Public banks, public power, public broadband. Each one already makes money in the states and cities that run it, and the companies that profit from privatization spend millions to keep that list short
Chattanooga’s EPB is the municipal broadband proof of concept you’re describing. They built fiber for smart grid management — outage detection, fault response — and broadband revenue was the surplus. Gigabit internet citywide since 2010, faster and cheaper than Comcast. $2.7B in estimated regional economic impact. Tennessee’s legislature, lobbied by telecoms, then passed a law blocking EPB from expanding to rural counties that wanted the service. The FCC tried to override it. The Sixth Circuit sided with the state. Public abundance, legislatively capped on behalf of private extraction. The model works. The suppression of the model also works.
As Christopher pointed out, those inside government are often trained to look inward at the system rather than outward at the people it serves. At the same time, we sometimes turn to politicians who come from big business because we hope they will bring a different perspective. The problem is that many of them have little or no understanding of how local government actually works, just as career politicians may have little understanding of what it takes to build something inside local government.
Neither extreme seems to be working.
Maybe what we need is someone who started a small business from the ground up. Someone who understands payroll, regulations, permits, taxes, and the daily struggles of ordinary people in the local community Someone who has dealt with local government, solved real-world problems, and understands the challenges facing working families and small communities.
Real change will come from someone who starts at the local level, earns the public's trust, and brings practical experience instead of political ideology. Perhaps the path forward is finding leaders who are closer to the people they represent and who understand both the challenges and opportunities that exist in our communities.
Maybe then we can finally start getting things done.
The private entities providing internet services also provide much slower Internet service than that which exists in Europe, Japan, or South Korea. The private sector is also unaccountable to the public for providing services as well.
As someone who worked in state government for 33 years and holds a masters in public admin I can say you are absolutely right, Chris. The mantra since the Reagan era has been "Oooo, the government is sooo inefficient. The private sector can do the same thing so much cheaper, faster and better." This is not just total horseshit. It's a lie designed to enrich already rich con men.
I worked with some of the biggest corporations in the country on some very large and complex contracts. Most of the people managing those projects for the corporations had no more know more knowledge or skill than the people on our side of the table. In some cases, waaay less than those of us in the public sector. But the biggest difference between us and them was that everyone on our side of the table (aside from a few political appointees who had no business being in the same room) was that we were focused on providing a service to the people who were paying our salaries. The corporate jerkoffs were only concerned with doing as little as possible for as much money as possible.
Not saying government is perfect. Only that I agree with you that the current myopathy that everything is better done by the private sector is bullshit. This is especially true when it comes to public services like large technology networks, social services, prisons and public safety.
Excellent! My community has fiber optic broadband now, thanks to public investment. Comcast didn't bother bringing fiber here until our municipal fiber broadband came in. Our city power derives from a cooperative venture owned by several cities. It works, and works well.
Some red cities have found out the hard way that businesses have the support of their state legislators to stop any attempt by cities to compete with them. Indiana being one.
Yes, that is unfortunate. The right to make money for individual profit supersedes the right of people to good service, fair prices, and a say in the whole process. Luckily I live in a state where public entities have the right to compete with the for-profit sector. I am very tired of people's rights to affordable public services being trampled in service to greed.
Chris you need to chair the Project 2029 committee (for lack of a better name). The first objective of the committee is to assist the implementation of state laws like Hawaii just implemented to regulate corporations in their state. That gets the money out of elections and forces corporations to compete on service and price not political bribes. The second objective is to assist massive implementation of public corporations as you describe. The third objective is a comprehensive, 24x7, communication, information, publicity network constantly reminding the public of the good things happening around the country.
Absolutely right. Municipalities all of this. Get rid of the middle-man profit sink. Health care, housing, education, all rights the government we the People should be providing. All pitch in. All get back. No greedy developers, insurance companies. And don’t get me started on AI! Resource devouring data centers that obliterate our power, water and land and then take away our ability to think.
My only criticism with the article is the authors use of Alaska as an example. It's true that the state (just got an xfinity notice about how they can do me a favor by advertising better🙄) reinvests the oil sales sales-tax and splits the profits from that among the citizens. The state does nothing to add to infrastructure. Cell towers are obsolete, whole villages struggle to fund moves from global warming, dont get me started on health care if you're native. Norway had the same situation as Alaska. It used its oil profits differently and can now fund its whole population for generation.
Fantastic article. Thank you so much for addressing this.
As we watch the current administration use "no bid" contracts and buy warehouses for ridiculously inflated prices, we should also understand that the issue of corruption is high on election concerns, and intimately connected to this. People at top levels and lower levels of public service protect their future by making friends in the private sector with money collected from public taxes.
Christopher, I love your newsletter and share it every day on multiple socials. I have a suggestion. Would it be possible for you to put together a list of your articles from each week into one post? I think this would be a great thing to share or email in order to get more people reading your stuff. I'm thinking a Saturday morning post would work best, then folks have a chance to look at it over the weekend. I see other authors doing this every week, and I think it is an effective way to spread the word. Not everyone has the time to read during the week, and maybe this would help them to keep up. Just a thought. Thanks for all your hard work.
