However much Google is paying, one has to assume that it's "enough" in some sense, in that someone is selling it to them on a voluntary basis. Last mile costs t

However much Google is paying, one has to assume that it's "enough" in some sense, in that someone is selling it to them on a voluntary basis. Last mile costs to reach customers would, presumably, be paid for by the customer's subscription fees. If a company is losing money selling internet access to customers I don't see how the failure of their pricing structure is Google's fault. Also, large amounts of infrastructure were created back when AT&T was a government-backed national monopoly, and even today one would have to be extremely charitable to describe the US telecommunications market as "competitive". Not to mention that there's a strong argument to be made that access to communication is so vitally important to society (in the sense of having very large positive externalities) as to justify government intervention, but that's a largely separate issue. I like market solutions as much as anyone else but in a market that's already, and perhaps inherently, deeply dysfunctional it's not obvious that "less regulation" means better overall results. Markets and economies do not exist to be decorative or to promote political goals, they exist to create value for society, a point that seems to be lost on many people on all sides of the political spectrum. Anyway, I'm not claiming that it's clearly an argument in bad faith--it probably isn't. What I'm claiming is that the statement is sufficiently absurd to cast doubt on the reasoning of the entire article, and having since read the entire article I saw little to persuade me otherwise.