They're Laughing At Us In Korea

Americans are blithely unaware of how bad things have gotten here in the Greatest Country On Earth. That's not terribly surprising, for is it not true that a fish is the last one to figure out that the water it swims in is polluted? Of course it is. That's the situation in the United States, a place where delusion is a way of life and the bullshit runs deep.

The latest evidence—there are literally hundreds of indicators to choose from—comes in the Daily Ticker story Why Your Phone, Cable & Internet Bills Cost So Much. Aaron Task interviews David Cay Johnston, whose latest book is The Fine Print: How Big Companies Use 'Plain English' to Rob You Blind. Johnston is one of those guys who enjoys uncovering the fine details of how America's corporate elites manage to screw the people through the political system over and over again.

I'm glad Johnston does this because somebody has got to do it. I'm way too disgusted to try to dig up those kind of details, and nobody is paying me to do it. Muckraking is almost a lost art in contemporary America, though it has a long tradition here (e.g. H. L. Mencken).

The latest fiasco concerns the speed and cost of internet service here in the Land of the Free. It turns out that we Americans are paying out mucho dollars to get some of the poorest internet connection speeds on Earth. In the interview below, we learn that internet service is faster and cheaper in Norway, Lithuania, the Ukraine, Moldavia and a host of other places. In Johnston's book, we find out that—

• Americans pay four times as much as the French for an Internet triple-play package—phone, cable TV and Internet—at an average of $160 per month versus $38 per month.
• The French get global free calling and worldwide live television. Their Internet is also 10 times faster at downloading information and 20 times faster uploading it.
• America has gone from #1 in Internet speed (when we invented it) to 29th in the world and falling.
• Bulgaria is among the countries with faster Internet service.
• Americans pay 38 times as much as the Japanese for Internet data.

AT&T, Verizon, Comcast and others were paid by Congress to build out a high-speed fiber-optic network, and they promised to do it, but also made sure that legislative language did not require them to actually do it. So they didn't, and consequently we are slaves to the profitable monopolies they intended to create and subsequently did create. There is more than one way to skin a cat. You're the cat.

Read Johnston's book, or the Daily Ticker story, or watch the interview below for the details. In that interview, you will find the following exchange:

Aaron Task — What they call high-speed internet in this country, they would laugh at in almost any other [place].

David Cay Johnston — They do. I was in Korea this year, and people literally laughed at how bad the American internet was when I interviewed people.

Koreans are laughing at us for the simplest of reasons—it is because we are a joke. And a bad one, I might add. We are the laughing stock of the developed (and not-so-developed) world.

So go ahead, vote for Republicans or vote for Democrats this fall, but don't expect your internet service to get faster and cheaper. Don't wait for it, as the late, great George Carlin said, be happy with what you've got, because the owners of this country, the real owners, don't want you to get that faster cheaper internet service.

 

Comments

[Ben]

"Companies such as AT&T, Verizon, Comcast and others were paid by Congress" It's a big club, and you ain't in it. You and I are not in the big club. - Carlin

I speed tested my service, the speed was so low for the price that I'm paying that I'm too embarrassed to post it. Check yours out if you want to at http://www.speedtest.net/