> The transparency issue is that a build-out requirement isn't denominated in dollars...If you institute a build-out rule, it does so without knowing the size o

> The transparency issue is that a build-out requirement isn't denominated in dollars...If you institute a build-out rule, it does so without knowing the size of the costs; they are simply imposed silently. OK, I think I see. > The company is charged $X per year to use public rights of way. The government hands this money to the poor people who can choose to buy cable connections or not. (If they don't, this is a sign that they have something better to use the money on.) But I'm still having trouble seeing how this scenario improves on the original problem. I thought that local governments were already charging $X for uses of rights of way, and build-out requirements are in addition to this. So if I understand right, the idea is to charge more (say $(X + Y)) but not impose those requirements, and instead let the broadband companies decide where and when to build out; then distribute the excess $Y (and, possibly, funds from elsewhere) to subsidize Internet service for the poor. The problem I see here is that, if I'm one of those N poor folks the broadband company decides it doesn't want to build out to, I'm out of luck. I don't even have the option of buying broadband service, and offering up my $Y/N dollars does not give me much leverage to change that. If enough of my neighbors got together and pooled our funds, maybe that would be enough to convince the company to build out to our neighborhood, but maybe not, especially if (1) the company has already decided our neighborhood isn't worth it, or (2) building out would require the company to pay more in right-of-way fees (though maybe this is included in the initial $X+Y price?). In short, it seems like our government trades the relatively strong leverage we have as a collected political force for the relatively weak leverage we each have as individuals, plus $Y/N dollars apiece. In this particular case, that does not sound like a good trade, for the reasons I mentioned: Internet access is more or less essential infrastructure, and there is public interest in having nearly-universal access to that infrastructure, rather than a class of haves and a class of have-nots. I wouldn't think it's that the government doesn't trust the poor (or really, anyone not yet built-out-to) to spend this money on responsibly. Rather, it's that divvying it up and letting individuals make their own decisions on how to spend it sacrifices political and economic coordination, which is required in this case to serve a desireable public end, near-universal access. Solving coordination problems like this is a big part of why governments exist, and we shouldn't be rushing to give up that coordination for individual decision making. We can easily end up in a situation where we're all worse off that way.