I think I’ve reached my Poe limit. I can’t tell if you’re serious or whether you’re parodying the Fox news idea of what a statist is like.
Edit: I read your bio. Dear God, I suspect you’re serious.
Okay, at the risk of feeding a troll, here’s what I find troubling with your reply.
- Contempt for the governed. We live in a democracy, and one that often makes decisions that are vastly different from my preferred position. But to claim that my opinion should outweigh the democratic decision of the public is an arrogance of astonishing proportion.
- Higher bandwidth is more important than say decent schools, or decent medical care for all, or rebuilding basic infrastructure like roads, etc? Look, I’m as delusional as anyone, but I’m not going to claim that satisfying my needs is a great gift to society. Sure, I might come up with an innovation because I’ve got 100MB bandwidth instead of 10Mb bandwidth, but that’s a nothing compared to the life improvements that those hundreds of billions could be used for if spent on people who are actually needy.
- I like to be paid something more than subsistence. Given that I try to earn the highest salary I can, it would be incredibly hypocritical of me to criticize a company for essentially doing the same. Break legal or ethical laws? Sure, I’m against it. But with a few noble exceptions, I see almost everyone trying to optimize their income while playing within the rules of the system.
- While government needs to be involved in basic research, almost all successful tech development has been a commercial endeavor. Government involvement is a necessity for some things (technological development in areas that don’t have a commercial return), but even a basic look at every piece of technology I use makes it clear that private industry, motivated by the profit motive (the same motive that gets me up for work each day), has built almost everything technical I own. Swift adoption of technological change is not a government core competency. Nor should it be. Technological progress requires gambles, and I’d rather it be with somebody else’s money, not with the government’s.
