Jon Stewart is educated by Ezra Klein on Government Regulation

[jmotivator]

Pssssst: Twitter tweets are not "news". Derp.

Psssssst: You are in the forum for discussing government regulation, not breaking *news*. Derp.

 

[Lovebug]

The whole interview is really good, and I like that Ezra Klein is the one exposing this stuff in his new book, but Jon Stewart's response as Klein walks him through the $42 billion rural broadband process is priceless.

They could have given rural customers money for Starlink and been done with the rollout in 2022, instead by 2024 53 states and territories had dropped out and nothing at all was accomplished except some bureaucrats got paid.

When a MAGA is schooling someone, something isn't right.

 

[Lovebug]

A few thoughts:

1) It wouldn't be for "20 people", it would be for a household.

2) 220 mbps is PLEANTY of bandwidth for 20 people. You don't need 2 gbps, up or down.

3) the Rural Broadband project only requires 20 mbps down and 3 up.

View attachment 67562745

4) Nobody, and I mean nobody is running fiber to rural homes. You'd have to be high to think you can run 30 miles of fiber to serve a few homes and make a profit.... see: The Rural Broadband requirements above.

We just had fiber run to rural homes. We thought it was a blessing until the felon and his puppeteer took over. That's rural, deep red TN. We were hoping to not being ignored. Now we are, once again in limbo...because...

Seriously, your fiber example is hilarious.

2 gbps down is enough bandwidth to stream 40 movies in 4K concurrently... or 120 movies at 2K...

You HONESTLY thought that these customers are getting fiber?!

Starlink can beat the Rural Broadband contract requirements by a factor of 9 today, and that fiber will get run to rural homes some time around the heat death of the universe.

Is this about the south African trying to make more money or is this about the south African running our country?

 

[jmotivator]

We just had fiber run to rural homes. We thought it was a blessing until the felon and his puppeteer took over. That's rural, deep red TN. We were hoping to not being ignored. Now we are, once again in limbo...because...

LOL. I'm going to guess that you already had options in your area. The rural that this program is supposed to help are the ones that are WAY off the beaten path. I mean, my house is "rural" because a block away the farmland starts, I wake up to roosters and my drive to work gets stuck behind hay trucks, but we have Cox, Xfinity and Fiber. That's not the rural this program is addressing.

And how is Trump at fault for this program that was being run by Biden?

Also, you claimed you got fiber, but then blame Trump for not getting the fiber? Huh?

Is this about the south African trying to make more money or is this about the south African running our country?

It's about the best way to bring broadband to homes and small towns that would need miles and miles of lines run to server their home, or plug in a satellite antenna.

 

[jmotivator]

When a MAGA is schooling someone, something isn't right.

.. which one in that video do you think is MAGA? Ezra Klein?

 

[Hello My Son]

Sorry, but Elmo is already too far embedded and reliant on the US government. Time to get him farther away.

Your anger at Musk makes you not want tens of millions of US citizens to have consistent and reliable internet?

 

[PeacefulWarrior]

Your anger at Musk makes you not want tens of millions of US citizens to have consistent and reliable* internet?

*-as long as it doesn't rain, snow, or get real cloudy.

 

[Hello My Son]

*-as long as it doesn't rain, snow, or get real cloudy.

Riiiiiiiiight...because inclement weather doesn't also impact every single other type of ISP.

 

[What if...?]

The only reason all of that bullshit was even being done was because the best solution was ruled out in advance for political spite.

There would be no impact planning and mapping necessary if they simply started up a credit for rural customers to buy satellite internet.

Is Starlink capable of providing that much service? And at what cost? Isn’t it expensive?

 

[Slartibartfast]

At some point and this is the thread premise, it isn't about explaining, messaging or misinformation. People not having a house, job, food and life being upwardly mobile and affordable and this is worst in blue cities, is a real problem and Democrats aren't the solution. They are the problem.

This may be the first time on this forum I see you attempting to talk like a person and not simply pitch a line.

I have similar concerns for the population.

I disagree with your diagnosis of course, but I am surprised that you have normal people concerns.

 

[trumptman]

This may be the first time on this forum I see you attempting to talk like a person and not simply pitch a line.

I have similar concerns for the population.

I disagree with your diagnosis of course, but I am surprised that you have normal people concerns.

I am consistent in how I type and talk.

Much like the thread premise, it is Democrat framing that does not allow the processing of information or voter concerns. All the two EK has done both in the OP and in the Daily Show clip is stop thinking about everything through the lens of TDS.

No one is "pitching a line". That is the TDS talking. Just like everyone voting for Trump wasn't voting on misinformation, racism, hatred for their fellow humans, watching Fox News or the other dismissive bullshit that gets tossed about.

