4 ms·

Maybe I'm missing the point, but what's the problem? It seems to me that the worst senario here is that Google supplants traditional telcos, and essentially bec

Maybe I'm missing the point, but what's the problem? It seems to me that the worst senario here is that Google supplants traditional telcos, and essentially becomes another monopoly for >1Gbps web access. Compared with what we have today, I'm pretty happy with that outcome. Actually, the worst outcome will be that the general public doesn't care enough, Google fiber flops, and the traditional model becomes further entrenched. I would also be a bit happier with a real, innovative, public broadband program. I don't think the US has the political culture to pull that off. > In fact, Google has gained "question answering" capabilities in the last few years thanks to web spam farms run by companies like eHow. I was under the general impression that they're trying to minimize this. It also seems like this kind of plague would affect any dominant search engine.

briandear 14y ago
> I would also be a bit happier with a real, innovative, public broadband program. I don't think the US has the political culture to pull that off. The political culture is one that caters to specific groups. If it was "broadband for farmers" then you'd get the farm lobby pushing for it. If it was "broadband for the poor" then you'd get the food stamp crowd on board. If it was "broadband for investment banks" then you might get the bank crowd on board. The fact that most infrastructure doesn't get broad-based political support is a symptom of "what's in it for me." It why it's so difficult to solve problems like Air Traffic Control systems being from the 1970s -- most people think, "I only fly once in a while, so why should I give up <insert preferred program here> in order to pay for upgrading the ATC system?" Sure, many people use the internet, but the average user doesn't think about how much better things could be. I get it -- broadband would benefit everyone either directly or indirectly, but it's hard to sell those benefits to the general electorate because money for broadband would mean less money for some other, more politically "interesting" project. I don't think anyone in America (Republican, Democrat, Independent) wants terrible infrastructure. The political hot potato is deciding how to pay for it. Regardless of tax or spending philosophies, it necessarily follows that spending on X takes money from Y. With money we spent for 1 year in Iraq, we could have paid for national broadband (among other things), however we also spend $80 billion per year on food stamps. Both of those priorities however, have some unexpected consequences. The defense contractors make money, but it also creates jobs and stimulates economic output (see WWII). Food stamps also create taxable events and drives economic activity, though both activities, when viewed in purely economic terms are net losses for the economy, the degree of which is outside of the scope of this discussion. Public broadband on the other hand would be a net gain for the economy because increased infrastructure efficiency greases the wheels of the entire economy. Better roads = lower trucking costs and more consumption and therefore more spending and jobs. However, it's hard to quantify those theoretical benefits to the electorate. Same goes for public broadband. There are some tasks ideally suited for government and utilities, infrastructure, police/fire, defense are certainly among them. Public broadband is more relevant to governmental roles than subsidizing private business (i.e. GM, Fiskar, Solyndra, Bank of America, etc.) Our infrastructure should be "too big to fail," but alas.. /rant truncated

briandear 14y ago

> I would also be a bit happier with a real, innovative, public broadband program. I don't think the US has the political culture to pull that off. The political culture is one that caters to specific groups. If it was "broadband for farmers" then you'd get the farm lobby pushing for it. If it was "broadband for the poor" then you'd get the food stamp crowd on board. If it was "broadband for investment banks" then you might get the bank crowd on board. The fact that most infrastructure doesn't get broad-based political support is a symptom of "what's in it for me." It why it's so difficult to solve problems like Air Traffic Control systems being from the 1970s -- most people think, "I only fly once in a while, so why should I give up <insert preferred program here> in order to pay for upgrading the ATC system?" Sure, many people use the internet, but the average user doesn't think about how much better things could be. I get it -- broadband would benefit everyone either directly or indirectly, but it's hard to sell those benefits to the general electorate because money for broadband would mean less money for some other, more politically "interesting" project. I don't think anyone in America (Republican, Democrat, Independent) wants terrible infrastructure. The political hot potato is deciding how to pay for it. Regardless of tax or spending philosophies, it necessarily follows that spending on X takes money from Y. With money we spent for 1 year in Iraq, we could have paid for national broadband (among other things), however we also spend $80 billion per year on food stamps. Both of those priorities however, have some unexpected consequences. The defense contractors make money, but it also creates jobs and stimulates economic output (see WWII). Food stamps also create taxable events and drives economic activity, though both activities, when viewed in purely economic terms are net losses for the economy, the degree of which is outside of the scope of this discussion. Public broadband on the other hand would be a net gain for the economy because increased infrastructure efficiency greases the wheels of the entire economy. Better roads = lower trucking costs and more consumption and therefore more spending and jobs. However, it's hard to quantify those theoretical benefits to the electorate. Same goes for public broadband. There are some tasks ideally suited for government and utilities, infrastructure, police/fire, defense are certainly among them. Public broadband is more relevant to governmental roles than subsidizing private business (i.e. GM, Fiskar, Solyndra, Bank of America, etc.) Our infrastructure should be "too big to fail," but alas.. /rant truncated