I support Hawk's idea. I suggested a similar "roundup" of current / ongoing calls to action a while back. Substack is great for many things....but it's terrible for tracking ongoing actions. And they don't have a Pinned Posts like Facebook groups do. Anything that can be done to allow people to choose between 5-7 actions to take on a weekend in a format that looks good & easy to follow - thumbs up. 👍
These are all very good ideas and could be implemented but not easily done under the current political system. It would require a complete makeover of every government system from the local cities all the way to the feds in D.C. and I don't see the wealthy oligarchs allowing that to happen without a physical fight. You know they would break out the big guns, such as hiring counter protestors, bribing government officials and all of that to try and stop something like this. Maybe even private paramilitaries in some instances, if they think they can get away with it.
But maybe that's what we need to push back against all of this and take back our country from these fascist oligarchs. I've long said that the maybe the only way we take back the country and stop these people from destroying what we built, may have to be another revolution like the one that started the whole democracy project in the first place.
True, not easily done, but doable. I live in a sh*+-0n beaten step-city lowr class sibling community to a collage town. Majority red, maga mayor. This guy(the mayor) took the covid funds and reinvested in high percentage savings and trust for the city. He is now starting a public utility co-op and has built 1/2dzn low income apt complexes and working on more housing for the community. The result is more people coming to our community, paying taxes, and adding to the ADA of our schools. Guaranteed, hes getting my blue vote next cycle.
Don’t get me started on HOAs, Another private equity grift. Another way to lose your housing. So many areas of government services require regulation and deprivatization. Btw, I just saw the action by two states (I thought Montana and Hawaii?) re ridding Citizens United at the state level. Yess!!!
Government needs to be brave and experiment. It too often depends on expected revenue streams and depends on taxation as the revenue source. I like these ideas and hope that legislators pay attention.
Maybe they will be if we push them that direction. It’s when we the people get involved with our municipalities and local communities that things change in a good direction. My community finally set up a program where we get a choice of electrical providers. And we are saving a lot of money. It’s not the same as having your own power company which in Massachusetts are successful, but it is a step in the right direction. Here it’s called municipal aggregation.
Every elected official from the state down to localities needs to hear and implement this, “you know, there are ways to generate revenue that don’t involve raising taxes.”
We need to push this kind of information back into the mainstream. The public is primed to hear it, probably now more than ever.
Chattanooga’s EPB is the municipal broadband proof of concept you’re describing. They built fiber for smart grid management — outage detection, fault response — and broadband revenue was the surplus. Gigabit internet citywide since 2010, faster and cheaper than Comcast. $2.7B in estimated regional economic impact. Tennessee’s legislature, lobbied by telecoms, then passed a law blocking EPB from expanding to rural counties that wanted the service. The FCC tried to override it. The Sixth Circuit sided with the state. Public abundance, legislatively capped on behalf of private extraction. The model works. The suppression of the model also works.
As Christopher pointed out, those inside government are often trained to look inward at the system rather than outward at the people it serves. At the same time, we sometimes turn to politicians who come from big business because we hope they will bring a different perspective. The problem is that many of them have little or no understanding of how local government actually works, just as career politicians may have little understanding of what it takes to build something inside local government.
Neither extreme seems to be working.
Maybe what we need is someone who started a small business from the ground up. Someone who understands payroll, regulations, permits, taxes, and the daily struggles of ordinary people in the local community Someone who has dealt with local government, solved real-world problems, and understands the challenges facing working families and small communities.
Real change will come from someone who starts at the local level, earns the public's trust, and brings practical experience instead of political ideology. Perhaps the path forward is finding leaders who are closer to the people they represent and who understand both the challenges and opportunities that exist in our communities.
Maybe then we can finally start getting things done.
“Maybe what we need is someone who started a small business from the ground up.” Agreed. We need lots of someones like this.
The private entities providing internet services also provide much slower Internet service than that which exists in Europe, Japan, or South Korea. The private sector is also unaccountable to the public for providing services as well.
As someone who worked in state government for 33 years and holds a masters in public admin I can say you are absolutely right, Chris. The mantra since the Reagan era has been "Oooo, the government is sooo inefficient. The private sector can do the same thing so much cheaper, faster and better." This is not just total horseshit. It's a lie designed to enrich already rich con men.
I worked with some of the biggest corporations in the country on some very large and complex contracts. Most of the people managing those projects for the corporations had no more know more knowledge or skill than the people on our side of the table. In some cases, waaay less than those of us in the public sector. But the biggest difference between us and them was that everyone on our side of the table (aside from a few political appointees who had no business being in the same room) was that we were focused on providing a service to the people who were paying our salaries. The corporate jerkoffs were only concerned with doing as little as possible for as much money as possible.
Not saying government is perfect. Only that I agree with you that the current myopathy that everything is better done by the private sector is bullshit. This is especially true when it comes to public services like large technology networks, social services, prisons and public safety.
Great article!
Excellent! My community has fiber optic broadband now, thanks to public investment. Comcast didn't bother bringing fiber here until our municipal fiber broadband came in. Our city power derives from a cooperative venture owned by several cities. It works, and works well.
