[Rictor]

http://www.frankston.com/Public/Default.aspx?zz=xcs&Script_name=%2Fdefault.aspx&name=Sidewalks

Morning of my First Day in At Your Service Village!

The ad campaign was compelling -- Freedom from Choice. They provided everything I could ever want, or was it that I could want anything they provided. No matter, I bought one of the houses as soon as I could. I was impressed by how little they charged me -- in fact, by signing up for their lifetime service plan the house was practically free. Sure, the penalty for leaving could buy an entire house in my old neighborhood but who can resist a bargain? They are even nice enough to charge me only an upgrade fee when my house becomes obsolete and I can no longer buy matching wallpaper.

I arrived in a container with the rest of the furniture and hadn't been outside yet. Apparently the movers didn't want to leave anything to chance and they told me it wasn't responsible to just carry the furniture and risk my getting lost along the way. Now that they'd moved us in I was ready to venture forth and stroll around without any particular intent other than casual exploration.

I stepped out to take my stroll and was immediately accosted (in the nicest way, of course) by a gaggle of TSP (Transportation Service Provider) agents vying to sell me the use of their sidewalks. Actually, they called it a Transportation Service -- I didn't have to worry about the details of the sidewalk itself. They realized that I was confused by the ability and the need to choose my sidewalk provider. They reacted as if they were speaking to a dunce and explained that competition was necessary in order to keep the prices down. If they had to share one sidewalk they couldn't guarantee the Quality of Stroll and QoS is very important. Imagine if I started to go to the grocery and had to slow down because someone was walking too slowly. I was about to ask why I couldn't just walk around them when I saw the big "do not walk on the Astroturf signs". I had to limit myself to the QoS provided by the TSPs. Sidewalks are scarce and they had to limit the quality in order to assure that everyone gets "fair" use of the scarce supply of sidewalks -- you can only run three or four sidewalks from the town center to each house -- any more and you'd lose the remaining 10% of the land.

[achtung]

How many lame comaprisons are going to be made?  Tubes, Dump Trucks, Side Walks, what's next?

Also I'm assuming this article supports the tiered system, if so, I disagree.  You know ISPs won't charge a minimal fee, it'll be a nice fat one.

[Descenterace]

They reacted as if they were speaking to a dunce

Which is certainly not the way the people conceiving these dubious metaphors treat the intended audience, as if anyone who doesn't see it their way must not be able to comprehend this complex problem without stories.