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If my internet connection was maintained in a similar manner to the street I live on, I would be switching to satellite. The US has a severe problem with its a

If my internet connection was maintained in a similar manner to the street I live on, I would be switching to satellite. The US has a severe problem with its ability to maintain infrastructure - which I think is closely related to the ability to scale mentioned in another comment. For reference, Sweden is around the same size as California, with 1/4th the population.

jonathankoren 10y ago
Do you have the same problem with your water and sewer? The problem with infrastructure in the US is simply one of money. We don't want to pay for nice things. It's the 50 year old self-fulfilling prophesy of cut budgets, then complain that nothing is maintained and so the budget needs to be cut more because clearly it must have been wasted. Repeat ad nauseum. (This of phenomenon also plays out on the micro scale when people claim poor people are poor because they bought a stick of gum, instead of I guess investing 22 cents in an index fund or something.)
- refurb 10y ago
  No, it's things like what happened with the Big Dig in Boston... "However, the project was completed only in December 2007 (instead of 1998), at a cost of over $14.6 billion ($8.08 billion in 1982 dollars, meaning a cost overrun of about 190%)[6] as of 2006"
  - jonathankoren 10y ago
    Lets be honest here. What would you do when you've dug a hole in the middle of Boston and disrupted traffic and every other piece of infrastructure in that part of city after you run out of budget? Walk away and leaving a gaping pit? Spend more money and fill the pit in, and then be left with your original problem, that's now probably even worse than when you started? Fill in the hole, and then dig a new hole? Or do you effectively throw good money after bad and finish the job? Comparing a government transportation project to anything in the private sector is a canard. There's literally nothing comparable. That isn't the say that government contracting policies and processes are perfect and not abused. They clearly aren't perfect, and they clearly are abused. See the F-35, and well, pretty much every military purchase since the Cold War. See the vast majority of government infrastructure projects. Most importantly, these cost overruns aren't something that's fundamental about private-vs-public, but rather something about how American governments function.[0] Unfortunately, there's no single smoking gun, and instead everyone falls back to their favorite boogeymen. (My favorites are multiple environmental impact studies, public comment periods, fraud, and of course willful incompetence (i.e. "I don't believe the government should do this, so I"m going to do a really shitty job, and then use my poor performance as evidence that the government is intrinsically incompetent.")) [0] https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-04-08/why-u-s-infrastructure-costs-so-much https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-04-08/why-u-s-i...
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
selestify 10y ago
So why doesn't California have as good internet as Sweden?
- BatFastard 10y ago
  Because the Swedish officials don't take money from the cable companies.

jonathankoren 10y ago

Do you have the same problem with your water and sewer? The problem with infrastructure in the US is simply one of money. We don't want to pay for nice things. It's the 50 year old self-fulfilling prophesy of cut budgets, then complain that nothing is maintained and so the budget needs to be cut more because clearly it must have been wasted. Repeat ad nauseum. (This of phenomenon also plays out on the micro scale when people claim poor people are poor because they bought a stick of gum, instead of I guess investing 22 cents in an index fund or something.)

refurb 10y ago
No, it's things like what happened with the Big Dig in Boston... "However, the project was completed only in December 2007 (instead of 1998), at a cost of over $14.6 billion ($8.08 billion in 1982 dollars, meaning a cost overrun of about 190%)[6] as of 2006"
- jonathankoren 10y ago
  Lets be honest here. What would you do when you've dug a hole in the middle of Boston and disrupted traffic and every other piece of infrastructure in that part of city after you run out of budget? Walk away and leaving a gaping pit? Spend more money and fill the pit in, and then be left with your original problem, that's now probably even worse than when you started? Fill in the hole, and then dig a new hole? Or do you effectively throw good money after bad and finish the job? Comparing a government transportation project to anything in the private sector is a canard. There's literally nothing comparable. That isn't the say that government contracting policies and processes are perfect and not abused. They clearly aren't perfect, and they clearly are abused. See the F-35, and well, pretty much every military purchase since the Cold War. See the vast majority of government infrastructure projects. Most importantly, these cost overruns aren't something that's fundamental about private-vs-public, but rather something about how American governments function.[0] Unfortunately, there's no single smoking gun, and instead everyone falls back to their favorite boogeymen. (My favorites are multiple environmental impact studies, public comment periods, fraud, and of course willful incompetence (i.e. "I don't believe the government should do this, so I"m going to do a really shitty job, and then use my poor performance as evidence that the government is intrinsically incompetent.")) [0] https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-04-08/why-u-s-infrastructure-costs-so-much https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-04-08/why-u-s-i...
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

selestify 10y ago

So why doesn't California have as good internet as Sweden?

BatFastard 10y ago
Because the Swedish officials don't take money from the cable companies.