the mail, we (the people, the government of the United States) created a governmental agency to do this; only later it became a QuANGO (quasy-autonomous non-governmental organization) with funding coming from the users and the government. In all cases, the point was to share the financial burden among all Americans for the benefit of all Americans. Had we left it to the corporations, the services would either have not been there, or have been just too expensive. As examples of this I use two problem areas for rural folk, cable TV and Internet service. Sure, you can have satellite dishes, and thanks to those little dishes cable prices are not out of sight. And yes, you can have dial-up Internet, but it is very slow, or you can have satellite Internet and it is not quite as slow but it is very expensive. The job of a major corporation is to make money for its owners (shareholders) and its management, not to provide a service to all Americans equally — it has no social conscience. Our government (we the people) has hampered the mail service to the point it is a joke. The alternative is for all of us to pay for it together. Or all of us to pay higher costs. Our choice. It looks like we will pay higher costs.