Well, because getting on the Internet at high speed is essential for business development, similar to electricity, the entire country
assumed that despite the general global deindustrialization that at least rural areas would gradually get Internet access, despite the big companies not wanting to do it because they lose money.
But, while they slept, the plutocrats were busy night and day making all the things that we assumed we could do FTA illegal. Triggering huge bailouts if we attempt them (energy too.. even if the climate goes berserk, we're going to have to export the natural gas to the highest bidder using the cheapest possible workforce to do it, even if people are freezing to death in large numbers. They did their homework and made a trap for us we wont be able to escape.
They're so smart..
How? Why?
A trade agreement ("GATS") in 1995 basically froze new public everything, unless it was in a service area that was completely noncommercial on the date it came into existence, (Jan 1, 1995) which the country intended to stay noncommercial, so the door shut then to new community wireless, along with anything else poor communities needed, like public health care, expansions of public education, public water, public works, at least on paper. (although that didn't stop 3 out of 4 of the candidates in 2016 from running on platforms based on things that violated it. They were lying. Telling Americans what we wanted to hear to lull us into a state of false security.)
Here is the wording, which defines the scope of this agreement, scope that is extremely wide.
"For the purposes of this Agreement...
(b) 'services' includes any service in any sector except services supplied in the exercise of
governmental authority;
(c) 'a service supplied in the exercise of governmental authority' means any service which is supplied neither on a commercial basis, nor in competition with one or more service suppliers.
Its supposed to stop all progress in a great many areas. The argument goes that public services are depriving the poor corporations (but again the logic doesnt really make much sense) of those jobs.
You've made the assumption that most rural areas have coverage now, which in my experience they mostly do not.
You can't declare something a disaster because they aren't getting something they never had in the first place.
I disagree with you on that. Given that jobs are going away in the coming years, sentencing rural areas to non-connectivity when they are basically going to be where poor people - a group thats going to be a LOT larger than it is today, because both automation and liberalisation, are expected to live, is tantamount to - well, lets not go there.
Okay, suppose we lose 40% of our jobs to liberalization and another 40% to automation over the next 20 years. (This is likely a realistic estimate, IMHO)
Also remember that there wont be any way that governments could help them if it reduced the profits of multinational corporations such as banks.
Glass-Stegall was 'reformed' (Causing the 2008 crash's devastation for millions of Americans ) The taxpayers were liable because of GATS, after all.
Not a single US paper said a peep about this despite the proof being unambiguous, a single line on the last page of the third supplement to the specific commitments page 31- a document filed in Geneva on February 26, 1998.
Tell me, has the British press told you that the WTO-GATS is at the root of the NHS's problems?
We're being walked into a trap.
Nor could they prosecute foreign banks in the future for their widespread mortgage fraud if they did not prosecute US banks in 2008. that would be discrimination. Thats how the GATS works.
How could we do that after we invited them in such a welcoming manner?
Basically, GATS is a war on the very concept of a middle class. By the plutocracy. Because here isnt going to be a need for people to be paid more than they are worth when machines do everything. Whats the point when tens of thousands of starving people want that job?
Supply and demand, Economics 101. To allow governments to help people would cheat the plutocracy of the windfall they are entitled to by Economics 101. Profit, preferably huge profits, is the essence of capitalism.
What then? That means millions of people will lose their futures and their equity, and a mass exodus from cities and exurbs because people wont be able to afford to live there anymore. Those houses will be snapped up by wealthy people from around the globe.
So where will the poor live? Well, they will likely all be in debt so children born will be off the grid as well and so, like those in Africa and Asia who are being pushed off the map now, they wont exist.
"Off the grid"