4 ms·

There are a lot of things you can do in a rich, tiny, homogenous country that you can't do in a enormous, diverse country. If my house were a country, I'd be i

There are a lot of things you can do in a rich, tiny, homogenous country that you can't do in a enormous, diverse country. If my house were a country, I'd be in the top 0.1% of household internet speeds compared to other countries. Obviously everyone should be just like me!

ceejayoz 7mo ago
> There are a lot of things you can do in a rich, tiny, homogenous country that you can't do in a enormous, diverse country. The US is a large collection of a whole bunch of rich (by global standards), tiny, fairly homogenous areas. We manage roads and schools at state, county, and local levels; we could do municipal broadband.
hibikir 7mo ago
The difficulties of American internet speeds have little to do with the total size of the country, but how far individual families are from each other. Spain is roughly the size of Texas, and Spain has a higher population, but you need a lot less fiber to each home, because metro areas are so much denser, and therefore it's so much easier to lay the fiber. As usual, blame the suburbs, which make all kinds of infrastructure quite a bit more expensive per capita.
- ceejayoz 7mo ago
  But the US has long lagged behind in even dense areas. It's more than just the distribution.
  - cvwright 7mo ago
    Right. It’s things like Baltimore (when I lived there) requiring that high speed internet had to roll out in poor areas first, before it could go into the rich neighborhoods. But this was the early 2000s and the internet was still “new”. Only the richer areas cared and were willing to pay the price. Letting them have first (or even equal!) access would have made it easier to fund the rollout in low income areas.
- awakeasleep 7mo ago
  Huge swaths of our densest metro areas, in our largest cities, do not have any fiber option, just one cable provider.
  - kube-system 7mo ago
    The NEC, which is the only area of the US that really has any density to speak of, does have pretty good fiber penetration. https://www.reviews.org/app/uploads/2024/11/Verizon-Fios-coverage-map.webp https://www.reviews.org/app/uploads/2024/11/Verizon-Fios-cov...
bugglebeetle 7mo ago
>homogenous country Tell me you know nothing about Switzerland without telling me you know nothing about Switzerland. Try asking a German Swiss what they think about a French Swiss or either about the Romansch.
- dotancohen 7mo ago
  I wonder if there is some sort of metric for classifying how similar cultures are to one another. Are e.g. German Swiss more dissimilar to French Swiss, than are Florida rednecks dissimilar to Compton gangsters?
  - bugglebeetle 7mo ago
    If you ever heard them talk about each other, you would definitely assume as much.
  - khalic 7mo ago
    I’m not even talking about the languages, we have 20% immigrants in the population, and an even larger part has foreign roots. We also don’t have weapons in every household, if we’re talking myths
    - denysvitali 7mo ago
      > We also don’t have weapons in every household, if we’re talking myths It all depends if you did your military service (which implies that you're swiss) and if you didn't decide to drop out of it or deemed as unfit. I don't think it's a myth really, it just happens to be that a lot of people don't do their military service and thus don't have to keep a weapon at home
      - khalic 7mo ago
        You’re right about the source of the weapons wrong about how many there are. An estimated one in five household has firearms, with a significant percentage not having ammunition at home at all.
wat10000 7mo ago
Rich is a key attribute here. Tiny, not really. The key is dense. That makes terrestrial connections cheaper. A country with the population of the US and the richness and density of Switzerland would be just as capable of building out high speed internet connections. It would have ~38x the population of Switzerland, cost ~38x more to wire, and have ~38x the resources with which to do it. Incidentally, the northeast of the US has a similar or greater population density as Switzerland and is pretty rich. That area, at least, should be as capable of this sort of thing. Doing it for, say, everybody in Alaska would be a bit tougher. I don't know what diversity has to do with anything here. As far as I've seen, people from all sorts of different places and cultures seem to like high speed internet about equally well.
- Aspos 7mo ago
  Infrastructure is laughable in northeast. And no, we do not have competition here in NJ. Yay "free market"
toofy 7mo ago
> There are a lot of things you can do in a rich, tiny, homogenous country that you can't do in an enormous, diverse country. US states are little islands entirely capable of doing things like building infrastructure. There is no excuse for our states and their lack of movement, certainly not “the entire country is just tooooo big. whoa is us.” nonsense.
- djoldman 7mo ago
  Yes, that's true for population. But all except 9 US states are larger in geographic area and only 5 have a higher population density. Those are pretty salient statistics when you're talking about infrastructure that links houses.
  - kalleboo 7mo ago
    Does New York have great home fiber infrastructure?
khalic 7mo ago
Homogenous? Tell me you don’t know anything about Switzerland without telling me…
Moldoteck 7mo ago
It's so homogeneous that there are 4 national languages, one of which is german with tons of loval dialects. It's so homogeneous that each canton has own sub regulations. It's so homogeneous that in it's biggest city, Zurich, 34% of people are foreigners and 45% born outside of Switzerland. But we can look at the opposite part of spectrum - Moldova, poorest country in Europe - 85% of infra is covered by fibre, >90% of population has option to get 1GBit fiber There are always reasons why something can't be done, just like solving frequent school shooting problem in US
- Sesse__ 7mo ago
  > 34% of people are foreigners I remember moving there, hearing talks about how international Zurich was, and then realizing most of those foreigners were German. :-) It's diverse on paper (and probably to the Swiss), but it's not like it's a cosmopolitan melting pot.
  - izacus 7mo ago
    They really aren't.
  - micwag 7mo ago
    Most immigration happens between neighboring countries e.g. the biggest immigrant group in Los Angeles are Mexicans. If you exclude neighboring countries Zurich has a foreign born population share of 27% (compared to 18% of Los Angeles). If you only look at the last 10 years Zurich has foreign born non neighboring immigration of 10% (compared to 4% for Los Angeles). If you only look at intercontinental migration then Los Angeles wins with 14% (compared to 8% of Zurich). So yes Zurich is less cosmopolitan then LA, but most of it is just because the US has more diverse neighbors.
  - tribaal 7mo ago
    Maybe you should visit Geneva then, or most of the "Arc Lemanique". It's way more diverse than Zurich. Well, if you mean "diverse" as "more brown people" as your comment seems to imply.
- Ray20 7mo ago
StrauXX 7mo ago
Switzerland is one of the least homogenous countries in Europe! Four languages, relatively weak federal government with strong local (canton) governments. Most state services are handled on a localized (canton) level.
Broken_Hippo 7mo ago
The US being different is no excuse - this is really just a shortsighted retelling of American Exceptionalism. Intelligent folks look at a system and figure out ways they can adapt it to their own situation. You can take systems they use for rural areas and figure out ways to do it on your own. The US is enormous, but most folks live in cities. States are tiny portions of the US, and some of those states would likely mirror Switzerland in diversity, density, and size. It wouldn't matter if the country had a population density similar to the US and was similar in many ways. It'd still need adaptation because of the differences in culture, laws, and so on.
izacus 7mo ago
Many US states are richer than Switzerland, what's their excuse?
piva00 7mo ago
The enormous, diverse country excuse is a good thought-terminating cliche but doesn't really hold up when the population of such enormous, diverse country is well concentrated along the coasts, with very dense rich pockets. Sweden, for example, is tiny in population compared to the US but geographically its size covers from north Florida to NYC, with barely 10m people it's able to have great public transportation, fiber coverage to 80-85+% of buildings, cellphone coverage to 98% of the population even in remote locations. Being enormous like the US might leave a vast area of low density population centres but it doesn't excuse at all that the areas where the vast majority of people live are dense enough to have these services very well covered. That doesn't happen though so the issue isn't being an enormous, diverse country at all.

