Government in general is really inefficient. Way less efficient than, say, Comcast, Microsoft, or Fedex. So unless there is some good reason it must be Government solving a problem, why not have someone (anyone) else do it?

Having Government do our broadband is very dangerous. Besides "fiber optic cables to nowhere", and outages and delays in major cities, there is the possibility of "packet shaping", blocking access to certain websites (e.g. The Pirate Bay), listening to our conversations (in case we're terrorists), requiring the installation of DRM software to go with internet access, and not allowing the use of cryptographic protocols granting anonymity or privacy. Why should we trust the Government to do those things less than companies that at least need paying customers and have less power?

As inefficient as is might be, there are still some things that only government can build. There are plenty of places even today that the US mail goes to that FedEx does not. (I lived in one of them).

Sometimes you've just got to suck it up and swing that sledge hammer at that gnat, because there's just no private incentive to make a fly swatter.

Yeah, sure, but why is broadband one of those things?

Is it broadband to rural areas that only the Government would do, because there is no profit in it? If so, I'm not convinced that's the best use of taxpayer money.

Way less efficient than [citation needed] The US government on average is not as bad as you might assume. Granted they tend to get burned when outsourcing work but bringing in third party's often increases costs or decreases quality. EX: Public school lunch programs managed by 3rd parties.

_The Machinery of Freedom_ has some citations.

Human organizations are inefficient. The more humans in there the more inefficient.

The way to make organizations efficient is to have, technology (machines) a large part of the organization.

Wether they are public or private is not as important as to wether the organization has used techonology to streamline its processes.

For the record the US Postal Service has an EXCELLENT on time performance:

"National overnight service was 96 percent on time — the first time this score has been maintained for three quarters in a row — and two-day service was 93 percent on time. " Tracked by IBM Business Services (http://www.usps.com/communications/newsroom/localnews/il/il_...)

93% or 96% ontime sounds bad. What is the rate for fedex? I bet it's better.

EDIT:

http://www.bloggingstocks.com/2007/04/09/ups-vs-fedex-battle...

The actual rate of the FedEx station in Las Vegas, Nevada (LASA) is 99.86%.