Canadian broadband irony
Posted on:: January 25th, 2005
I readily acknowledge that with this screen capture I’m indulging in cheap irony and that the real question is — as Dewayne Hendricks said in forwarding the link — why the US doesn’t have an initiative like this Canadian one. Nevertheless, you don’t turn down a chance to blog cheap irony, do you, especially when that’s our only way of maintaining our sense of national superiority…?
Categories: Uncategorized dw
You’re forgetting some of the most basic tenets of the freemarket gospel that so many of our business leaders and politicians hold so dear. According to the belief system, as I’m sure you well know, because government is always wasteful and incompetent, it’s best whenever possible to hand over to private industry incredibly important matters like broadband which will determine on what side of the global digital divide we end up on. Private industry always knows best. People motivated by individual self-interest are the most motivated people in the world. It is because of this kind of thinking, no doubt, that we have the best mobile phone system in the world, and the highest percentage of people with access to broadband.
Oh ok, actually this provisioning is via a OC-192 (10 Gbps) speeds. Its aka-CA*net4.
Its from the thinktank Canaira , which promotes and works with the CA government on R&D issues.
OK, so I’m Canadian and no doubt biased … but imo free markets don’t always serve all of the constituents or citizens of a society well, and I for one don’t believe everything that is provided as service as should be devolved to “free” markets.
Broad band in an Internet era is about as good a candidate for a public good, or a public service, as I can think of.
So, I sure hope my government continues to evolve in that direction in terms of the provision of broadband access.
And … daniel .. are you certain that the US has the best mobile phone system in the world ? I have been mightily impressed whilst in western Europe … it seems to me that the mobile phone systems in the UK and Holland were at least the equal to the US … and I suspect Japan is no slouch when it comes to mobile phone infrastructure.
I could pick a bone or three on the issue of “private industry always knows best”, but we’d probably end up yelling (figuratively) at each other.
Sorry Jon, I was being facetious. I actually believe that our IT infrastructure could be a lot better if, like our system of roads, it was built out by our government. Instead of a standards body of somesort coming up on, well, standards everyone can agree on, we have a farrago of systems that don’t cooperate with each other very well. The situation is somewhat reminiscent of the early days of railroad when each railroad had its own track gauge. Because of the absence of government oversight, countries like Korea and Japan, and I’m sure there are many others, have passed us long ago in providing affordable, highspeed internet access. I’m sure the reason they’re in the lead is because of well thought out government policies. The pro-privitazation, anti-government current runs so strongly in our country, not only are we unwilling to initiate broad government initiatives that would benefit everyone, we are going to scrap (if the Republicans get their way) government programs that have been in place for decades and work reasonably well. They must get rid of these programs, in my humble opinion, becasuse they stand as a refutation of their whole ideology that government cannot work. In a very twisted way, many of Bush’s supporters don’t mind that he bungles everything. The more he does so, the more their central supposition about government incompetence is reinforced.
Thanks for the clarififcation, Daniel. Ever since I was an adolescent, I’ve thought there must be something to the results obtained from living out the tag lines of governments. In the USA it’s “Life, Liberty and The Pursuit of Happiness”, no … whereas up here in the (somewhat less-frozen ?) Great White North it’s “Peace, Order and Good Government” ;-)
I’m guessing (but pretty certain) that most of us generally don’t mind paying taxes as we realize the bulk of the taxes go for health care, education, broadband to rural and under-served areas, and such … and fortunately our army (such as it is ;-) doesn’t seem to eat up quite the same proportion of the country’s annual budget (or focus of attention).
Selling the idea of lower taxes to the American people is only possible in an environment where people believe that government is at best a necessary evil, and at worst incompetent, cofiscatory, and all too willing to make the lazy minority ingrates the recipients of too many tax dollars. This kind of thinking is constantly reinforced in our society. The reality is, however, that the military industrial complex is what really constitutes the “welfare” state in America. Thus our military expenditures are far, far greater than what they are anywhere else in the world–certainly out of proportion to any threat we face. It is not too much of an exaggeration to say that in place of things like universal healthcare we have a collection of about 100-300 billion dollar bombers (you know, the kind that are eventually mounted near the entrance of a military installation once they become obsolete). Too few Americans seem to understand that taxes are what people need to pay for civilization. It is not possible to have a great country and a taxation burden similar to what Haitians or Bangladeshis ,um, enjoy.
Yes, daniel … thanks. There certainly are some days when the USA looks like a very war-like and war-liking nation, preferring that character to one of helping to build civilization (regardless of the symbolic and hopeful Iraq election, and what your president says).
Paying for the military-industrial complex and its wars is a different form of taxation, of course. Sponsoring …
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