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This post is mind-boggling to me... > > We could be running fiber-optic cable to every house in America, and we even know how much it would cost. > That's the

This post is mind-boggling to me... > > We could be running fiber-optic cable to every house in America, and we even know how much it would cost. > That's the problem, isn't it? It costs too much. No it doesn't, and we already paid for it at least four times over. The large-scale ISPs (and even small-scale ones) have been given $400,000,000,000 by Congress since the 1990s until now to bring broadband Internet to people in America. They still didn't get it done. They didn't get it done because they used the money to buy back stock and give themselves bonuses after wiring up a few hundred thousand homes at most: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-book-of-broken-promis_b_5839394 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-book-of-broken-promis_b_5... And the reason we paid for it at least four times over, is because the Pentagon commissioned a study some time ago on the amount of money required to bring a strand of fiber-optic cable to every home in America. They estimated it to be around $50,000,000,000 to $100,000,000,000. There are a lot more problems we can solve with more severe punishments and more certainty of being punished. We can solve even more with re-instituting shame in our society. This idea that nothing is shameful is not only disgusting, but objectively stupid... and we can see where it's led us.

vlovich123 3y ago
Oft repeated but https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7709556 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7709556 lays out a compelling argument that maybe the government didn’t actually hand out $400B in subsidies/tax breaks but instead it’s an artifact of how the researcher for the book chose to classify profits but that you could make an alternative pitch. I’m not well-versed enough in the law to know but it sounded like this person did research vs quoting a summary of the book by its author. Not disagreeing with the rest, but if the other poster was correct it may be worth correcting the record on whether or not we actually did attempt to fund building fiber throughout America.
pompino 3y ago
Personally, I don't find it "mind boggling", but rather in-line with reality. Large mega-projects usually suffer major delays, massive cost over-runs, complications due to unforeseen events, and are at a high-risk for corruption. It is hard to believe we now have a handle on what it takes to do accurate costing of such large ambitious public infrastructure projects.

vlovich123 3y ago

Oft repeated but https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7709556 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7709556 lays out a compelling argument that maybe the government didn’t actually hand out $400B in subsidies/tax breaks but instead it’s an artifact of how the researcher for the book chose to classify profits but that you could make an alternative pitch. I’m not well-versed enough in the law to know but it sounded like this person did research vs quoting a summary of the book by its author. Not disagreeing with the rest, but if the other poster was correct it may be worth correcting the record on whether or not we actually did attempt to fund building fiber throughout America.

pompino 3y ago

Personally, I don't find it "mind boggling", but rather in-line with reality. Large mega-projects usually suffer major delays, massive cost over-runs, complications due to unforeseen events, and are at a high-risk for corruption. It is hard to believe we now have a handle on what it takes to do accurate costing of such large ambitious public infrastructure projects.