National Broadband Plan: A 25X Faster Web

[garbon]

[CountDeMoney]

Great, more open infrastructure the Chinese are going to want to crash.

[Admiral Yi]

Perfect example of being penny wise and pound foolish, a Republican ideal.  Infrastructure investment is very important to economic growth, and so is access of everyone to the infrastructure. 

Infrastructures typical exist as some types of networks, and networks are known to have network externalities (which are positive).  Having more people on the network brings benefits to people already on the network, but sometimes expansion of the network may not be worth it on its own if you don't internalize the externalities.  It's a classic situation where government intervention can create wealth relatively directly.

You're arguing from first premises.

The original argument for the rural phone subsidy was the same as that for the de facto rural postal subsidy: it would increase national cohesion.