Those are the lines being pitched to dismiss their legitimate concerns which the used to cast their ballots.

If you enjoyed that Daily Show clip maybe go read the book they authored. The Democrat Party cannot win votes by simply yelling Trump is bad or evil and using Trump motives as an excuse for their own incompetence. If they aren't incompetent they can just highlight the places where the air is clean, the roads are smooth, the homeless are handled, the housing is affordable, etc.

 

[Slartibartfast]

I am consistent in how I type and talk.

Much like the thread premise, it is Democrat framing that does not allow the processing of information or voter concerns. All the two EK has done both in the OP and in the Daily Show clip is stop thinking about everything through the lens of TDS.

No one is "pitching a line". That is the TDS talking. Just like everyone voting for Trump wasn't voting on misinformation, racism, hatred for their fellow humans, watching Fox News or the other dismissive bullshit that gets tossed about.

Those are the lines being pitched to dismiss their legitimate concerns which the used to cast their ballots.

If you enjoyed that Daily Show clip maybe go read the book they authored. The Democrat Party cannot win votes by simply yelling Trump is bad or evil and using Trump motives as an excuse for their own incompetence. If they aren't incompetent they can just highlight the places where the air is clean, the roads are smooth, the homeless are handled, the housing is affordable, etc.

And now you are back to pitching lines. I enjoyed the moment of you displaying actual human empathy while it lasted.

 

[trumptman]

And now you are back to pitching lines. I enjoyed the moment of you displaying actual human empathy while it lasted.

Telling you to go read a book written by two prominent liberals to explain how the Democrat Party can get back to helping their constituents in a thread where the OP involved one of those authors speaking to Jon Stewart about how the Biden's BBB gave no one broadband after four years is just me "pitching lines".

So my friend who claims to be the arbiter of empathy. How empathetic is it to fail to deliver on services with billions upon billions of dollars being allocated and often spent with no tangible results to show for it?

As was noted in the OP, EK is talking to JS and after four years, no rural broadband. How empathetic is it to excuse and continue to support that level of failure?

"Well it wouldn't have failed except for Trump......."

Keep on keeping on....

 

[jmotivator]

Is Starlink capable of providing that much service?

Starlink has about 7,000 satellites currently in service and they come in a few flavors.

Here is a 2021 Estimate (pdf) of total full service concurrent users as of 2021 using Starlink Version 1 with a coverage of 211 satellites over the US, and the estimate was then 521,00 users, which was the beta phase.

Those Version 1 satellites had a per-satellite capacity of 20gpps. Version 1.5 has a capacity of 200 gbps and Version 2 Satellites have a capacity of 1 tbps, and the number of satellites has increased 400%.

Since Version 2 has only just started to deploy, we can assume a US coverage of ~850 satellites at 10x the capacity, which would support ~21 million concurrent connections. Limiting the target consumer to the users outside of access to modern broadband, and assuming that not all customers use full capacity downloads 24 hours a day (1 4k video stream users about 25 - 50 mbps) there is more than enough capacity, and when fully deployed with V2 there will be 30,000 satellites at 1 Tbps each, for a total concurrent user support in the US of 521 million.

Even at current capacity it has more than enough capacity to server rural US customers. Urban and Suburban customers who already have a selection of terrestrial broadband options (copper, fiber) would likely not opt for satellite, and current fiber capacity already far exceeds actual normal customer needs.

And at what cost? Isn’t it expensive?

The reason that there is $42 billion in subsidies available is because getting broadband to these remote homes and communities is expensive.

To put it in perspective, for $42 billion the US Government could afford to deliver Starlink to ~5.4 million homes for 5 years.

But that isn't even what that $42 billion is meant for, it's to pay the contract winners to run the cable to these homes and the consumers in the rural areas will then pay the subscription fees. In theory the savings to the end user will be the reduction in cost to the provider who won't need to recoup the costs of deployment.

So absent the "free" Starlink that I use as an example, the $42 billion would simply offset SOME of the costs to the end user. So if you offer $25 a month rebate, that $42 billion now lasts closers to 30 years... a span of time where all of these current issues will have long been resolved by new technology.

 

[Felis Leo]

The whole interview is really good, and I like that Ezra Klein is the one exposing this stuff in his new book, but Jon Stewart's response as Klein walks him through the $42 billion rural broadband process is priceless.

They could have given rural customers money for Starlink and been done with the rollout in 2022, instead by 2024 53 states and territories had dropped out and nothing at all was accomplished except some bureaucrats got paid.

