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Comment by greggyb | Hacker News Reader

There are more organizational structures than "large, profit-maximizing corporation" and "municipal government".

In support of my argument, I present: co-op and not-for-profit.

More broadly, since I wrote more than one sentence, my point was that the dominant factor in bringing down prices and bringing up reliability of service is having multiple viable options available.

I never made a claim that there are no other differences attributable to organizational structure, though I do see one might misinterpret in that way.

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Co-ops and nonprofits aren't always great. We have a co-op grocery++ store (almost like Walmart I assume) in Norway named Coop. It's a fine store and all but they're no different than the rest.

They spend tons of money on advertising etc so they just end up acting exactly like a forprofit corporation except they can say they're a co-op and market themselves as "a little bit yours" because you can pay like $20 a year or something and "own" it.

I'm convinced there's a bunch of forprofits siphoning off the profits somehow. Just like with charities, they find ways to extract that cash flow. Slurping it up like black gold.

Municipalities aren't always great. That is an entirely different point than the uniqueness of municipalities.

I don't disagree with anything you said.

The benefit of a coop structure like this is for the workers. Worker owned coops tend to have flatter pay scales, retain employees longer, and are internally democratic.

Even if you're just narrowly looking at prices, a community run ISP will be cheaper even if it has a monopoly. Therefore the claim there is "nothing special" about them is untrue. The difference is one is run to maximize profit and the other isnt.

The existence of non profits or coops is irrelevant to the original claim. Although I'm fully in support of those also.

I see that you are quoting someone else, so I will let you continue your argument with them.

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