Do it yourself communities being challenged

There's a small chance that local communities may wake up to the insidious creeping prescence of global corporations in their neighborhood and lock onto the idea of "do it yourself". Unfortunately those that do will find it's going to be a battle as entrenched businesses fight back in every way they can to avoid local home-brew competition.

The story from Lake Tahoe is typical of what one can expect as the monopoly cable operator fights back against a city plan to provide its own broadband solution. Why did the city want to do that? Because the monopoly provider just wasn't serving the community's needs for reliable high speed broadband.

The legal argument used to try and block the city from rolling out its own service is quite laughable in that if used as a precedent setting case would block any city, municipality, county, state or even the government from funding any project. They argue that because the city is spending public money to kick start the project, if it fails then taxes will go up to recoup the losses and their business will be penalized by higher electricity costs (which are taxed by the city). In their opinion the cities business plan for broadband rollout isn't 100% guaranteed to make money therefore it should not go ahead. Basically the company is saying the city cannot spend any money on any project that isn't guaranteed to make money because tax payers will end up paying for it.

That kind of argument would mean that no city could fund projects that compete with an external business if they are not money making enterprises. It would mean for instance that no city could run its own public transportation if some private company was already running one. Indeed it would mean that no city could engage in any business where there is private sector competition because no business can be guaranteed to make money. It would also rule out any subsidies of any kind when there is private sector competition.

Like I said, this argument is laughable - if a community chooses to take action that it knows may raise its own taxes then why shouldn't it? Why should the private sector have a sole right to make money and operate in any market. And why should they feel they have an exemption from paying taxes that are the result of a community trying to supply is own public goods?

A business that operates within a community should abide by the rules set by that community, not dictate them to the community. Naturally if a community sets rules in which it is impossible for businesses to operate it will experience the cost of that decision, however it should be their right to do so and if they don't like the consequences of businesses leaving then they can change their minds later.