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Comment by LyalinDotCom | Hacker News Reader

I am ashamed of my country (America) that we as a nation, federally speaking, don't provide the funding needed to empower everyone in rural areas with high speed internet as a right. The Internet powers so many important things today and if we're talking about "thousands of dollars per household" it is totally doable.

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Why should those of us who don't choose to live in the country have to subsidize the lifestyle choices of those that do choose to live in the country?

And, before you go thinking I'm just the radical conservative, recognize that this cuts both ways. I'm also of the opinion that we shouldn't be subsidizing people's high-carbon lifestyles by making roads free, for example.

I agree with your statement, but I worry that not everyone has the ability to move to less rural area even if they wanted to. How do we avoid punishing the people who are not choosing to live in middle-of-nowhere versus those who make that choice?

Accelerate the deployment of Starlink and OneWeb. Save hundreds of billions of dollars over 20 years in building unnecessary FTTH all over shrinking, uneconomical rural America.

Well, you're subsidizing wars in some faraway lands, so why not Internet at home.

That's a facetious argument.

"Who cares if the govt wastes more money because they already waste money?"

Rural industries make urban life possible. If some people didn't live in the country you wouldn't be able to live in the city.

Google suggests perhaps ~10 million rural houses in the US lack access to high speed internet.

It's a nice thought, but where in the budget do you propose we find several tens of billions of dollars?

Rural electrification and rural POTS was once done, what makes rural WISPS that much more expensive?

We didn't have a landline in rural US until I was 14. We had point-to-point long distance maser and WISP by the time I was 21. If anyone wants it, they can get it, of they pay for it. If somebody doesn't want to pay for it, why should the despits of various people's urban states compel their denizens to do so?

We need that money for more adventures in the middle east and urban welfare though.

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