America has a uniquely bad regulatory structure. Japan has a massive bureaucracy. So does France for that matter. Both are modern countries. But it is infinitely easier to build bridges in France in a year or two that take a decade or two in the United States, or building housing in Tokyo practically as fast as we print paper.

 

[Greenbeard]

America has a uniquely bad regulatory structure. Japan has a massive bureaucracy. So does France for that matter. Both are modern countries. But it is infinitely easier to build bridges in France in a year or two that take a decade or two in the United States, or building housing in Tokyo practically as fast as we print paper.

Much of the frustration with government projects in this era is that the federal government isn't "big" enough. Here we're talking about federal funds going toward cooperative grants to states (part of our fetishizing of state autonomy and "local" decision-making), but it shows up in tons of contexts where any local individual or group can become veto points on a project for their own parochial reasons. Some much of what we do allows for bottom-up power centers to stifle projects. I imagine the general attitude is that sometimes you really do just need a Robert Moses to come through and raze some neighborhoods in the name of progress--just so long as it's someone else's neighborhood!

I would argue that "the federal government should be empowered to just unilaterally hand taxpayer money to Elon Musk rather than use a process-driven approach to allowing states to decide how to meet their needs" reflects a wish for a far more muscular ("big") federal government than what the Dems have been serving up. For all the GOP hand-wringing about the size of government, one thing we've learned in the Trump era is that they really do just want a strongman to steamroll through with little to no checks on his power.

If right and left now agree with the sentiment "Get rid of all these dumb steps and intermediate stakeholders and just do stuff," then it seems we have an emerging consensus across the ideological spectrum on the need for a "bigger"/more powerful federal government.

 

[Hello My Son]

And now you are back to pitching lines. I enjoyed the moment of you displaying actual human empathy while it lasted.

Negatory...pointing out that the Democrats lack a cohesive and effective plan to address any real issue whatsoever, which has literally been the state of the Democratic Party for nearly 10 years now, is not "pitching lines," whatever the hell that means.

 

[Slartibartfast]

Negatory...pointing out that the Democrats lack a cohesive and effective plan to address any real issue whatsoever, which has literally been the state of the Democratic Party for nearly 10 years now, is not "pitching lines," whatever the hell that means.

That’s the talking point you wish to promote.

 

[Hello My Son]

That’s the talking point you wish to promote.

Nope.

Democratic politicians' proposed solutions, effective strategies, and voter approval are all quantifiable variables. If they aren't meeting the muster, that's just a fact, not a "talking point." Engaging in the cliche of calling every reality you don't like a "talking point" is another reason why Democrats have a 27-29% approval rating.

You have to be willing to ACKNOWLEDGE the problems in the first place if you're going to ADDRESS them with real solutions.

 

[Peter]

Starlink?

Yep.

Absolutely no terrestrial construction necessary and no environmental impact to speak of and nearly 100% of rural homes already would be covered with a simple appliance install. It was a no-brainer decision, so of course Democrats ****ed it up.

So, the rockets build themselves and somehow don't create carbon?
The entire system also operates without ground control?

Starlink is also not the only system of its type available so even if you shut it down people still have options for a similar service.

 

[Slartibartfast]

Nope.

Democratic politicians' proposed solutions, effective strategies, and voter approval are all quantifiable variables. If they aren't meeting the muster, that's just a fact, not a "talking point." Engaging in the cliche of calling every reality you don't like a "talking point" is another reason why Democrats have a 27-29% approval rating.

You have to be willing to ACKNOWLEDGE the problems in the first place if you're going to ADDRESS them with real solutions.

I already explained that the problem is nimbyism

 

[Hello My Son]

I already explained that the problem is nimbyism

Every single problem in the country, including every one that Democrats haven't proposed a solution for, is a problem because of "nimbyism?" That's really your position?

You literally believe that the Democrats have done everything right and have all the answers (even though they haven't shared them with the voters), but it's the fault of EVERYONE ELSE for not bowing down to the party's declarations?

 

[anatta]

nothing to add . but i read the thread and it is enlightening . Stewart having his mind boggled at the layer after layer of over-kill is exemplary

 

[Deuce]

LOL!!! You do realize that you are making the argument for WHY the government shouldn't be trusted such things? The Democrats would rather NEVER get rural customers dependable internet if it means giving business to Elon Musk.

Absolutely, yes. Nazis don't deserve taxpayer funds.

 

[Slartibartfast]

Every single problem in the country, including every one that Democrats haven't proposed a solution for, is a problem because of "nimbyism?" That's really your position?

You literally believe that the Democrats have done everything right and have all the answers (even though they haven't shared them with the voters), but it's the fault of EVERYONE ELSE for not bowing down to the party's declarations?

Much of the inefficiency you detailed from your description of the high speed rail issue is nimbyism.