On January 3rd at Noon (1100 15th Street NW, 11th Floor) the DC Environmental Network will be convening our monthly brown-bag to discuss a possible new waste-to-energy conversion facility (possibly incineration) within the District of Columbia. Continue reading
As I recently mentioned in my endorsement of Tubes by Andrew Blum, the book explains how a municipal fiber network helped to attract Google to town. Google sited its first “built-from-scratch data center” there, a $600 million investment according to Stephen Levy. According to Blum, it all started back in 2000 when the community got… Continue reading
If you have been trying to find a book that offers an engaging explanation of how the Internet physically works and the various networks interconnect, search no more. Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet by Andrew Blum has done it. The author was featured on Fresh Air way back in May, but… Continue reading
An article about health care in the 2012 November Wired offers a strong reminder of how important smart government policy plays in making markets function well. In the early 1950s, it was nearly impossible to know the value of an automobile. They had prices, yes, but these would differ radically from dealer to dealer, the… Continue reading
After six years in the making, the OpenCape network is soon to be delivering services. According to a Sandwich Wicked Local article, town selectmen were informed on December 6th that the Brockton-to-Plymouth stretch of the network will be activated before the end of 2012 for testing. We brought you detailed news of the $40 million… Continue reading
Susan Crawford’s new book, Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry & Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age, looks to be an excellent read for anyone regularly perusing this site. It is becoming available at bookstores near you. (For why we discourage buying from Amazon, see our Amazon Infographic.) Susan did a one hour presentation at… Continue reading
This past spring, we introduced you to the small town of Leverett, in rural western Massachusetts. Having been largely ignored by the cable companies and left behind by Verizon’s DSL service, the community overwhelmingly approved a town-owned network initiative in a May vote. They decided to finance the FTTH network with a 20-year bond measure. The… Continue reading
If Walmart will not pay 3 percent more for basic fire safety, if it readily abandons factories when cheaper production can be had elsewhere, if it declines even to come clean about where its goods are made – then how can we buy Walmart’s claim that it will transform factories across Asia into models of sustainability? Continue reading
Since 1974, ILSR has championed local self-reliance, a strategy that underscores the need for humanly scaled institutions and economies and the widest possible distribution of ownership. Click and Contribute Today! To our donors and partners, thank you for joining us as we work towards a prosperous future built from the bottom up. Continue reading
Robert J. Shiller, Professor of Economics and Finance at Yale recently weighed in with his perspective on subsidizing charity with a New York Times column whose title clearly conveys his message: “Please Don’t Mess With the Charitable Deduction.” There is a case to be made for charitable deductions. Regrettably, this isn’t it. Shiller offers three… Continue reading
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