Posted on 10/04/2007 1:13:26 AM PDT by bruinbirdman
> After your “vacation” why don’t you invite the bellboy at your hotel to visit your home? Oh, he isn’t allowed to leave. Last time I checked, they called places you couldn’t leave a prison.
If it were as bad as all that, the local populace would have risen by now and overthrown Castro long before now. A few flee but most remain.
The Bay of Pigs fiasco is a classic example of Liberals being unable to organize a successful p*ssup in a brewery. Sadly, subsequent and successive Conservative administrations have failed to redress that.
Perhaps once America solves the Cuba nuisance, America will be qualified to criticise France for providing sensible infrastructure for free in Paris.
And I'm sure that's what regulators were looking at when the telephone came along. Unless I'm mistaken, the telegraph ended up with the railroads pretty much taking over, because they had oth the need, for scheduling and switching, and the right-of-way almost everywhere.
Nothing’s free.
Good? Bad? I don't get your point. They loaned 1.22B for 586,000 subscribers which is about $2k per subscriber. I have set up rural wifi broadband for considerably less than that. What the government funds is typically backward looking and laden with pork (free computers for subscribers, etc).
Paris and France will become the haven of terrorists seeking anonymous Internet access. Oh, wait...
The problem is that you haven’t clearly defined your terms. You have four things listed, but allow that there are things that you haven’t considered. Eventually, everything will be considered necessary public amenities. Eventually, you will be living in Cuba without the necessity of even getting on a boat or an airplane.
I do like the idea of free stuff, but at the end of the day the government does nothing efficiently, and nothing’s really free.
> I do like the idea of free stuff, but at the end of the day the government does nothing efficiently, and nothing’s really free.
You are right on both counts. Government is inherently inefficient. And no, nothing is ever inherently “free” — there is always a cost.
Some essentials, like sewerage collection or potable water, already fall under the umbrella (at least in most jurisdictions) as things we cannot do without — and thus are controlled by local body authorities. My suggestion is that over time this definition needs to expand to include things like telecommunications, gas, electricity &tc. They are just too dam’n important to leave to the whims and fancies of the free market.
Yuh, I guess that is a bit Socialist, but not all Socialist ideas are particularly bad. Just like not all Conservative ideas are inherently good.
In my view, extremes are always a bit dodgy: I tend toward the Free Market, but certainly not an uncontrolled Free Market. There is a balance to be struck...
Actually a major reason “why it was busted up” was because the federal judge overseeing the antitrust case wasn’t very competant and believed all of the pie in the sky promises made by the antitrust plaintiffs. Several years after the case was decided, the judge was quoted as saying roughly — “I don’t understand what happened! They promised me that if I gave them what they wanted, everything was going to work out.”
Too soon to tell if it’s good or bad. If it improves the economy in those areas, then it’s a good investment. If it turns into a mess, then it’s a bad investment. We’ll know in a couple of years.
You get your electricity, gas, telecommunications, and water for free from the government? Where do you live?
Cuba, Venezuala, and the old Soviet Union pop to mind as models for your new utopia.
A large amount was spent in rural Michigan, we don’t have to wait to see the effect of that. Broadband might help a few people up there sell more stuff on EBay, but I haven’t seen any new network entrepreneurs coming out of Michigan.
That is an elegant way to perform industrial espionage. Oh wait. Never mind.
It’s been 36 months. It might take years for any effects to be felt in either new or existing businesses.
> Cuba, Venezuala, and the old Soviet Union pop to mind as models for your new utopia.
Ancient Rome pops into my mind. Cuba, Venezuela and the old Soviet Union could not find their arse with both hands at the best of times. Ancient Rome, on the other hand, most certainly could.
> You get your electricity, gas, telecommunications, and water for free from the government? Where do you live?
We don’t, and we should. So should you. I live in New Zealand.
All liberated by an endlessly generous, & benevolent USA.
In what year did your country fight for her freedom?
You will be adding them to the list of places America "lords over".
What, if anything, is your country willing to do to solve the "Cuba nuisance"?
(aside of waiting for someone else..someone more brave to do it)
Good response on turning over ANY utility to the government where it is guaranteed to
(1) stagnate and (2) be subject to needless overhead.
Ma Bell is the perfect example of what we now see in Europe and a lot of Progressive anti-capitalism but really nothing more than a Socialist-Monopolistic and increasingly Fascist economic arrangement.
Governments do a crappy job at running things, and their involvement should be kept to an absolute minimum.
First, if its free, there is no reason to be efficient, thus everything becomes very costly (the free stuff still has to be paid for) AND innovation dies because there is no money in it.
Governments almost never pay for innovation in public systems and generally trickle money in after initial startup. There is no glory for a politician in fixing a street, only in building a new one.
Among the ways to spend money are:
1. Spending your own money on something for yourself. This results in the highest quality for the money, because you care what it costs and what you get.
2. Spending someone else's money on yourself. You get high quality, but don't care what it costs.
3. Spending your money on someone else. You care what it costs, but not so much about quality.
4. Spending someone else's money on someone else. You care little what it costs and little about the quality.
The latter defines government spending. Your recipe for utopia has been tried a hundred times and on vast scales. It fails every time.
I will give you that it can look good initially, but that is the last time it will happen.
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