ceejayoz 7mo ago

> There are a lot of things you can do in a rich, tiny, homogenous country that you can't do in a enormous, diverse country. The US is a large collection of a whole bunch of rich (by global standards), tiny, fairly homogenous areas. We manage roads and schools at state, county, and local levels; we could do municipal broadband.

hibikir 7mo ago

The difficulties of American internet speeds have little to do with the total size of the country, but how far individual families are from each other. Spain is roughly the size of Texas, and Spain has a higher population, but you need a lot less fiber to each home, because metro areas are so much denser, and therefore it's so much easier to lay the fiber. As usual, blame the suburbs, which make all kinds of infrastructure quite a bit more expensive per capita.

ceejayoz 7mo ago
But the US has long lagged behind in even dense areas. It's more than just the distribution.
- cvwright 7mo ago
  Right. It’s things like Baltimore (when I lived there) requiring that high speed internet had to roll out in poor areas first, before it could go into the rich neighborhoods. But this was the early 2000s and the internet was still “new”. Only the richer areas cared and were willing to pay the price. Letting them have first (or even equal!) access would have made it easier to fund the rollout in low income areas.
awakeasleep 7mo ago
Huge swaths of our densest metro areas, in our largest cities, do not have any fiber option, just one cable provider.
- kube-system 7mo ago
  The NEC, which is the only area of the US that really has any density to speak of, does have pretty good fiber penetration. https://www.reviews.org/app/uploads/2024/11/Verizon-Fios-coverage-map.webp https://www.reviews.org/app/uploads/2024/11/Verizon-Fios-cov...

bugglebeetle 7mo ago

>homogenous country Tell me you know nothing about Switzerland without telling me you know nothing about Switzerland. Try asking a German Swiss what they think about a French Swiss or either about the Romansch.

dotancohen 7mo ago
I wonder if there is some sort of metric for classifying how similar cultures are to one another. Are e.g. German Swiss more dissimilar to French Swiss, than are Florida rednecks dissimilar to Compton gangsters?
- bugglebeetle 7mo ago
  If you ever heard them talk about each other, you would definitely assume as much.
- khalic 7mo ago
  I’m not even talking about the languages, we have 20% immigrants in the population, and an even larger part has foreign roots. We also don’t have weapons in every household, if we’re talking myths
  - denysvitali 7mo ago
    > We also don’t have weapons in every household, if we’re talking myths It all depends if you did your military service (which implies that you're swiss) and if you didn't decide to drop out of it or deemed as unfit. I don't think it's a myth really, it just happens to be that a lot of people don't do their military service and thus don't have to keep a weapon at home
    - khalic 7mo ago
      You’re right about the source of the weapons wrong about how many there are. An estimated one in five household has firearms, with a significant percentage not having ammunition at home at all.

