>I think minimal infrastructure should be free. I think you mean minimal infrastructure should be subsidized. There is no free in the physical world. The inter

>I think minimal infrastructure should be free. I think you mean minimal infrastructure should be subsidized. There is no free in the physical world. The internet you are using comes in on big copper (or glass) cables and tearing up the ground costs lots of money. Overhead wireless internet is feasible, but not at the scale of an entire city, let alone a nation. It's not like you can wave your hand and have a network magically appear. People have to dig up the streets, put the cables in the ground and connect things. There are servers in big datacenters and routers and all sorts of technical devices that have to be configured. It is not as simple as pushing a button and making your code open-source; building networks is construction not publishing. If you think the internet should be subsidized (or nationalized) that's a conversation, but asking private companies to give things for free is ludicrous (you either mandate it to be free or accept the private status quo). If you really want free wifi, lobby for it. Is the Internet a business or not? Is telecom a business or not? The highways are nationalized, and I'd argue that they work pretty darn well. It's very politically difficult to go from a privatized industry to a nationalized one, particularly in America (it has only historically happened during times of war or massive banking crises and even then quite rarely). The fundamental question is this: Are these networks public or private? If they're public, most of these questions are non-issues. If they're private, again, most of these questions are non-issues. The reason we're talking about this stuff is because the line between public and private is hard to define.