Most distribution networks are natural monopolies - that usually leads to a sub-optimal market outcome (under-production of the good, as the monopolist doesn't face the same marginal cost and revenue curves a free market faces)
Secondly, the first person that wants such a service generally "gets it in the shorts". Imagine we built the sewerage system, or the water distribution system this way. It'd never get built (well, not in the type of way we have today) because the first person (or handful of people) who need such a service would face enormous sunk costs. Now, if we could find a way to spread the capital costs amongst a whole lot of people, who'd agree that the cost was worth it if built at economy-of-scale...then it might get built. That's how we built the sewerage system, the current copper network, the water mains, your residential electricity supply, and so on. Cheers Ken From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Joseph Cooney Sent: Tuesday, 5 November 2013 3:07 PM To: ozDotNet Subject: RE: NBN Petition I would have thought if it was worth it to you to have that fast internet then you'd pay for it, and if it wasn't worth it then you wouldn't. That's how markets usually work. On 5 Nov 2013 14:01, "Tony Wright" <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: To keep it simple, I can look at a single function and see what it would be like under an NBN. Backups for disaster recovery. I currently backup to a NAS within my environment. The backup of a server usually takes between 20 minutes and 1 hour, over my internal 1Gbps network. I have Telstra Cable, which is 100Mbps download speed and 2Mbps upload speed. If I want to backup offsite to ensure I don't succumb to risks such as fire, my current backup will take roughly 500 times as long to backup to the cloud, and I currently have one of the fastest connections you can get outside of the NBN. Will I go and fork out a few grand to backup for the extra fibre to the node? The answer is no. I have better things to spend my capital on. Yet if I had a fast enough internet upload speed, I could backup all my servers to the cloud within a practical timeframe. Economies of scale would bring down the price of storage due to the volume of people that would be backing up to the cloud. And it wouldn't just be business, either. An average person might want to set up backups from their home computers to the cloud as well. During the backup process, virus detection could identify people who had viruses and root kits on their machines during the backup process and alert them straight away. This would significantly reduce the amount of viruses getting around as well. Just a thought bubble. But, oh, no, there are no good reasons to have high speed internet are there. Secondly, the entire purpose of the NBN was to replace the degrading and antiquated copper wires. If there is an agreement that the copper wires need replacing, and the Liberals obviously believe they don't need replacing, then the question is, what do we replace it with. The answer is, that whatever we replace it with, we may as well get a decent speed out of it at the same time. If the Liberals want to keep their copper, well good on them. But I don't know why the rest of us should have to suffer from their ignorance and short sightedness. Only around 45% of the population voted for the Liberal Coalition (meaning the Liberals, the Nationals, The Liberal National Party and the Country Liberals). The other 55% voted for other parties that either had a different opinion or no opinion on the NBN, and the difference on the two party preferred vote is less than 4%. So no, I don't think the election was a petition at all. If 4 out of 100 people vote for a different government at the next election, we would change governments again. The way the politicians are behaving, perhaps we could get lucky. We got rid of Rudd and Gillard at the last election, perhaps we could get rid of Abbott at the next one. From: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> [mailto:[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>] On Behalf Of Grant Maw Sent: Tuesday, 5 November 2013 2:20 PM To: ozDotNet Subject: Re: NBN Petition (petition == the will of the people) == rubbish. Obviously :) On 5 November 2013 13:10, Grant Maw <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: "I find your version of democracy very entertaining." Well the only alternative that I can see is getting people to vote on every single issue. Is that what you are advocating? Petitions are, in general, useless, unless you have an alternative petition for people NOT in favour of the proposal, AND you can get them to participate. Petition == the will of the people == rubbish.