wat10000 7mo ago

Rich is a key attribute here. Tiny, not really. The key is dense. That makes terrestrial connections cheaper. A country with the population of the US and the richness and density of Switzerland would be just as capable of building out high speed internet connections. It would have ~38x the population of Switzerland, cost ~38x more to wire, and have ~38x the resources with which to do it. Incidentally, the northeast of the US has a similar or greater population density as Switzerland and is pretty rich. That area, at least, should be as capable of this sort of thing. Doing it for, say, everybody in Alaska would be a bit tougher. I don't know what diversity has to do with anything here. As far as I've seen, people from all sorts of different places and cultures seem to like high speed internet about equally well.

Aspos 7mo ago
Infrastructure is laughable in northeast. And no, we do not have competition here in NJ. Yay "free market"

toofy 7mo ago

> There are a lot of things you can do in a rich, tiny, homogenous country that you can't do in an enormous, diverse country. US states are little islands entirely capable of doing things like building infrastructure. There is no excuse for our states and their lack of movement, certainly not “the entire country is just tooooo big. whoa is us.” nonsense.

djoldman 7mo ago
Yes, that's true for population. But all except 9 US states are larger in geographic area and only 5 have a higher population density. Those are pretty salient statistics when you're talking about infrastructure that links houses.
- kalleboo 7mo ago
  Does New York have great home fiber infrastructure?

khalic 7mo ago

Homogenous? Tell me you don’t know anything about Switzerland without telling me…

Moldoteck 7mo ago

It's so homogeneous that there are 4 national languages, one of which is german with tons of loval dialects. It's so homogeneous that each canton has own sub regulations. It's so homogeneous that in it's biggest city, Zurich, 34% of people are foreigners and 45% born outside of Switzerland. But we can look at the opposite part of spectrum - Moldova, poorest country in Europe - 85% of infra is covered by fibre, >90% of population has option to get 1GBit fiber There are always reasons why something can't be done, just like solving frequent school shooting problem in US

Sesse__ 7mo ago
> 34% of people are foreigners I remember moving there, hearing talks about how international Zurich was, and then realizing most of those foreigners were German. :-) It's diverse on paper (and probably to the Swiss), but it's not like it's a cosmopolitan melting pot.
- izacus 7mo ago
  They really aren't.
- micwag 7mo ago
  Most immigration happens between neighboring countries e.g. the biggest immigrant group in Los Angeles are Mexicans. If you exclude neighboring countries Zurich has a foreign born population share of 27% (compared to 18% of Los Angeles). If you only look at the last 10 years Zurich has foreign born non neighboring immigration of 10% (compared to 4% for Los Angeles). If you only look at intercontinental migration then Los Angeles wins with 14% (compared to 8% of Zurich). So yes Zurich is less cosmopolitan then LA, but most of it is just because the US has more diverse neighbors.
- tribaal 7mo ago
  Maybe you should visit Geneva then, or most of the "Arc Lemanique". It's way more diverse than Zurich. Well, if you mean "diverse" as "more brown people" as your comment seems to imply.
Ray20 7mo ago

StrauXX 7mo ago

Switzerland is one of the least homogenous countries in Europe! Four languages, relatively weak federal government with strong local (canton) governments. Most state services are handled on a localized (canton) level.

Broken_Hippo 7mo ago

The US being different is no excuse - this is really just a shortsighted retelling of American Exceptionalism. Intelligent folks look at a system and figure out ways they can adapt it to their own situation. You can take systems they use for rural areas and figure out ways to do it on your own. The US is enormous, but most folks live in cities. States are tiny portions of the US, and some of those states would likely mirror Switzerland in diversity, density, and size. It wouldn't matter if the country had a population density similar to the US and was similar in many ways. It'd still need adaptation because of the differences in culture, laws, and so on.

izacus 7mo ago

Many US states are richer than Switzerland, what's their excuse?

piva00 7mo ago

The enormous, diverse country excuse is a good thought-terminating cliche but doesn't really hold up when the population of such enormous, diverse country is well concentrated along the coasts, with very dense rich pockets. Sweden, for example, is tiny in population compared to the US but geographically its size covers from north Florida to NYC, with barely 10m people it's able to have great public transportation, fiber coverage to 80-85+% of buildings, cellphone coverage to 98% of the population even in remote locations. Being enormous like the US might leave a vast area of low density population centres but it doesn't excuse at all that the areas where the vast majority of people live are dense enough to have these services very well covered. That doesn't happen though so the issue isn't being an enormous, diverse country at all.