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Comment by phobosdeimos | Hacker News Reader

As I see it people in the US believe that the whole of the country needs to be treated equally. If you live in rural Kentucky your internet speed has to be the same as someone who lives in NYC. Pointing out that New York is the economic engine the US runs on and deserves to get priority makes everyone upset.

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Let me fix this for you:

Nobody likes to hear that they are lower on the priority totem pole, however, everybody understands when new businesses go after the biggest markets first.

If somebody is going to be upset by investing first in the areas with the most people...then you really have to disregard their point of view.

I live in a rural suburb and have had one of those cell-phone-over-ethernet setups in my house to handle the poor signal. I understand.

I think you could not be more incorrect about this. The FCC does sponsor efforts to make sure that less developed areas are getting broadband. However, I would argue that this is similar to electrification programs a century ago, and is more about access than equality.

From my experience, Americans care very much about what speed and reliability is available within their neighborhood. They care very little about access outside of their neighborhood.

I thought the meme was that Americans were fiercely individualistic and that Europeans were outcome-egalitarians? Of course the picture is more nuanced than that, but I've never heard the reverse before.

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