[...] a nineteenth-century liberal, a free intelligence, a type hated with equal hatred by all the smelly little orthodoxies which are now contending for our souls. - George Orwell
I have no comment on privatisation of tollroads and the like. I’m too fixated on watching the US election campaign up close.
Has Trump’s campaign hit the narcissistic death spiral stage? I don’t think we’ve hit that point just yet.
I’m only mildly interested in the US election, in the same way I am mildly interested in something like, say, AFL grand finals… I am aware it is a thing. I’m pretty sure the outcome was a foregone conclusion months ago and that outcome will only peripherally affect my day-to-day life in subtle ways, like products being flogged to death on supermarket shelves and on social media that I’m only really vaguely aware of or care about and discussions involving names and events that I’m even less aware of or care about…
I’m far more concerned about privitisation.
This is something - as someone who’s had first hand experience at the Local Council level, but suspect also applies all the way up to Federal level - is primarily decided upon, on the basis of Return On Investment.
Specifically, SHORT TERM Return On Investment (see: What That $40B in Telstra Stock Would Have Earned The Govt Since The Float, If It Had Held On To The Stock) (citation req.)
There is of course some level of Lip Service which is (also) given to other perceived benefits - the usual spiels about the Private Sector being so much better Managers (provably so, in many cases) and burdens to budgets that could be so much better spent on Other Things (never happen) and so on… This is all very minor and insignificant in comparison to the aforementioned Primary Concern:
there is money to be made
This is all stuff we all already know.
What we may not all be already aware of, however, is a certain Cold War which is brewing over not so much ownership as control over certain critical infrastructure - much of it about to become far more critical than is currently obvious to many (most).
The obvious one is of course the relatively hot war currently going on with the telecommunications infrastructure - the level of fibre that will be considered “NBN” and non-NBN and the usual Telstra-style unwillingness to accept responsibility for providing reliable infrastructure all the way to the $2 cigarette-packet-sized box Wibbly has previously talked about that lives somewhere in your actual premises.
I’m not talking about that.
I’m talking about the so-called “poles and wires” - the stuff which recently, spectacularly, DISASTROUSLY failed in South Australia - despite the “service” charges for maintaining this infrastructure that is foisted on consumers more than doubling in only a handful of years. (I am assuming here but I doubt those prices rose in such 50-100% style increments very much in the past… 100 years or so?)
I’m personally a big fan of the “Micro-Grid” solution - which is already being implemented by apartment blocks, industrial sites, and military bases, in other parts of the world.
While there are obvious benefits in mitigating natural (or, say, totally unnatural nuclear) disasters and also mitigating the whole “Base Load” “Peak/Off-Peak” disasters-in-waiting of the old (current) system, there is also an opportunity - a potential - which has not gone unnoticed by certain (necessarily large) corporations BUT only just entering into the awareness of most governments - again, from Local thru to Federal level - perhaps in the same way Drumpf’s (are we still calling him that?) campaign is entering into mine…
If you’re still with me, let me just come out and say it: I’m talking about the so-called “Internet Of Things”
I’m talking about the inevitable bailout and repatriation of our Poles and Wires (along with much of the “air” - the spectrum - presumably) which will hopefully happen before then next crisis but probably not until after. I’m talking about Public Lighting - including Traffic Signals - and potentially Signage and even those little reflective “cats eye” things that mark lanes on our roads - all being linked by “dark” (as in unlit by lasers) fibre and providing a platform for internet access that - so long as it is under PUBLIC control - can be provided on an actually, completely neutral basis.
To be clear, I’m talking about 5G - which will require much more ubiquity than the current “cell tower” and “telephone exchange” infrastructure underpinning every other G before it. I’m talking about “smart grids” and CCTV and live video feeds and autonomous vehicles and drones (drone ambulances?) and dynamic street signs and speed limits and the absolute tsunami of data the next G is going to have to be able to handle.
This all might sound just a little bit “pie in the sky” to most, but the maneuvering and manipulation (and probably bribery) to try to wrest control of this (critical) infrastructure away from the Public has already begun and, like the NBN before it, like the electricity grid, and water (at least in Victoria) and Land Titles Registry (at least in NSW) before it:
there is money to be made
I’m at the centre of the maelstrom and can’t help but pay attention.
Trump’s “I’ll keep you in suspense” position makes me worried that a large segment of the Republican movement is going to adopt the philosophy “we were only in favour of democracy and the Constitution while white male conservatives were the voting majority”.
so about my previous theory regarding attempts to wrest control of “poles and wires” away from The Public, in order to prevent neutrality of access by ISPs…
there is another theory which states that this has already happened