[NNagain] A good question - do you know how a toilet works?

[Dick Roy]

See highlighted text below.  To follow up on the previous posting on “amoral
capitalism”, the tincture of mercury was being promoted by those with
mercury to sell, while a good blood-letting was being promoted by leech
farmers trying to generate a market for their products!  The analogy is
surprisingly tight! :-) 

 

Cheers,

 

RR

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Nnagain [mailto:nnagain-bounces at lists.bufferbloat.net] On Behalf Of
rjmcmahon via Nnagain
Sent: Wednesday, October 4, 2023 12:41 PM
To: Network Neutrality is back! Let´s make the technical aspects heard this
time!
Cc: rjmcmahon; bloat
Subject: Re: [NNagain] A good question - do you know how a toilet works?

 

Some books I found worth reading

 

https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674416833

 

Eden on the Charles

The Making of Boston

Michael Rawson

 

Eden on the Charles explores how Bostonians channeled country lakes 

through miles of pipeline to provide clean water; dredged the ocean to 

deepen the harbor; filled tidal flats and covered the peninsula with 

houses, shops, and factories; and created a metropolitan system of parks 

and greenways, facilitating the conversion of fields into suburbs. The 

book shows how, in Boston, different class and ethnic groups brought 

rival ideas of nature and competing visions of a “city upon a hill” to 

the process of urbanization—and were forced to conform their goals to 

the realities of Boston’s distinctive natural setting. The outcomes of 

their battles for control over the city’s development were ultimately 

recorded in the very fabric of Boston itself. In Boston’s history, we 

find the seeds of the environmental relationships that—for better or 

worse—have defined urban America to this day.

 

https://upittpress.org/books/9780822961475/#:~:text=Jacobson's%20Ties%20That
%20Bind%20is,the%20course%20of%20two%20centuries.

 

Ties That Bind

By Charles Jacobson

 

In the early days of utility development, municipalities sought to shape 

the new systems in a variety of ways even as private firms struggled to 

retain control and fend off competition. In scope and consequence, some 

of the battles dwarfed the contemporary one between local jurisdictions 

and cable companies over broadband access to the Internet. In this 

comparative historical study, Jacobson draws upon economic theory to 

shed light on relationships between technology, market forces, and 

problems of governance that have arisen in connection with different 

utility networks over the past two hundred years. He focuses on water, 

electric, and cable television utility networks and on experiences in 

four major American cities — Boston, Seattle, San Francisco, and 

Pittsburgh, arguing that information and transactions costs have played 

decisive roles in determining how different ownership and regulatory 

arrangements have functioned in different situations.Using primary 

sources and bold conceptualizations, Jacobson begins his study by 

examining the creation of centralized water systems in the first half of 

the nineteenth century, moves to the building of electric utilities from 

the 1880s to the 1980s, and concludes with an analysis of cable 

television franchising from the 1960s to the 1980s. Ties That Bind 

addresses highly practical questions of how to make ownership, 

regulatory, and contracting arrangements work better and also explores 

broader concerns about private monopoly and the role of government in 

society.

 

Bob

> Sometimes I liken this debate about the internet, to 1906-era

> partisans arguing about the right cures for syphilis. One side,

> intoning with great authority: "Tinctures of mercury, yes a good dose

> of mercury, is just what you need... " and the other side, insisting

> that "Leeches, leeches will help... all you need is a  good

> blood-letting... and everything will be fine..."

> 

> While those few that had embraced germ theory and were pointing at

> little squiggly things in microscopes as the root causes of so much

> disease, were laughed at and ignored.

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