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Money-Drunk BellSouth Sings the Blues (very badly) to New Orleons

Mon, 2005-12-05 08:35 — Nick Lewis

Washington Post reports:

Hours after New Orleans officials announced Tuesday that they would deploy a city-owned, wireless Internet network in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, regional phone giant BellSouth Corp. withdrew an offer to donate one of its damaged buildings that would have housed new police headquarters, city officials said yesterday.

BellSouth, ironically, feels victimized that a city which was under 10-20 feet of water just a few months ago, would even consider giving free internet access to those who slowly come back.

Friendly word of advice to the slimebags whose thirst for money is like that of a crackhead for a rock: please go out of business as soon as possible so that you can stop humilating the rest of the human race with your leadership's empty quest for vanity, disregard for everything besides your own interest, and appallingly shitty service. Please, go away.

Comments

Thu, 2005-12-15 19:22 — Karlo (not verified)

!

Yep. The greed is unbelievable. In a related vein, NPR had some special on some young kid who set up a rural wireless network on a shoe-string (I forget the figures but it was thousands of dollars). He then asked subscribers to simply pay him whatever they thought it was worth on a voluntary basis. Stories like this make me think we should introduce human cloning. We need to create copies of the gene for altruism wherever we find it.
Thu, 2005-12-15 20:47 — Nick Lewis

Mr. Karlo -- nice of you to stop by

Hey there Karlo. Following up on that thought, I'd retort that we don't need clones. I submit these thoughts from this incredible essay A Renaissance of the Commons:
One of the most potent challenges to free-market dogma – and affirmations of the commons – is coming from new scientific findings about human nature. Thanks to recent research into brain functioning, genetics, developmental and evolutionary psychology and biology, and comparative anthropology, we need no longer accept the armchair speculations of 17th Century philosophers such as David Hume, John Locke, and Thomas Hobbes about the actual propensities and capacities of human beings. Although our understanding is by no means complete, recent research points to a coherent new understanding of basic aspects of human nature. The research – which is inherently non-ideological and eminently testable – is almost a point-for-point refutation of the premises of free-market dogma. The implications are enormous. If the different strands of the emerging sciences could be woven together and popularized, the resulting synthesis could catalyze a sea change in our images of ourselves and human society. While FreeMarket Dogama conveniently offers an antiquated, highly simplified model of human nature and economic behavior, a new, more dynamic model of human agency and social identity is starting to emerge. Our history as a species reveals that social cooperation, not just brutal competition, has been a critical evolutionary factor in the survival of the human species. Unfortunately, the story of human nature continues to be told in the sound bites of 17th century philosophers. A more balanced, subtle and realistic account is long overdue.

Did that hook you? Read the whole essay...