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Re:Why is European broadband faster and cheaper? Blame the g... by arecibodrake on Wednesday June 29, 2011 @01:54PM (#2710451)
The only reason we don't have most metropolitan areas with gigabit fiber to the door is almost entirely teleco/cable easements.

The day you stop government from mandating one company per area or delimiting it to a small few monopolistic entities and allow a free market is the day we stop dealing with the hell that is becoming us.

The answer is quite simply LESS government, dammit.

Re:Why is European broadband faster and cheaper? Blame the g... by seabee on Wednesday June 29, 2011 @02:03PM (#2710499)
That clearly isn't the answer, as the article spends many paragraphs explaining.

The answer is "do things that encourage competition and investment". The US government fails at this, but it is neither a limitation of government per se or easily achieved by private enterprise alone.

Re:Why is European broadband faster and cheaper? Blame the g... by arecibodrake on Thursday June 30, 2011 @02:08AM (#2712861)
The article argues that good situations resulted from government action. The reality is that while these situations are viewed as good, they are not neccessarily the best. Only when individuals are able to voluntarily interact in the market do the best services and products meet the best prices and innovation is at its highest. One of the main factors that does not permit government from being able to exist in a market in a positive way in comparison is due to a complete lack of price model interaction. Government (by its very nature) does not depend on consumer response (price model). It thus has no way of allocating resources as efficiently as it would were it to exist without tax dollars (confiscated property, not gained through competition or voluntary interaction). As such, it cannot gauge weather or not the things it is doing are the best or the most effective to meet the demand.

There are mountains of writing on the basics of free markets and Austrian Economics, if you would like me to link you to some resources.

Re:Why is European broadband faster and cheaper? Blame the g... by arecibodrake on Thursday June 30, 2011 @03:15PM (#2715361)
Ah yes! -2! Let's outpace reddit down the website memory hole!

I mean really people, this is basic economics.