5 ms·
> Things like GPS and the internet would’ve been deployed much faster by a private corporation but then they would be dumb monopolies as opposed to the public g
by cauthon 4y ago
> Things like GPS and the internet would’ve been deployed much faster by a private corporation but then they would be dumb monopolies as opposed to the public good they are now.
1) at least in the USA, access to the internet is not a public good, it is provided by an oligopoly (and in many circumstances a functional monopoly, where service at a given address is only available from a single ISP)
2) why do you believe that either GPS or the internet would have been deployed faster by a private corporation?
- pj_mukh 4y agoI would compare GPS to something like Starlink which went from idea to activation in 5 years while GPS took over 15. While of course, Starlink relied on government know-how, given away for free, the speed of deployment was 2-3x. In the end we’re left with a monopoly service which sucks. But, it came together quick. Why can’t we have both? Fast deploying public goods.
- meheleventyone 4y agoIsn’t that more to do with when GPS was deployed. Doing things early is harder and takes longer, even more so when you’re first. Comparatively Starlink has fewer novel problems to solve. If you’re going to compare the two you need to control for confounding factors.
- pj_mukh 4y agoSure but they had full access to 20 years of launch technology from NASA at that point. More generally, I don’t think “Government works slower then private corporations” is that controversial a conclusion. If we’re gonna try to improve it, we have to admit the problem first.
- kortilla 4y ago>Comparatively Starlink has fewer novel problems to solve. Lol, this is worse than the infamous Dropbox comment. There are no LEO providers except for Starlink for a reason. Starlink required novel launch techniques, novel antennas, novel network management, and that’s just what we know about publicly.
- trasz 4y agoThe “infamous Dropbox comment” was technically valid - there’s no novel technology there. What the comment missed was the business part - Dropbox is technically inferior, but at the same time it’s superior business-wise, and that’s a common theme for the vast majority of web startups.
- jjj123 4y agoThe parent comment wasn’t saying that starlink has no Novel problems to solve, just that there were fewer than GPS.
- meheleventyone 4y agoAbsolutely I think people don’t realise that the GPS project began in 1973!
- kortilla 4y agoWhat novel problems do you think GPS had to solve?