Hey friends 👋,
A few months ago, Amazon announced that Kindle users would no longer be able to download and back up their book libraries to their computers. Thankfully, I still have access to my library because I saw this video by Jared Henderson warning of the change and downloaded all
That quickly becomes a tragedy of the commons. The city residents pay for it but how do you verify “citizenship”?
If you mean citizenship as being associated to the city whose hosting services you are using, yhe power or water bill pointed at your name and residence should be able to do that. Now, if you want that plus anonimity, the only practical option I can think of for a city-wide physical campaign is some sort of GPG Signature Meetup (“signature party”).
Many people live in cities without owning their house. So they never see those bills. Renters are usually two levels away from the actual owner. Then there are all the people who live and work in cities but aren’t official renters.
In the USA, most power bills are the tenants’ responsibility. In the USA, virtually all internet connections are the tenants’ responsibility.
The locality hosting the services could also pass a law requiring the tenants to either bear responsibilities for, or be included in, all utility related billing.
A lot of arguments in this thread seem to be ignoring this as a solution to the legitimate problems they’re raising.
If every city has the same then why would you even want to?
It would have to be a national mandate that is available in every city or everyone would use the free service from one city but not vote to raise the taxes in their city to pay for their own.
If it’s a national mandate, then might as well make it a national service.