Technology

which just to happens to be today's sponsor!

I wonder if Linus and woz would be friends

Checks and balances?

Do you mean check marks on my balance sheet for each billion dollar row?

As for damages

Say you have a old masonry structure like a masonry brick fence in the way of the easement

They can tear it down and will, and will not replace it with one of comparable quality if they bother to at all

Ive seen some beautiful 1950s work like that where it goes from amazing tradesmen quality masonry and iron fencing to jank 4x4's and basically chickenwire on the easement, even 2 sections of the masonry/iron fence would take thousands to fix properly from what they did and there's the likelihood they'll do it again in the future.

Those are homes of people on fixed incomes or investments. They usually can't keep fixing the damage. And those fences aren't really decorations, its not even slightly uncommon for people to die from dog maulings in my area. Happens a few times every single year

Say you have a road, driveway, etc? At some point you will have a massive random pothole or speedbump because they'll cut a trough right through it and fill it with asphalt not repour expensive concrete. I can in my neighborhood point out four locations where cable and fiber easement companies have done just that

Theres really no eli5, this is a purposely convoluted topic

Best I could offer you is recomemend you go look up the channels Lehto's Law and The Institute for Justice on YouTube

In the US, easements have a history of being abused to render large areas of privately owned land useless/unusable, to legally trespass, and to harass landowners

There's a reason for example that American Tribes fight especially hard to prevent easements from oil or rail or really any companies

Cable companies in particular have a reputation of destroying peoples properties, have numerous times now been given insane payouts to build the very infrastructure with taxes that they just bought and in those instances pocketed the money without even a slap on the wrist. Further their involvement indicates that any further infrastructure projects expanding that fiber are basically dead, and for any that exist they're going to be on life support

Those same bailout companies just got their hands on the easements that were allowed to go to a group who at the least didn't have that history of abuse, and precedent of the that deal going through so it is more likely to start happening in more places

All of those easements should be considered as dead space and new ones will have to be allocated when expansion is taken up by yet another company on 10 or 20 years when they prove they won't upgrade or properly maintain theirs to modern needs, that means further encroaching on people's property

Think of it like sidewalks that moved another 3-4 feet into people's yards every 10 or so years which you as a homeowner are not allowed to alter or use or complain when their representatives do so

"We're too stupid to have better things," cried Society.

"ran a survey", this was the only clue I needed to realize that they never planned to do it in the first place. Surveys are so easy to manipulate that if someone tells you they made a decision based on a survey, that you can immediately assume that what they are really saying is that they made a decision that they knew would be unpopular, obviously biased, or otherwise disastrous, but they wanted to blame the decision on "other people".

Americans are too stupid to vote in a lot of cases. why even hold a vote on something like this at all? just get it done. why bother asking permission from people who will answer without understanding the question