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Comment by bionhoward | Hacker News Reader

There's a serious argument to be made to keep the government out of areas which ought to be free market territory. If there's not enough demand for internet in these areas to justify multiple service providers, perhaps that's OK, because to provide the service would be a waste of resources... Just because internet is a utility does not mean the government ought to be the one providing that utility.

Also, this just reinforces the argument for projects like Starlink -- which could change the game in rural broadband. Conservatives have a lot of motivation to oppose government programs and that does not necessarily make them corrupt.

What America needs is more intellectual + centrist + pragmatic conservatism to counter Trumpist BS, not necessarily more government programs....

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Internet access should be considered a utility and explicitly NOT subject to "free market" territory. It's a core driver of our modern economy and essential for pretty much everything these days. It should be mostly if not wholly subsidized by the state like the interstate highway system.

A municipality's decision to implement common locally-owned internet as a public utility IS the free market. The State should not get to decide what's a "waste of resources" for me and my neighbors.

If your neighbor doesn't use the public internet for whatever reason, then making your neighbor pay for it is a waste of resources.

And some people do not have cars or children in schools or use the food banks or go to community college.

Not everything is about the individual cost/benefit, and individuals can benefit from society wide benefits.

Further in this direction. The neighbor that doesn't use this internet will still benefit from the value of new jobs and opportunity that it will bring.

"If there's not enough demand..."

Demand is not that simple. There could be tons of latent demand and the internet seems to be one of those things that seems to show induced demand as well. People are incredibly adaptive and may be working around the problem of crappy internet one way or another.

If there was just straight up "demand", these near-monopoly ISPs form a market of "you can't vote for whoever you want as long as I get to choose the candidate" type systems. That does not a healthy market make and supply/demand do not work out like it does in econ 101 textbooks in unhealthy markets.

> What America needs is more intellectual + centrist + pragmatic conservatism to counter Trumpist BS, not necessarily more government programs....

I don't think this is about Trump, GOP governments have failed to reduce government programs for 5 decades now, and almost always resulted in more deficits: https://miro.medium.com/max/700/1*pqIXolEpzpTNktAgIclA-A.png

From the outside (I'm not from the US) it looks like the small government talking point has been empty rhetorics since inception.

> free market territory

The free market in the United States for broadband Internet has failed. Time for plan B.

DSL, Cable, 4G, wifi, starlink, GEO satelite.

There's plenty of options

Yup. Plenty of 10mbps options.

Why is that. There's clearly the potential for competition, there isn't a monopoly on internet provision - the investment to set up a WISP is minimal.

Why isn't the market providing that competition? Why can't you run fiber through your sewer for example? who owns the sewer?

What free market? In most places in the US cable and Internet service is a local monopoly. This argument is getting more and more threadbare as the Republican Party gets more outré.

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