That logic doesn't seem to work as expected. Didn't community broadband face problems because of the local overregulation backed by existing monopolists? Many of those states are Republican dominated. So it means they are perfectly fine with regulation which protects monopolists, and they oppose one which boosts competition. Google is a threat to existing monopolists too, so why aren't they opposing the effort?
You're right. A more nuanced way of putting it would be that the Republicans prefer that government interfere less with economy. To that end, they support regulation which restrains government from interfering with the economy, and are against the more-typical regulation which directly interferes with the economy.
I think this restraint has merit, but not when applied to interference with monopolies and utilities.
> more nuanced way of putting it would be that the Republicans prefer that government interfere less with economy. To that end, they support regulation which restrains government from interfering with the economy, and are against the more-typical regulation which directly interferes with the economy.
But in this case this logic isn't even correct. Since they support laws which ban competition, and that is clearly interfering with the economy. I.e. it's interfering for the benefit of monopolists, and against the benefit of their competitors and the public. I get an impression that this abstract idea of "don't interfere with the economy" is simply inconsistent. More consistently that position looks like "against competition", which equals against free market.
Community broadband is not competition, it's seizure of a market by the government, an entity that does not have to make a profit and has generally broad authority to take other people's money by force.
More ISPs is competition and more choice for the public. Having a monopoly is surely not competition. There are no two ways about it and no amount of demagoguery will change that fact.