Some red cities have found out the hard way that businesses have the support of their state legislators to stop any attempt by cities to compete with them. Indiana being one.
Yes, that is unfortunate. The right to make money for individual profit supersedes the right of people to good service, fair prices, and a say in the whole process. Luckily I live in a state where public entities have the right to compete with the for-profit sector. I am very tired of people's rights to affordable public services being trampled in service to greed.
Chris you need to chair the Project 2029 committee (for lack of a better name). The first objective of the committee is to assist the implementation of state laws like Hawaii just implemented to regulate corporations in their state. That gets the money out of elections and forces corporations to compete on service and price not political bribes. The second objective is to assist massive implementation of public corporations as you describe. The third objective is a comprehensive, 24x7, communication, information, publicity network constantly reminding the public of the good things happening around the country.
2029 committee - yes! Great idea. Christopher should definitely lead or be involved heavily.
Christopher, care to share your thoughts anytime soon about a Project 2029 committee?
Absolutely right. Municipalities all of this. Get rid of the middle-man profit sink. Health care, housing, education, all rights the government we the People should be providing. All pitch in. All get back. No greedy developers, insurance companies. And don’t get me started on AI! Resource devouring data centers that obliterate our power, water and land and then take away our ability to think.
My only criticism with the article is the authors use of Alaska as an example. It's true that the state (just got an xfinity notice about how they can do me a favor by advertising better🙄) reinvests the oil sales sales-tax and splits the profits from that among the citizens. The state does nothing to add to infrastructure. Cell towers are obsolete, whole villages struggle to fund moves from global warming, dont get me started on health care if you're native. Norway had the same situation as Alaska. It used its oil profits differently and can now fund its whole population for generation.
Jus-sayin💎 Excellent article! Needs to be shared.
As always, in absolute awe!
Fantastic article. Thank you so much for addressing this.
As we watch the current administration use "no bid" contracts and buy warehouses for ridiculously inflated prices, we should also understand that the issue of corruption is high on election concerns, and intimately connected to this. People at top levels and lower levels of public service protect their future by making friends in the private sector with money collected from public taxes.
Christopher, I love your newsletter and share it every day on multiple socials. I have a suggestion. Would it be possible for you to put together a list of your articles from each week into one post? I think this would be a great thing to share or email in order to get more people reading your stuff. I'm thinking a Saturday morning post would work best, then folks have a chance to look at it over the weekend. I see other authors doing this every week, and I think it is an effective way to spread the word. Not everyone has the time to read during the week, and maybe this would help them to keep up. Just a thought. Thanks for all your hard work.
I'll think on it. Thanks for the suggestion 🌲🌲🌲
I support Hawk's idea. I suggested a similar "roundup" of current / ongoing calls to action a while back. Substack is great for many things....but it's terrible for tracking ongoing actions. And they don't have a Pinned Posts like Facebook groups do. Anything that can be done to allow people to choose between 5-7 actions to take on a weekend in a format that looks good & easy to follow - thumbs up. 👍
These are all very good ideas and could be implemented but not easily done under the current political system. It would require a complete makeover of every government system from the local cities all the way to the feds in D.C. and I don't see the wealthy oligarchs allowing that to happen without a physical fight. You know they would break out the big guns, such as hiring counter protestors, bribing government officials and all of that to try and stop something like this. Maybe even private paramilitaries in some instances, if they think they can get away with it.
But maybe that's what we need to push back against all of this and take back our country from these fascist oligarchs. I've long said that the maybe the only way we take back the country and stop these people from destroying what we built, may have to be another revolution like the one that started the whole democracy project in the first place.
True, not easily done, but doable. I live in a sh*+-0n beaten step-city lowr class sibling community to a collage town. Majority red, maga mayor. This guy(the mayor) took the covid funds and reinvested in high percentage savings and trust for the city. He is now starting a public utility co-op and has built 1/2dzn low income apt complexes and working on more housing for the community. The result is more people coming to our community, paying taxes, and adding to the ADA of our schools. Guaranteed, hes getting my blue vote next cycle.
We do need this but for sure the oligarchy will fight tooth and nail against this idea/
Don’t get me started on HOAs, Another private equity grift. Another way to lose your housing. So many areas of government services require regulation and deprivatization. Btw, I just saw the action by two states (I thought Montana and Hawaii?) re ridding Citizens United at the state level. Yess!!!
Communities do not need to rely on Goodwin, Las Vegas. Many have their own POAs.
Hi Janice, not sure what you mean. Most aren’t co-ops, but private entities following an insurance template.
Government needs to be brave and experiment. It too often depends on expected revenue streams and depends on taxation as the revenue source. I like these ideas and hope that legislators pay attention.
Maybe they will be if we push them that direction. It’s when we the people get involved with our municipalities and local communities that things change in a good direction. My community finally set up a program where we get a choice of electrical providers. And we are saving a lot of money. It’s not the same as having your own power company which in Massachusetts are successful, but it is a step in the right direction. Here it’s called municipal aggregation.
Every elected official from the state down to localities needs to hear and implement this, “you know, there are ways to generate revenue that don’t involve raising taxes.”