Actually ubiquitous power came from a government mandate and funding
known as the Rural Electrification Act. The former Bell system left
many areas of the country without telephone service and the same act set
up the "Rural Telco's" to this day I am served by "Kearsarge Telephone
Co" at home which serves a large chunk of Central NH.
Ultimately the 'Market' always fails in corner cases and Government in
the form of regulation and sometimes funding needs to step in as human
nature never changes and greed still dominates in the end not so much
that these areas are unprofitable to service it's just that with the
same investment more money can be made elsewhere. From a accounting
standpoint this is rational behavior from a societal standpoint this
behavior is counterproductive. Government is not 'The Answer" as many
people feel but it does have a valuable role in balancing financial and
societal needs.
One of the societal needs today is reasonably priced high speed internet
otherwise the US will fall behind in developing next generation network
services as low speed DSL simply does not get the job done reasonably
priced does not mean $100US for a 384/768 "Business DSL" which is the
only thing I can run VPN over. This infrastructure is important today
as electricity was in the 20's and 30's
Laird Popkin wrote:
On Jul 28, 2008, at 9:54 AM, John Levine wrote:
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> you
write:
Sort of makes one wonder how the US came to have ubiquitous roads, or
power, or water distribution...
Oh, but that's different. They were important.
Or, to be more specific, people everywhere need power and water and
were willing to pay for them, so other people started companies to
provide them everywhere. Roads are a little more complicated - the
basic roads were there due to demand, but the highways got built
because the Army argued that without highways they couldn't move
troops and supplies to defend the country in case of an invasion. The
same trick got science funded for a while... :-)
