An alternative, we know today in our much more unequal America, does exist: Private interests could control our public goods. We could have decided a half-century ago to lease out the Interstate's management to private companies.
If we had organized the Interstate along these lines, anyone wanting to ride the system would have been paying tribute, all these years, to private corporations. And the execs in those corporations would have become fabulously rich, wealthy enough to corrupt our political system and keep their monopoly power secure.
This scenario should all sound a bit familiar. In contemporary America, we've let private corporations determine who can access our data superhighway. That control has generated grand fortunes -- and formidable political power.
Comcast CEO Brian Roberts, we learned in 2013, averaged $29 million in take-home the previous three years. He has become both a billionaire and a major political player. Roberts plays golf with the President of the United States. His top lobbyist used to sit on the Federal Communications Commission, the agency that has to decide whether to approve the Comcast merger with Time Warner.
The top official in the U.S. Justice Department's antitrust division will also have a say on the merger. The current Justice Department antitrust chief helped grease the skids, as a corporate attorney, for Comcast's 2011 takeover of the NBC Universal media conglomerate.
Brian Roberts and his corporate counterparts elsewhere in the data-moving industry have essentially created a giant wealth extraction machine, sucking on average over $150 a month per household for TV, phone, and Internet, a bundle that costs a French household in Paris much less than one-third that price.
The first step toward turning this situation around? Stop the Comcast and Time Warner merger. The more fundamental task: Give our private corporate Internet access giants some public competition.
Some municipalities are already moving to set up their own fiber networks for Internet access. Comcast and other telecom heavy hitters, working with the plutocrat-friendly American Legislative Exchange Council, are pushing states to ban localities from taking this public-spirited action. Nineteen so far have.
The battle is only beginning.
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